I have been working on a new game inspired by one of my favourite games from my youth called Glider. Paper Pilot is a game where you fly a paper airplane through house avoiding obstacles in this action puzzle game. Your paper glider has good flight characteristics however without an engine it naturally looses height and will eventually hit the floor. You must use wind coming from floor vents to achieve lift and avoid furniture and other items located throughout the house. Touching the floor or any obstacles crashes the airplane.
This weekend has been very rainy in my home town of Calgary (Canada) so I was able to focus more on deploying the new version of Train Sim to the other platforms.
So far I managed to convert and test the new version Train Sim for iOS and uploaded it to the Apple App Store (should be live on your favourite iPhone or iPad within a in a day or so)
While I was testing the iOS version I found a few bugs so I also released a beta version for Android with a few of these bug fixes: (link: http://bit.ly/2YcVK77)
The new beta version of Train Sim has the following fixes:
– Fixed an issue where Steam Train Wheels would some times not turn – Rail Crossings now have flashing lights (again) – Weed whacked some grass that grew over the Train Tracks in the Desert Level – Fixed some tenders were jittery
All of the above fixes are already present in the new iOS version.
Here is a short video preview of the Pacific Surfliner Coming Soon to Train Sim. Can’t wait? Test out the new Pacific Surfliner Train as well as the new Graffiti System in our Public Beta
Completely redesigned rail system that allows me to produce fully
3 dimensional tracks as well as full 3D Electrical Wires. So far only the rails are rendered in full 3D,
the sleepers or (crossties) are still just a 2D texture, mostly for performance
reasons on mobile. However as mobile
devices get faster, I will easily be able to extend this to full 3D sleepers
(crossties) at very little effort.
In fact, I can now place any 3D object along or on the rail continuously
or in spots. This opens many new
possibilities in the future to allow Train Sim to grow well into the next decade.
Why did it take so long?
This was a complete redesign of a key system in Train Sim
that affects every level. The rail
system is so core to the game that updating it required rewriting other key
systems such as track switching, track connections, train controller, wagon
controller etc. Don’t even get me
started on testing, every train wagon, track connection and level had to be tested. And then when a bug is found, it had to be
fixed and re-tested again.
What’s next?
Once the 3D model is complete my next focus will be to add
the Pacific Surliner to Tran Sim as fast as possible.
What have I been up to lately? Testing, Testing and More Testing. This is my test level for Train Sim, That I use to test rail connections and how rolling stock behaves in various scenarios. You may find watching this 5 minute video a bit boring, but imagine doing this 20-30 times. Each time I perform a test if I find a bug, I have to stop, fix the bug, restart again. Over and over again.
The good new is I think I have finally figured out my last bug so I can start rolling out this update very soon!
