We’ve finally got alpha8 out! Here’s the list of changes from alpha7:
- The upgrades for lines and carriages have been rolled in to one asset, ‘railcars’.
- The line limit is now seven. New lines can be constructed within that limit as long as you have a spare railcar to put on them.
- Additional railcars put onto a line either travel independently as new trains or add to existing trains, depending on the length of the track (longer tracks support more independent trains). The railcars will reassign themselves as the line grows or shortens in length.
- Tunnels are back to being limited resources. London begins with three.
- Stations now hold six passengers each (twelve if upgraded).
- Railcars now hold four passengers each.
- Additional train types have been removed.
- Station upgrades reduce loading times.
- Tunnels are avoided by the line-placement algorithm where possible.
- Pressing space pauses & unpauses.
- The clock has been removed and replaced with a pause button.
- Lines must contain three or more stations to loop.
- Upgrades are now tied to passenger milestones, not awarded every week.
- Each milestone, the upgrade can be selected from any of the three available (railcar, station, tunnel).
- Added numbers to the upgrade icons to indicate how many of each are available.
- Capacity is now taken into account when pathfinding.
- Changed wording of line-crossing error message to “Lines can only cross at stations”.
- Bug: Tunnels now show up on dangling lines with an error.
- Bug: Fixed rare crash when certain track configurations were completed.
The upgrade system is waiting on a UI change in alpha9 to really make sense. It was a toss-up between waiting until we get all the UI changes in before we release a new alpha, or pushing alpha8 out this week with a slightly odd upgrade dialog.