April Newsletter
Hope you've all had a lovely March! Personally I'm ready for the warmer months despite really enjoying the indoor modelling season. I need some sunshine in my life.
Progress on projects overall was a bit slower this month due to the model train show at the beginning of March as well as a slew of medical issues I had to take care of with my wife. But things did still get done.
Anyway, this month I have a few goodies for all you patrons! Let's go over everything.
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News
The Greenberg Train Show was a hit and Steve and I both had a ton of fun. It was great meeting many of our "fans" and we also met hundreds of folks interested in exploring our V Scale hobby. We spent most of our time demoing our content in Trainz and explaining how the game has both a simulator mode as well as a sandbox mode. I spent a lot of my time operating the P&B and DBEV. It was a good way for me to shake out some bugs!
Currently we don't have definitive plans to do another show but it's something we'd like to explore.
P&B
Work on the P&B continues to the best of my abilities. I had to take a bit of a break from the Power Plant build because it was really burning me out. So I spent a good chunk of time working around Grafton and I'm happy to report I filled in a pretty considerable area around the city. I'm still hoping to complete the route this year but there's a lot of dead space that needs to be filled that I'm wildly unmotivated to do 😂. What I mean by that is there's a lot of main line ROW that needs to be filled in and it's literally the last thing I want to be spending my time doing. It'll get there though.
Updates will be included for Executives to explore.
DBEV 2019
I'll start off by saying that the DBEV in 2019 looks absolutely fantastic and I can't wait for everyone to be able to enjoy it the way I have been.
Since I did have a lot of time at the Greenberg show, I spent it testing sessions on the DBEV. I managed to fix a few bugs I found and I'm hoping it'll be the last time I need to do this. The route and sessions will be available to Executive patrons this month as well. If all goes well, I hope to get it released to JR as soon as possible.
Asset Packs
At the beginning of the month I purchased a collection of 35 apartment buildings with store fronts. This pack is a very nice compliment to the apartment packs I've released previously and will make a great addition to the game as generic downtown buildings.
This month I have 4 on offer and more will follow each month as I have time to port them in. I've been spending a little additional time on each one to remove modern components like AC and HVAC units in an effort to make them a little more generic. I also spent time blanking out the storefront signs (unlike my previous storefronts), and I've been contemplating removing the signs altogether. Let me know your thoughts on that. But with them at least blanked, you can easily make them whatever you want, or just leave them blank to hide multiple instances of their use in the same area.
N Scale Layout
In case you don't follow me on Twitter or Instagram, the layout is getting an addition! I'm adding another 45" to the layout essentially doubling its length. The addition will allow me to fully build out the yard adding a few more storage tracks and some industries.
I'm filming the entire process and right now the plan is to make a series of "shorts" as I go. Eventually I may end up producing an full length video for the channel but that's a ways out.
I'll also be sure to include some blog posts along the way since those are a little easier for me to produce quickly.
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Patreon Benefits
Executive Tier: P&B and DBEV route update's will be available Sunday April 2nd
Dispatcher Tier: Monthly live stream will be held Wednesday April 5th. Let me know what you'd like to see me working on!
Project Manager: 4 spicy new buildings! Available Sunday April 2nd.
Station Agent: Hangouts every Wednesday night on Discord.
Model Railroader: A blog post overview of the layout expansion. Available some time in April.
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That's all for this month's newsletter. Let me know what new features you're excited to see coming to Trainz+. I know I'm excited for the HD terrain!