itch.io

This is because you have enabled Electrified Rail (click the button with the electric symbol in the Railroad Construction window to disable it). I will add code to disable this button in the early tutorials.

Mainly, it just isn't generally true that we should always want trains to avoid longer paths to the same blocked track like in your idea. Given a layout like you have in your screenshot, it is entirely reasonable to *want* the second train to use the loop as a buffer if there is a blockage: If the second train is long, then taking the loop will free up track behind it, which might be important to avoiding jams in the rest of your network. I would not be content to add heuristics that take away opportunities like this.

I am, however, working on an option to modify how a train considers detours when it is stuck in traffic. I believe this will help for your playstyle.

I have never actually tried completing a run without signals, I would guess it's possible but probably difficult, heh

The signals are similar to path signals in OpenTTD, if you are familiar with that. (There is nothing like block signals.)

In Distributrains, trains work by reserving a path towards their destination. A train has to wait if the path it tries to reserve overlaps with the reservation of another train. If they see (the front side of) a signal while trying to reserve a path, then they stop reserving there. In essence, signals are used to shorten the path reservations to reduce conflicts.

There are two signal types: One-way Signals can never be passed from the back side, and Back-traversable Signals are ignored from the back side.

The rules are simple, and trains will never crash, but using signals optimally can be difficult. The game has a couple tutorials about this. Active path reservations are always drawn on the tracks, there is a pathfinding visualiser, and an option to draw signal direction arrows on the tracks.

Trains will consider longer detours the longer they are stuck. Sometimes the end result is they take a strictly worse loop because the alternative path they come up with ends up also being blocked, so they revert to the original path at some point. They do not remember the past or predict the future, all they want is to reserve path that will lead to the target. 

I can change the parameters to make them less eager to take longer detours, but I don't really want to place any hard limits as this will result in them failing to find actually viable alternative paths in many cases. It could perhaps be user configurable.

You can, however, remedy this in two ways. #1 is to fix your congestion issues so your trains do not get stuck and start thinking about nonsensical detours. #2 is to change your track layouts so that those nonsensical detours are just not available to them in the areas where congestion might occur.

I'm not sure if a locomotive use case tutorial belongs inside the game, but I'll look into it. In general, you want trains that are as cheap as possible to run, while having just enough traction and top speed to avoid causing congestion. To make a good choice you need to consider what the weight of the train will be, the speed of other trains on the line, and how often it has to climb a sloped tile.

When engines are combined, they only contribute to traction below their engine top speed, and the speed of the whole train is limited by the lowest max. safe speed. The typical use of combining engines is including a slower engine to help in climbing long slopes. A couple other uses would be including a weak/fast engine to increase the top speed on long flats, or combining electric and combustion engines for traversing partially electrified railways.

You are seeing high resolution icons because of your UI scale setting. If you want to see upscaled low resolution icons instead, you should delete the icons in the "hires" folder.

I checked using the current version of the itch.io app and I don't see any issues. To be clear, there is only one download, and it is marked as supporting both Windows and Linux:

It contains the following binaries:

• Distributrains32 - For 32-bit Linux (x86)
• Distributrains64 - For 64-bit Linux (amd64)
• Distributrains32.exe - For 32-bit Windows (x86)
• Distributrains64.exe - For 64-bit Windows (amd64)

If you are on a supported platform and the download doesn't show up then you might need to talk to itch.io support.

It does, but you need a power that would have been relatively powerful for the era. The computer I tested it on has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU and an ATI Radeon HD 4670 GPU.

It will not come to android, sorry.

I have uploaded the files for you here https://oddwarg.com/Music/Distributrains%20OST/

I will probably put it on bandcamp in the future

I added a MWh/cycle tooltip in the train build menu, and will continue working on improvements. But for now I encourage you to see the added management effort as a cost of deforestation.

The tradeoff with the tree preservation setting is lower values are more productive but lead to deforestation. The deal is you can choose to manage the forest sustainably or thin it out and then move the camp.

Wind and sun are on the same scale in that a fully upgraded solar farm has about the same output as a fully upgraded wind farm if their weather numbers are the same. Without upgrades, a wind farm is about 50% better.

Rain is a different matter. Dams are meant to be used as batteries for other power plants. When only powered by rain, they can be good early game, but building only dams is generally a poor choice.

The KWh unit is calculated under the assumption that a cycle is a month. This means with 1 MWh you can run a 1 MW engine for roughly one real second. Maybe there's a better way to present this information, but it's just the amount of energy stored in the dam.

In map generation, wind is likely to be lower than sun and rain, while sun and rain are inversely correlated. You are meant to choose your power plants based on a several factors including the climate, your resources, the terrain, and what cards appear in the shop.

I will likely develop a demo version at some point, yes.

Thanks for the report! I don't know what possessed me to make this mistake, but it's fixed now.

It does not, sorry. The itch.io version comes with the game files and executables for 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux. It has all the same features (except steam integration), will receive the same amount of support, and you can play multiplayer with Steam users.

The room that's bricked shut was meant to be the baths but I just couldn't find the right energy to do anything with it. Maybe one day.

There is no official species name and you should call it whatever you want. I've used the tag hippowoof at least once but that's just silly.

