Train Metropolis comes out today. Thanks for all the people who gave feedback on the demo! In this blog I'll detail what improvements I've made, what else made the cut, and what's still to come post-launch.


The game now has save and load, both for the full game and the demo. I also more than doubled the number of different districts. Both Spaceport and Arcology districts allow you to "win" the game, and there's a variety of ways to unlock and then level them up for victory.

I added a "tech tree" style guide showing how all the districts upgrade to/from and what they make and need. Hopefully this will make planning a route to success easier.

As well, the game now has an "aims" UI to give suggestions on which districts to focus on next. They're totally optional, but should help anyone who is a bit lost coming off the end of the on-rails tutorial.

With playing the game repeatedly to balance the new districts, I also found numerous small UX and UI frustrations, which I've fixed or improved. As well, I also added in the following suggestions from your feedback:

• Ability to sell trains.
  
• Auto-level up ability for players who prefer idle play.
  
• Boosted income-type upgrades, again to aid idle style players.

The demo and main game also have random maps, and a bit more variety with the terrain. It's not the semi-infinite map mode I originally had in mind, but the islands generated are more than big enough to win the game and then some.


Another player suggestion was for some physical change of appearance for the trains to indicate which have upgrades. This makes a lot of sense. For speed upgrades, you can already see trains go faster. I am hoping to add in more carriages/wagons for trains that have capacity upgrades (just didn't quite have enough time to make this so). However for income upgrades, I haven't yet quite found a good solution for showing them on the train itself.

Longer term, there's a few things that I aim to do but either aren't straightforward or will need a bit more work to get into the game:

I am still keen to make a browser based version of the game. The sticking point here is a). save and load, and b). offline progress. I'm looking into using a backend-service provider to host save game files but although not technically hard, it still takes a fair bit of time and effort to implement. I may make a browser based version of the demo that simply has save and load disabled in the short term, again depending on time.

Many people pointed out it's a bit weird to see trains ghosting through each other. While I decided long ago that crashes don't really add anything to the game aside from some novelty the first time it happens, it would be really nice to at least have double-tracks, so that trains pass through each other less often. I already know how to implement this in theory, but I kind of dug a hole for myself with the way the grid on which all the game's buildings and track is placed. Simply, the grid squares are too small, and making them bigger to allow double tracks would mean redoing all the building placement for the whole game. I will though do some experiments with squeezing two track lines into each grid square to see if it doesn't look too awful.


Also on the point of trains ghosting through each other, I looked at adding in some kind of traffic management to the game. However this was going to be very difficult to retrofit into the game code/programming wise. As well, each of the possible ways of doing it that I looked into were loaded with UX issues, weird edge cases, counter-intuitive behaviour, or would be very fiddly to make UIs and controls for.

Therefore I've decided it's now beyond the scope for Train Metropolis, though one of my other games, Mars Rapid Transit, I have designed from the beginning to have (train) traffic management.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2824250/Mars_Rapid_Transit/

At one point I also had a happiness system in the game. The original plan was that some districts could level up and upgrade based on a happiness score. However it wasn't clear where happiness should come from. Basing it on neighbouring districts made the game into a puzzle and a bit of a frustrating one at that, since there's no way to undo a mistake (no way to demolish or downgrade a district). The only other way of making districts happy was to give them a constant supply of goods or passengers. But this felt too similar to the existing way to level up. Plus it was never clear how long a district needed to stay above a happiness threshold to be allowed to level up. So I scrapped the idea.

It'd be nice to expand the city building side of the game but I concluded that the more fine-detailed aspects of city building I couldn't simply borrow from other city builders. They just didn't fit. It's something I will need to think about for the future, both for Train Metropolis and my other games.

I mentioned in a previous blog about some ideas for a storyline as well. However, my initial concept for this was quite weak. I couldn't weave a narrative that felt more than just tacked on. While I enjoy giving my games a bit of a story, for Train Metropolis it was ultimately extra ingredient that didn't add to the overall flavour.


I have a few more UX fixes I'd like to make in the coming weeks:

• More ways to order/sort lists.
  
• Ability to zoom to selected districts/trains/stations on the map.
  
• Better handling of unassigned trains in the Train Overview list

As well, I'd like to do some visual improvements. Have ships, planes and rockets all moving about when a district levels up, and generally more vim and sparkles to celebrate. Probably the game has a few further graphical glitches or places where I can improve the building models (such as no fences on piers). These though are low priority for now.

If there's something you think is higher priority that I've missed, I am still looking for feedback. Use the Feedback Thread here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/955220/discussions/0/523083364935144975/

And if you find any bugs, please let me know in the Bug Thread here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/955220/discussions/0/523083364935145233/

In the meantime, hope you all enjoy the game!

Train Metropolis has arrived at its first station. There is now a demo available on Steam. As well in this devlog I'll go into some of the plans for the full game.


What you can expect from the demo:

The demo is set on an island and as such has a limited number of new districts that can be founded. As well it only has a subsection of the different district types that'll be available in the full game. As with the main game, the demo can be "won" by reaching an end goal, but it's possible to continue after that.


The demo is now on Steam. I was thinking to do a playtest first, but due to the imminent arrival of the Steam NextFest (less than two weeks at time of writing), I figured might as well launch the demo now and get some feedback on it directly.

If you have any comments on the game difficulty or pacing, I would be super grateful to hear them. As well any thoughts on the train upgrades and how effective they are, whether there are any that are too powerful or weak, that'd be really helpful also. Plus if you find anything irritating or frustrating with the UI or gameplay, that will help me refine the game.

Use the Feedback Thread here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/955220/discussions/0/523083364935144975/

Or pop into the Crystalline Green Ltd. discord here: https://discord.gg/hYSbQwFQZQ

And if you find any bugs, please let me know in the Bug Thread here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/955220/discussions/0/523083364935145233/


Train Metropolis will eventually feature far more districts than the demo has. I've yet to decide how many exactly, since they are quite time consuming to make. The aim is to have enough variety that players can feel like they're making a unique city and reaching the eventual goal in their own way.

Equally, the chain of which districts can be upgraded to which other ones will probably change between the demo and full release version. Right now, the demo is a bit too linear, and some of the upgrades, such as Farmland to Industrial aren't intuitive, since players need to simultaneously found a forest district and later a mining district. Equally these districts are kinda useless without an industrial district, so probably there'll be some extra logic for locking district founding and upgrading based on more than just district level.


For those that are into the clicker part of Idle Clickers the plan is to add an upgrade chain that will make clicking more powerful. I have some ideas about how to theme this, probably something around either the "stations" being upgraded, or the train company itself.


I also have some ideas for how the story of Train Metropolis will develop, beyond just being fluff for the tutorial lady Jess to say. I'll need to see if what I have in mind meshes well with the rest of the game, but I'm a fan of adding just a bit of narrative to a game to give it some flavour and hoping to do that with Train Metropolis also.


Lastly, I want to implement a map that can be expanded indefinitely, adding further new land every time a district is founded, as well as occasional obstacles such as lakes and mountains that can't be built on.


Plan is to release Train Metropolis in March, though it depends somewhat on a). how long it takes to take on board feedback, b). how long the rest of the content, especially the additional districts, take to make, and c). how work goes on the other projects I have.

In the meantime, hope you enjoy the demo and please do get in contact if you have feedback!