Dev Vlog: Map Mania, Performance Optimization, and More!

36:55 D E D Dead

Those pacing shots of the engine with the full train were spectacular. And... Gods, those cars with Rico and Dolores are peak. A little belated but, happy pride, no matter the month

The choice to make the map look with that style is superb.

How do you know what part of the video is Mark's? 1. Sounds. Dude's an audiophile to the bone, and we love it. 2. I saw that weird ramp bridge thing you let slip by the camera at Inyo >.> 3. Cinematic shots from ON TOP OF THE TRAIN! Mark, your Hyce is showing. But in all seriousness, I LOVE how much detail you're putting into the UI. The map looks so cool, and still keeps that somewhat minimalist vibe that keeps it clear what we should care about most. And the DANCE of the train going down the line??? I mesmerized the whole video watching it sway as it runs. I cannot wait to play this and get immersed!!!

I honestly love how far the game has come since ~2022-23 and I hope I get to play it before i graduate in 2029 and head to college. By any chance will you all do a Youtube Q&A at all or will you just stick to patron Q&A? I like the sound the new slack makes and everything doesn't look as shiny and RTX maxxed as before. Such a good job you wonderful team of 18 fluffy goats and continue your work!

will you do a steam demo ever? just a question cause i was considering because you had something for NNGC and was curious if there was going to be a demo (sorry if this was already answered i just havent really watched the qna's in a while)

I thought of this a little late, will the Map have a Setting to show Map Topography to help with planning Slopes, Or will it be more of a "you'll see it when you get there" type of Work lol.

Sometimes blogs may be boring and technical but at the end of the day that's what a lot of gamedev is, so don't worry about it! People like me who are already in game development love it 👀

Was soo excited to see the Shovel noses!! With their time on the White Pass comming to an end soon, it’s so important to preserve the history of these iconic lil gremlins!

Is every piece of information automatically added to the map? And will we have an option to add markers/text/etc. manually as well? Also will there be toggles to change the information displayed on the map? I'm primarily asking for something like a height map of some kind to help with planning routes.

Track chart paperwork vibes for the map is the way to go, that's a style I love seeing in model railroad form as well. Great call!

One specific thing I noticed with the maps and industries is that the track at Sierra Talc Co. where the talc ore was unloaded from the cars into the industry in the previous devlogs was labelled as "Storage Yard - Out". From the perspective of the cars this makes sense, the load is being taken out of the cars. However, since it is the industry track associated with the industry being shown on the map, it seams a bit counterintuitive to me. I'd have thought it would be ladled as the input to the industry (i.e. from the perspective of the industry), rather than the output of the car. Either way works and I realise it's all w.i.p., subject to change, etc., also that the current way round might be more intuitive for some, or more authentic, but if the labelling or in and out is the way round currently shown it might be useful to keep in mind when writing instructions and tutorials.

Great update. I love how you go into detail about the challenges and the way you work through them. It's almost like hey we are learning here as we go. The map looks great! I would like to see some color options for the map, even though I like the blueprint theme.

Here’s a nitpick, but I think it’s worth noting. The post office didn’t change state abbreviations until 1963, Inyo, Calif. would be far more common and appropriate than Inyo, CA.

For the maps, will we only get one interchange per map or will we see maps with multible interchanges? And if that is the case will we get traffic between interchanges?

How will the character models interact with the world? E.G:. Will your character physically interact with objects in the cab when watching from the perspective of another player, will a small animation play when lining switches, etc... Will there be stylized human and animal NPCs?

Thanks for the update and reassurence that I won't need a NASA computer to play the game. I was getting a bit worried with how detailed and pretty the game looks, not to mention every possible physics simulation. I really admire your persistant attention to detail, seeing the train wobble down the track and the engine's hunting motion combined with the swaying made me smile more than one would reasonably expect. The sound design is also something immensely appreciate. I'm looking forward to seeing more progress on this project.

