Below is the (semi) complete list of isses of Train Fever as of version 4831. I will update it after each patch, so we can track how good Urban Games is in improving their game.

The list is not sorted in any particular order. Those are just things I have noticed after ~120 hours of gameplay.

If you have something to add, just reply to this topic.

Reposted, because WordPress sucks and does not allow edits after approximately 0.002 seconds.

Graphical Bugs

1. Vehicles with
   connecting rods ( such as steam engines or crocodile ) do not
   animate their connecting rods when being manually sent to a depot.
2. Bogies of TFV and
   DualStox do not follow the trackage correctly. This is most visible
   in tight curves.
3. Road vehicles are often
   not correctly aligned to roads. This makes them ride above the
   surface of the road, or sunken beneath the asphalt.
4. Vehicles with doors
   open all doors regardless of the side the platform the vehicle is
   stopped at.
5. Wheels of the A 3/5
   steam engine are not round.
6. The
   Walshaerts/Heusinger valve gear on steam locomotives ( BR75 or A4 )
   is not correctly animated. The valve gear works differently as it is
   presented in game.
7. Roads in cities
   sometimes get adjusted to really awkward angles.
8. Tracks are sometimes
   adjusted into awkward angles, usually near a level crossing.
9. Locomotives which emit
   particles ( smoke, steam ) should not do so when stopped at a light.
10. Steam locomotives
    should not emit smoke from their cylinders when speed is above 5km/h
11. Electric locomotives
    with several pantographs should always ride with rearmost raised.
12. Shadowing distance is
    too short when camera has a very shallow angle ( looking parallel to
    the ground). This makes shadows flicker and seem appear suddenly at
    a distance.
13. Roads are drawn with
    very low polycount.
14. Near Clipping Plane
    placed in a way that clips away some parts of the viewed object.
15. Vehicles created by
    “Emu” consists with “reverse” property ( such as
    TGV or TwinDexx ) do not reverse their icons in build train window.
16. BE 5/6 Cobra is too
    long to fit tram stations. When stopped it overhangs the tram stop.

Usability Bugs

1. There is no info about
   crucial gameplay elements
   1. train length ( in
      carriages and metres ), both in build new train and replacement
   2. average speed and
      average round trip time of a given line between each stop
   3. length of placed piece
      of track or road
   4. incline of placed
      piece of track or road
   5. curvature of place
      piece track or road
   6. Industry
      increased/decreased its maxumum production
   7. track and road speed
      limits
   8. track and road incline
   9. track and road
      horizontal plane curvature
   10. production of
       goods/freight should be expressed in production / time unit
   11. No info is given about
       speed limits and/or differences between narrow/wide/4 lane roads,
       as well as between country and urban roads. Rail tracks at least
       display a little speed limit sign when being placed. No such info
       for roads.
   12. No info is given about
       speed limits between normal and HSR track.
   13. No info about station
       capacities.
   14. When a vehicle is
       introduced, no info about its stats is given. Player has to
       manually open ‘build vehicle’ window.
   15. No info is given about
       new roads or electrification.
   16. tally of goods
       produced by a given industry, Something like:

• Tiverton Forest:
  Production: 312, Maximum: 400
  • Destinations
    • Crewe Sawmill: 240
    • Battle Sawmill: 72
• Crewe Sawmill:
  Production: 240, Maximum 400
  • Destinations
    • Crewe: 120
    • Battle: 80
    • Looe: 40

17. tally of passanger
    destinations from a given city. Something like:

• Tiverton: population
  1000
  • Destinations:
    • Tiverton: 425
    • Battle: 160
    • Hunstanton: 120
    • Crewe: 120
    • Looe: 50
    • Hedon: 75
    • Newbury: 50

