Thanks to a gifted layout artisan called Rinston, owners of railway modelling sim Rolling Line can now drive Lilliputian locos around a stylised recreation of Half-Life 2’s City 17.
Naturally, drained canals, security barriers, and derelict vehicles and buildings dot the landscape, and the skyscraping Citadel towers over everything. The Combine must be busy elsewhere, as their personnel, surveillance drones, and striders are nowhere to be seen.
While Bulgaria, the country that inspired City 17’s aesthetic, doesn’t get much love in serious rail games, times are pretty good for train simmers in neighbouring Romania. Not long ago Train Motion’s high fidelity rendition of the CFR Class 47 for Train Simulator Classic hit Steam, and Rail Studio’s range of lovingly engineered RO routes for the same sim continues to grow.
Talking of Train Sim, Christopher Mitchell Ph.D. may well be the only TSC fan in the world with sufficient know-how to buy an actual train speedometer off eBay then get it working with TSW’s predecessor. In order to achieve his ambitious goal, the founder of Geopipe (AI that “rapidly parses the real world into rich metadata and immersive 3D environments, for gaming, simulation, and beyond.”), had to disassemble his purchase to find out how it worked, and design and build a bespoke PCB. Interestingly, despite being a native New Yorker, Christopher’s train sim steeds of choice are British.
‘Hot boxes’ (overheating axle bearings) can have serious consequences on real railways so it’s easy to understand why Giraffe Lab have just added them to ace Early Access genre-blurrer Railroader. Users who choose to play with option switched on, will either need to periodically top up axle box oil levels themselves, or rely on silicon employees to do the job. Helpfully, if an AI driver finds themselves in the cab of a train that has been halted for some time, they will grab an oil can and go attend to any depleted boxes.
THC’s shambolic approach to news gathering means I somehow missed the release of Tramcity Hakodate back in January. As I liked the demo I tried last summer (“Behind the antiquated graphics, lurks a surprisingly absorbing driving experience.”) there’s a good chance one of this week’s posts will consist of first impressions of the £13 Early Access version.
Having perused its forum and read quite a few of its Steam reviews, I’m less eager to try Early Access City Transport Simulator: Tram, the latest effort from the creators of TramSim: Vienna. Set in a fictional German city, and featuring a novel route design element, CTST has earned almost as many red thumbs as blue ones since launching on June 20. Crashes and poor framerates seem to have done a lot of the damage.