Category Archives: Blog

Train Sim Improved Rails & Electrical Wires

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Work continues on the next update to Train Sim with the main focus on improved 3D Rails & Electrical Wires.

This turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought, due to the fact that I had to update a major system in Train Sim that creates the tracks and wires on a predefined path. This means that all the tracks in Train Sim had to be remade & then re-tested.

Also because the the height of the 3D tracks have changed, I had to re-test all the Trains & Cars to ensure their positioning on the tracks is correct.

After a month of work and quite a few 12AM nights, I think all the tracks & trains are now positioned correctly. However I still have to check the positioning of all the cars & perform a full test cycle of the game.

Coming Soon to Train Sim

New 3D Rail System

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Last week I started working on a new 3D Rail System for Train Sim. The current rails are actually a 2 dimensional texture that mimics the look of 3D. This was originally done to improve performance on mobile devices. While it looks OK on a tiny phone screen, it does not translate as well to larger high resolution tablets or PCs. Hence it has been on my list of fixes for a while now.

Unfortunately this will be allot of work as I will actually need to re-make all the rail paths in Train Sim across all of the levels. However I think I figured out most of the technical & performance unknowns and can now move to implementing this feature across all levels in Train Sim. At about days per level it should take a few weeks to finish.

So why invest so much time on new rails? I think as new mobile devices get more powerful it makes sense to update some of the core features in Train Sim to ensure it does not look dated compared to newer games. Although this is a large investment in time, I think it will be well worth it at the end

20 Million Downloads

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This month I am celebrating Train Sim 20th Millionth download on Google Play!  That is 20 million of unique Google Play (Android) users that were kind enough to download Train Sim to their mobile devices.  For perspective, 20 million users is more then the population of countries like Romania, Netherlands, Greece and Portugal.  When I started this project more then 5 years ago I had no idea that it would be enjoyed by so many people.  I am so thankful for the continued support of all the Train Sim fans over the last 5 years.  I am looking forward to the next 5 years of continued improvements & development of Train Sim.  I can’t wait to see what the next 5 years will bring.