Since optimization has seen some improvements lately, I'd like to propose that you guys consider distributing limited alpha builds via patreon from time to time. This is a model that worked well for GunnerHeatPC prior to their game releasing to a broader audience, and played a big role in generating attention and funding. On a selfish note, I'm sure many of us would love the opportunity to play around with things like the firing sim and just running the trains, even if the rest of the game isn't done materializing around it yet.

Happy Pride month and as always love seeing the pride boxcars! As someone who is transfem it is nice to have people in the railroad community that are supportive of lgbtqia+ folks. The map looks wonderful and the sway on the trains look so much more fluid. The audio work and performance improvements are awesome to hear.

Painfully beautiful work, guys! I have a feeling the track building system is going to be the perfect match for the "blueprint" map style. There's something incredibly satisfying about seeing the railway shape on what looks like a giant engineering drawing.. It feels authentic, elegant, and deeply immersive. And how about the the slack sound.... is absolutely maniacal! Fantastic. Every update somehow manages to raise the bar. I think CoS is shaping up to be something truuuly special...

Ok thanks

One thing i have noticed: Is the horizontal line in the circle just the symbol for the turntable or does it show the current alignment?

I loved the slack-action sounds! Ever since I watched one of "Boomer Diorama"'s videos where he'd edited in some recordings of real trains over some switching on his HO railroad, I've wanted to figure out how to do this live on a model railroad. You are absolutely right about how much it adds to the immersion. Are you going to add other car sounds like brake squeal and flange squeal around curves and thumps from flat spots on the wheels? (Or are those already there?) It could be fun if the cars get noisier as their condition goes down, though that may be more complexity than really matters.

I genuinely laughed out loud when I saw the train derail in the map view! XD A great progress update as always guys. Cheers!

Dear studio 346 just wondering if the whistl that mark had to wait 6years to hear might be in game

Oh the map looks amazing! One thing I didn't see is hover-over details or symbols for some simple things like water towers, and as those are such nondescript shapes, that may be very useful. Amazing work, it's absolutely beautiful.

I have experienced scenes in real life that didnt look this good. Stunning graphics, truly immersive sounds and I love the rockin & rollin waddle. As usual, the maths left me behind, but as long as somebody understands it all, all will be good :) Love the look of the map - I have spent the past 6 years cataloguing railway blueprints - locomotives, rolling stock, station yards and permanent way infrastructure and the maps fonts bring a wonderful historic feel. Super impressed - bring it on!!

Great work all round refining the game and making progress on enhancing the gameplay experience. The amount of work and progress is noted and appreciated even if it isn't all as immediately obvious as new content. One observation on the map (beyond that overall it looks great) is that I expect that it might be really useful if terrain height contours were either included or a toggleable option. Particularly when planning routes and to orientate yourself with topographical features away from items represented on the map. This could be a fixed layer based on the map with no modifications for track or buildings (those items "just" mask the contour layer), rather than a dynamic set of contours calculated from the current state of the world map. Although I expect detailed terrain height details wasn't always available to railroads, especially in remote areas or the earlier eras, and I can see how you might feel it detracts from the art style you're going for, and hence why you might not include it.

I’m in love with the “ui is paperwork” thing. The map being a track plan makes all the sense. It’s gonna make planning our own routes so much easier! I can totally see a system where you can lay a track on the map and it leaves a “ghost” in the game world do you can follow it as you lay your tracks.

May i suggest for the map switch icon, that you use colour indications for how they are set like geen for normal, red, when set the other directions and perhaps a yellow or orange for when they are damaged Its so much easier to quickly see how your switches are set on the map when you have a colour indication vs trying to see how they are aligned via lines. Like how the enhanced map mod works for railroader. I was the person to make this suggestion to Vanguard when he first made the mod, which he implemented and it made switching errors so much easier to catch.

I'm liking the return to more skeuomorphic design that's being used for the map and the UI in general. With the feature that shows things like broken switches on the map, I'm a bit curious if that's something that will update as it happens, or if there will be a "fog of war" so to speak that will only update its broken/functional status on the map when a player gets near enough to it (or something.)

Dang, the background music sounds nice!

