0.3.0 - In which trains slow down around corners, and we start working toward Early Access

The first big change in this update is that trains now slow down around tight corners. The second change is that we’ve stripped Appleberry Farm and its fields out of the Forgotten Valley scenario, in favour of a town called Hazelmere. Hazelmere has a similar, but improved (we hope!) version of the Appleberry Farm mechanic. The third big change is that potential passengers only spawn when there is track laid that would allow completion of their desired route.

On the music front, there are now melodies to play over the generated beeps on completion of contracts, as well as an update to the title track. 

There was a lot of work on the core engine to make these changes, so this update is more likely than most to introduce new bugs. If you see anything, please let us know!

This update also marks the beginning of our path to Early Access. To that end we’ll likely hold off on new mechanics until after Early Access, and look to focus more on bugs and playability issues. Also, we’ll be starting a playtest of the Endless mode and other content that will not be part of the Steam Demo. This will be a Steam playtest with a smaller group of players who have given feedback in the past, so let us know if you are interested!

Some other smaller fixes

• Fix for bug that would allow you to build a tunnel directly underneath another tunnel as long as they were in line
• Fix for a number of bugs with routing, specifically one where trains would do laps inside the station when they were unable to exit to a nonstop zone
• Fixed a bug where we were incorrectly quoting departures as arrivals in the town screen
• Added departures to the town screen
• Update to shore/sea art
• Significant performance improvements for large networks