2. Game is inconsistent
   with its use of time. Sometimes it is expressed in years/months/days
   ( train age ), sometimes in minutes/seconds ( frequency ), sometimes
   not at all ( industry production ). Be consistent.
3. No info is provided how
   to convert years/months/days into realtime.
4. The “20 minute
   rule” is not messaged anywhere in the game.
5. When saving a game it
   is possible to overwrite an existing savegame since no protection is
   given.
6. Not possible to turn of
   snapping of built structures ( such as stations )
7. Gui is, generally
   speaking way too small. On high resolution.
8. Impossible to build a
   level crossing with road over a trackage.
9. Dragging a track/road
   across track should automatically create an overpass bridge.
10. Land modification tools
    are very awkward.
    1. modified area is not
       highlighted
    2. “Level”
       tool should level all terrain to height from the point of
       beginning of the drag
11. Clicking on currently
    followed vehicle ( after clicking the crosshair icon ), to bring up
    its properties, should not unfollow that vehicle.
12. Build Road, Upgrade
    Road and Remove Road tools should be merged to a single, context
    based tool. Possibly as with a key combo ( build + Shift –
    upgrade, build + Alt – destroy ). It is extremely annoying to
    be forced to switch between those three tools when rearranging a
    city.
13. Clicking on “Automatic
    Vehicle Replacement” in lines window should automatically open
    the “Vehicle Replacement” Tab on the “Line”
    window.
14. Add “Replace Now”
    button to “Vehicle Replacement” tab.
15. Add “Electrify”
    button to “Line” window in train line
16. Add “Upgrade to
    high speed track” button to “Line” menu of train line
17. “Running”,
    “Stopped” and “Reverse” on vehicle properties
    should have button frame.
18. “Go to depot”
    button should be on the same tab as “Running”, “Stopped”
    and “Reverse” buttons.
19. Interface is too small
    in most places. General rule: use % of screen vertical size, no less
    then X pixels to size UI. Icons in “Menu” menu are kind of
    right size, but once people switch to 4k screens even those will
    become microscopic as well. Those include, but are not limited to:
    1. Icons showing
       production and consumption of freight by industries
    2. buttons on most
       windows
    3. “Cargo”,
       “Land use” and “Contour Lines” buttons
    4. Finances, city
       directory, industry directory etc
    5. Most tooltips and
       texts.
20. It is not ergonomical
    to place the game tools UI on the side of the screen when most of
    the action of those tools happen in the middle of the screen. Most
    people have panoramic screens these days. Sometimes in the 21:9
    format. I shudder to think how bad it is on eyefinity setup. Having
    tools along the upper or lower edge of the screen, somewhat in the
    middle is much more user friendly.
21. Money display box has
    too little contrast. Use bold font.
22. There is no possibility
    to review messages once they were closed.
23. There is no way to
    check and/or redefine key bindings. How many people know that ‘Del’
    closes all windows?
24. Display ONLY
    supported resolutions on the resolution selection window. Moreover.
    Check if the selected resolution is still supported when starting a
    new game.
25. Vehicles with
    “multipleunitonly = true” property should not be
    introduced with a message.
26. Multiple units should
    be introduced.
27. It is not possible to
    adjust order of train cars in “Vehicle replacement” tab.
28. Scrolling of trains
    along their length in “Depot” window and on “Vehicle
    replacement” tab is very misleading for long trains. It is
    better to start adding cars in another row below the locomotive
    instead of adding a scrollbar.
29. “Depot”
    window for trains should always have widith of a 160m long train.
30. Warning should be
    emitted if a train is longer then shortest station on its line.
31. Autosave period is not
    configurable nor possible to turn off.