Amazing work you all have been doing!! But I've got a question for you guys, will the grade- and maintenance profiles be shown on the map? Or will that be a seperate thing? (I've got an even spicier question, but I'm keeping that until the next Q&A will be announced)

This as always is amazing work, love how the map UI looks and works, its simple design looks to add to the games aesthetics, rather then losing it with really fancy graphics. Those sounds are fantastic and the FPS gains are impressive, I would be very happy to with those rates on my system. Waiting patiently to get to play and enjoy.

First of all hearing the slack run in and out brought the biggest grin on my face lmao. Anyone who’s worked/lived around these things knows the sound they make when the slack runs out or in. Speaking of audio things, it’s interesting that mark is working on the “lazering” effect that locomotives make when running past you. I remember when I was working on audio mod for smokebox’s big boy locomotive and noticed that whenever it was starting out the chuffs had this “lazering” effect to them. It sounded like a peak filter on an EQ that was sweeping up and down. What was actually happening was that the audio files were slowly fading from stereo to mono which created that odd effect. I don’t know if that’s anything you could apply that to what you’re trying to accomplish, even if you could that’s probably a more resource expensive solution to what you’re doing lol, but it’s something I’ve noticed in my limited audio engineering work. Again that and the rest of the work on this is incredible. You were right, the future is looking very bright.

What a cool update! I love this stuff. I think the in game map is MAGICAL and like ColonelCactus said, I also smiled very big when hearing the draft gear sounds. I'm really happy with how the rolling stock sway is looking after that backend change; it looks so natural. There was something about how it swayed before that just didn't look *quite* right to me. Now, for me, it is doing the thing. Also have to say, always love to hear nitty gritty from Jake

Glory be, getting to see the map for the first time has been great! It really does look good, and getting to see the behind the scenes as well as the optimatization is wonderful. I'm soooo excited for this game. As someone running a potato PC on the graphical side, it's great to know I could get that type of performance in the game. Cheers y'all.

Will we be able to NAME bridges and tunnels? This would make feeling at home on our railroads so much deeper.

So we don't get a handcar fueled by cheeseburgers and fries to fix broken switches? ;)

Wow! I really like the direction you have taken the map feature, it looks absolutely fantastic. I'm curious, from a gameplay perspective, will some of the more comfort oriented features be locked (or lockable) for higher difficulty levels? Particularly with multiplayer, it seems like being able to slow down the work a bit could be a really nice way of stretching out the gameplay a bit. I also really enjoyed the watching the sway and it got me thinking about how I'm looking forward to seeing more of the track system getting fleshed out. I'm holding out hope that some of the sway that's associated with the track can be made visually apparent in the track itself. Walking on track everyday I can assure you that from a distance it can look remarkably straight, but it never really stays that way for long, and in the digital space I've never seen track that had that real world used feel to it. But, if anyone can get it right, I'll bet on Studio 346. Last but not least, the slack action sounds being added, chef's kiss! What more can be said?

Wow that map is amazing! The Sanborn sort of map looks incredible. Really like how how the art style is really leaning into looking like the actual paperwork, 100% the right call. The real time wreck on the map was great, can't wait to watch another train crew on the map launch their train off a bridge as I look helplessly on the map.

31:40 song in the background is giving me Dominic Behan vibes

Every time I watch a devlog I am more and more impressed. Love the work, love the sounds, love the visuals.

Amazing video as always and I look forward to seeing all the great work you all are doing! I love the in depth talks about the technical side of the game, especially the math that went into getting the map feature to look and run as amazing as it is. I would love to hear more details like that! Great job as always workers of studio 346 and I can not wait to see what you all cook up next!