Anyway thank you for playing my game :)

You cannot open this door.

Incidentally the binary release works much better with the itch app on Linux.

If you want to, you can transfer your saves by copying the save directory from one game directory to the other. By default, the flatpak saves are at:

~/.var/app/com.oddwarg.SulphurNimbus/sulphurnimbus/save

and by default the itch app saves are at:

~/.config/itch/apps/sulphur-nimbus-hels-elixir/Sulphur Nimbus/save

where ~ is your home directory, as is normal. The directories starting with a period (.) are hidden in most file managers. You can likely toggle their visibility with the hotkey Ctrl-H.

If you downladed it without the itch app, then the save directory goes inside the game directory wherever you extracted the archive.

The work I did on the flatpak release is available here in case it is of interest to anyone

Your art is lovely, thank you :)

I am happy that you enjoyed my game.

https://oddwarg.itch.io/sulphur-nimbus-hels-elixir

I have raised the minimum price back to a nonzero value for the occasion, and will keep it that way for the duration of the bundle if the game is accepted. Please reject it if you feel this goes against the spirit of the project.

No problem, happy it helped

Hi,

The Discord window capture hook is known to cause a serious memory leak which will eventually crash the game regardless of settings. Unfortunately this is not something I can fix on my end, however you have a few options:

1. Change your Discord capture mode to Display Capture instead of Window Capture.

2. Use Discord for Google Chrome.

3. Use any other screen capture software, such as OBS.

Thanks for the report. I was not able to get this to happen normally, but it has nevertheless been fixed in the latest release.

I enjoyed this and found the art style inspiring.

I did have a problem where the game would not run because the RPG Maker 2003 RTP was not found. I had to set FullPackageFlag=1 in RPG_RT.ini to fix this.

The dGPU opt-in you are referring to is already implemented in the official release for 64-bit Windows.

Unfortunately, there is no way to enable this feature from pure Java code. To overcome this, the official release uses the Groan Autodeployer, which is an executable wrapper that is able to enable the switch in native code before starting the Java Virtual Machine. The Groan Autodeployer is available on my SourceForge profile if you want to set this up yourself. But, the documentation and configuration is not very user friendly and please understand I do not offer technical support for this.

There are other Java executable wrappers you can try which have better documentation. I have never seen one that has the dGPU opt-in, but they do play nicer with Nvidia Optimus (e.g. you can configure the executable separately in the Nvidia control panel, or if you have a somewhat recent driver you can right click on the executable to select the GPU).

Without creating a native executable I think the only way to use the dGPU is to set the java executable itself to use the dGPU in the Nvidia control panel. In my experience this will work if you select the correct version of the executable, but I understand it's not a very nice solution.

It's there for people who want an extra challenge. It contains some collectibles, but unless you are a completionist it is entirely optional and that is the idea.

This should be fixed in release 118, although I haven't had the opportunity to test it on an actual high-DPI Windows 10 computer.

Thanks, I was not aware anyone could join. Looks like I'm too late for them to add the game, but I asked them to add me to the collection of supporters.

It appears I am too late, but please add me to the list of supporters.

https://oddwarg.itch.io/sulphur-nimbus-hels-elixir

That's good, thanks for letting me know.

If you have the time, could you verify that the issue has not resurfaced in the latest version? (112)

Not exactly planning on making more games like this, but if the game ever gets something like a modding community maybe you'll get to see something like what you're imagining.

Me and ntfwc found a possible fix, if you could try this version http://oddwarg.com/Temp/jogl-all.jar and let me know the results that would be great.

Hi, sorry about that. If you could provide the full, uncropped error log (including the header) that would be very helpful. Also, please contact me via the discord server or send me an email at oddvahu@ntnu.no if you can.

This bug has been fixed, thanks for the report.

I sell the builds because money helps me to live. I've released the source code because I believe it's the right thing to do.

If you have the knowledge required to compile the game, then you can currently obtain a complete copy of the game for free. However, regarding the legality of redistribution: The source code is MPL, but the assets (e.g. the 'res' directory) are, at the time of writing, all rights reserved. This is in part because there are certain assets that I do not own and whose licenses are incompatible with the MPL. You have every right granted by the MPL for all forms of the code, but redistributing a copy and including the assets is, at best, on very shaky legal ground.

That said, I have no intention of fighting redistribution as long as it's not done in extremely bad faith, such as publishing a complete copy on a digital game storefront, or claiming that you made the game. Giving a copy to your friends is fine (and reusing any and all parts of my code is fine), but please encourage anyone who enjoys my work to consider buying the game to support me.

Code and assets being different licenses is not uncommon practice, and it is reflected in the itch.io Metadata. Commercial open source games also not unprecedented, although they are relatively rare. This article contains some examples that follow a similar model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_sour...

The source code is published under the MPL 2.0. You will find the link to the freely available source code if you read the game description. This link can also be found under More information > Links > Source code. 

Fixed in the latest update, thanks for the report.

It is working as intended, I have double checked this. She won't say anything if you do the ice level as your sixth star, because at this point in the story she has other things on her mind. If you want to see the text, either do the ice level earlier or do finish another level first.