Gameplay Bugs

1. Game will sometimes
   route several lines through the same platform on a station. There is
   a workaround for trains, but trams, trucks and buses suffer from
   this bug.
2. It is not possible to
   drag track from a converging end of a railroad switch if we remove
   the little stub of track remaining after the switch construction.
3. Vehicles replaced by
   auto replacement will sometimes emit info about “being too old
   and needing replacement” even if they are 10 or so years old.
   It seems that age of the vehicle they replaced is taken into
   consideration. Usually happens with the ‘25%’ rule.
4. Cargo has no weight.
5. Multiple capacity
   vehicles allow for loading of both types of cargo at the same time.
6. Once the “Main
   connection” feature considers player built detour a “Main
   connection”, this detour becomes impossble to remove, even with
   another detour.
7. “Main connections”
   are often not feasible to upgrade to newer road type.
8. 4 lane roads should
   always be of the same size.
9. Performance is
   generally very bad. Especially when:
   1. Tracking a vehicles
      through a city
   2. Having several ( more
      then 1 ) cities in the viewport.
   3. Opening ‘Lines’ window
   4. Opening several
      vehicle windows with “Render to texture” feature enabled.
      Hint: Transport Tycoon did not allow more then 6 vehicle windows to
      be open. Messages with “Render to texture” should replace
      one another. Window with no focus can display just a static (
      grayscale, for extra style bonus ) image and turn into “Render
      to texture” viewport when activated.
   5. Lod system appears to
      be very simple. It should not only be based on distance from
      camera, but also on pitch angle. The closer pitch is to 0 degrees,
      the less distant objects should be visible. I tried to, check how
      Lod is calculated for buildings, but LUA code you are exposing does
      not seem to show such data.
   6. Removal of particles
      and visible passangers seems to improve performance in some cases.
   7. The game is CPU
      limited, and the little experience I have in 3d suggests it is
      batch-count constrained. Simulation runs quite fast even with 6-7k
      of passangers on the map and about 1000 units of cargo with ~400
      vehicles.
10. Responsivity of the
    game is very poor. Too often it happens that game stutters because
    something needed to be done.
    1. Do all cities need to
       rebuild themselves at the same time
    2. I don’t really need
       the info, that all 400 of my vehicles cost me $Texas with overlays
       and floating texts.
    3. Sending 40 trucks to
       depot for sale makes the game pause for a few seconds.

I would recommend  Urban games to use this a template for voting what should be fixed first.You know, simple questionnaire makes the order list to do.Everyone could vote once from each category.

Would you add :

Supply chain train-> truck->customer doesn’t work. Train unload all the stuff at once, it overload the truck station. Goods disappears. Stations in a group should load each other, so prevent disappearing. Same apply for people.

Graphical minor bug: ground floor in any depot is grass.

Game-play: Multiple opening window at depot buying. It should be only for first new vehicle in the depot.

Graphical bug: All UI icons (stations, vehicles, depots, … ) are visible thru the terrain. It should be available only for vehicles in tunnels.

UI layout : Bridge building – the selection of bridge type cover the bridge. It is located in the middle of the builded item. Especially for short bridges it covers it all, so user doesn’t see what does he doing. The only one type (the selected one) of a bridge should be visible. Once clicked, the menu – the current list is shown. Then user can choose the type, and it minimize self back. The icon of a type should be located clearly above a bridge, up about 3 sizes  of a road width.

Design issue : Unwanted  industry devolve- in case of one train on the line. It cant be sent to depot without atleast 20 points devolve penalty on the industry. as long as it evolve 1 point per month, add a wagon cause hit back for et least 2 years. Vehicles should stay as a part of a line, all the time. Even in depo. In case of more vehicles it works the same, if you are close to the time limit.

UI info: line window

– line capacity per default period (annual ?)
– line usage per default period(annual ?)
– add a column(s) of currently waiting agents (goods/passengers)

UI info:  station window

– shows throughput of the agents (annual ?)
– shows usage of vehicles leaving for particular line (Lets have 10 unit bus: then 5 passengers on makes usage 50%. In case 20 people stays on the station at the departure – usage 300% )

– show all the lines who stop at the station. Even if there is no one waiting – User need to see who could.

UI info : Waypoints – show in his window all the lines who use it. Same for traffic lights.

Gameplay – Waypoints – on delete introduce a shadow, same as for buss station. So user could move a way point few meters away. Its annoying when you redo complicated junction, and you have re-assagin waypoints in proper order to all lines involved.   Same for traffic light.

UI graphical : Flying money notification. Tone it down. Or simply enable switch off. It has no value see red horizon. You could show just 10% of the highest numbers. That could make some point. Also, merge maintenance of vehicles in one city and draw just one number for all the vehicles in the city.

Sound – playing one short sound again and again is known torture method, used from WW2. Remove money cha-ching sound asap. If some decent method for flying money comes, the sound could come back, but now its pain.

Avoid any “Vehicle in the way” error message. Its nearly impossible to change layout of a bridge cross whith with buss l ines. lift up vehicle, hold them on the sky, then put them back to nearest station. Whatever, but do not bother user.

Avoid agents disappearing on road upgrade.