Great video! Happy Pride Month, love to see the rolling stock and other little details again :) thanks for keeping that up. The optimizations are extremely exciting, it's great to see how much progress you're making. And the auditory feedback for slack and colliding rolling stock is such a nice feature, being immersive and weighty and also providing information to players. Keep up the great work! Also loved the deep dive on the inner workings of the map and some of the unexpected challenges and amount of problem-solving that went into it. Flex that math degree a little ;)

I don't have time to watch the whole vlog today, so forgive me if this was addressed... Will map features such as the position of rolling stock and locomotives, alongside switch position/interaction be toggleable in difficulty? It seems to me that in a multiplayer setting where you do in fact have more than one train, or even just a train and speeder out on the line, that it would take away from some of the realism where you have an almost CTC level of knowledge just in the map. Knowing you don't need to slow for a junction to make sure it's lined properly, versus not paying attention and finding yourself on the ground because you took an industry switch at track speed. Knowing there is a train coming and need to take the siding, versus the dispatcher failing to issue orders and having a brown alert when you see another train you weren't expecting. Stuff like that adds A LOT of gameplay for multiplayer groups, and I'd hate to see that aspect watered down in the name of QOL. Otherwise, the map feature really looks great and adds a lot of useful information for more realism focused groups, and I look foward to seeing more!

Firstly, I LOVE how realistic the engine hunts and dances as it powers through Inyo Station from the Engineer's perspective! It looks almost exactly like it should when sitting behind the engine, staring forwards. Secondly: I love the fact you put in slack action and draft gear sounds! On the 7.5", some cars are built with draft gear, some cars are built with just a coupler pocket. But one thing they all share is if you get 3 or more cars together and you do a rough stop or start, you're gonna hear the banging of the slack action from those couplers and it made my night hearing those! I also love the work Tom and Jake did on the map! It's a truly unique and inspired take on a common game function that makes it stand out from other video game maps. Keep being awesome, Studio346!

I can't wait for yall to release this game! It has got to be the game that is the most anticipated for me.

I continue to love the paperwork UI theme. It feels cozy somehow.

Its a night and day difference to see a train game made by people who have actually “done the thing” as opposed to a train game made by some guy ^TM that happens to kinda like trains but hasn’t done the thing personally.

Is there any chance we can get a full cover of "Come Out Ye Black and Tans" that played at around 31:15? That was a very nice but short unexpected treat to hear.

First off, Happy Pride! Secondly, amazing Dev Vlog! So far everything looks amazing, please keep at it! Thanks to the entire Dev team for all their hard work, the many hours of coding and the many more hours of Kenoshas!

This has been an incredible devlog. I really enjoy hearing from the different devs about some of the smaller details like the map implementation. It's also incredible how much the draft gear sounds add to the immersion. Hearing them for the first time put the biggest smile on my face. A lot of the previous pictures and devlogs about Inyo had me worried the map would be relatively boring scenery wise compared to the other 3 maps if it just focused on the flatter portions of Owen's valley, but this devlog has me really excited to run trains over Olanche pass. Outstanding work as always.

A lot of things are looking great here. I love the map, and the slack action sound effects are fantastic. More than anything though, the game is looking so pretty these days. Keep it up guys, we’ll be waiting when this masterpiece is ready.

Nice work Guys!!! I love the Art style of your UI and the Map looks incredible. Only thing I miss is the option to toggle the hight map over it to see the grades of the map itself. Keep up the good work and I want more vlogs about the programing stuff. Very interesting.

If you guys dont mind me asking what GPU was the game ran on in this video

The slack sounds are amazing, I was hoping they wouldn't be left out. Good job guys ;)

Good to see more progress made, will the infrastructure such as the track and water tank at the top of the pass be fixed or will we be able to move it to better suit our chosen route?

are there any plans to acknowledge the railroads involment in genocide of american indians in this game? i would be dissapointed if it woudnt even be mentioned.

The Great Dev vlog famine is over! (I was having trouble with my payment me so it was longer for me) I'm glad you guys are doing wonderfully on the game. I really love the design of the map. It really does capture the vibe of old paperwork. It's incredible and also your work on crunching down on specs. His amazing and a science and a magic all at once (I just hope it will help the game run on a small nitro 5) keep up the good work gentlemen! Anticipating the game everyday 🙂🚂

That map looks spectacular! Good to see the performance improvements as well, especially with hardware prices these days. Looking forward to getting my hands on this digital masterpiece!

Thank you 346! Each update makes me more and more excited to get to run trains at Mach yes across Inyo.