Avoid agent disappearing on station group/ungroup

Make land property consistent – City buildings backyard are build over the user property, the train station. In case of train staion upgrade (buldoze and build back), the city building must be buldozed too, cose their land interfere with the station layout.

Finance

– use taxation on profit 10-20% depends on – deprecation of vehicles is 10 years at maximum, not 30years or so. So the vehicle value should be 0 after 10 years.- show re-pay time horizon for a vehicle on his info card. e.g. 10years6 months or 100 years for a less profitable line. Or never for negative income.- show how many times the vehicle repaid already.

I could run a game and check some more, those are just on top of my head.
Uzurpator  – welcome to the External QA department of Urban games. 😀

UI: Scroll bars are actually proper size and work as a scroll bar. Would be faster and easier to for example find the vehicles in the long list of locomotives and wagons.

Edit: UI: standardize the window sizes etc. It’s pain in the back side to sell vehicles at the depot when the X keeps jumping around or move vehicles between the trains as the length of the vehicle dictates where the up and down arrows and the sell button are. Same problem repeats all over the UI. Keep things fixed.

UI: Don’t open the line windows to that side of the screen, and partly off the screen to indicate where the line is. Frustrating to pull them back into view to be able to see it completely. Especially now with auto replace you need them quite often.

—-

Regarding that vehicle depreciation, 10 years might be ok for trucks and buses, but trams and trains certainly need longer lifespans where 25 to 35 years are more normal.

@Uzurpator

add

Missing info: maintenance value of stations, depots.

There should be an info panel below the build menu, just up the time. Simple square window without control header. It contains all the info of the item focused in the build menu. On focus lost, the info window vanish.

Bulldoze road says error message- “The building(s) must be bulldozed first” but doesn’t mark by red color which one. Make it consistent to build roads, mark them.

I would think these items  should be rated in a category of game breaker/minor annoyance/wishlist

Its all a tribute to Transport Tycoon: Useful as they are, I wonder if those old Windows 3.1 style windows with tiny text are alien to some. It makes me think of a long lost style, others might disagree.

As I’ve said elsewhere , the joy of this style of game, and its greatest weakness, is trying new things and discovering how the world works.
So the lack of introduction works in its favour as well as against it.

Having said that, they key message of number 2 is pretty important info:

2. The “20 minute
   rule” is not messaged anywhere in the game.

A few I’ll add

–  Minor: There is one steam train that shows the wheel coupling rods going in reverse when viewed from the left hand side (Looks right on the other side)

– Medium: Performance: Later years with a complex network can be very demanding
Although I do wonder how they can improve on performance without cheating/faking on the actual resident/goods flow simulation like Simcity did

– Medium: When you send a train to the depot, it needs to stay connected to the line it was on until you either sell the train or change line.
At the moment, if you send a train to the depot when it is halfway to the station, it will instantaneously disconnect from the line and make goods use a different route, usually when if you were upgrading the train on the same line.
This can adversely affect supply your chain when you were trying to improve it. (Especially if the train gets lost and stuck going to the wrong depot on a different line)

The workaround it not to hit the “go to depot” button until the train is very close to the home depot

“Regarding that vehicle depreciation, 10 years might be ok for trucks and buses, but trams and trains certainly need longer lifespans where 25 to 35 years are more normal.” – financial  depreciation has nothing to do with lifespan. It is just financial method/tool for lowering/tear down the value of a property.

Exactly what i meant. No rolling stock company or railway company depreciates their vehicle value to zero within ten years. Usually it is somewhere between 25-35 years depending on the rolling stock. Depreciating them to zero so quickly would give tax benefit but lose all the assets. And since running a railway is far from lucrative in the real world (operating profit including govenrment supports are usually around 1-3% from the turnover) there is no need, or possibility,  for massive depreciation values. Hence the depreciation follows pretty closely lifespan of the unit.  In the game i managed to pull 89.5 million profit in one year from 136 mil turnover, which doesn’t make any sense. Running costs are way too low compared to the income and especially purchase prices are too low on anything. 16k for a level crossing what usually costs around 250k to 400k to make in the real world…

Sorry for this slight off topic, it is relevant for the improvement but can’t be classified as a bug at the moment. More like missing feature which would be nice to sort out later.