Train Fever is about transporting people and freight. In this development update, we show what can be transported, and explain from where to where. In addition, we present how the game world is simulated and explain what a town needs in order to grow and develop.

Let’s start with introducing the six basic transportation items of the game. There are people (which are most important in the game) and goods:

People (left to right: old-fashioned to modern)Goods

In addition, there are four raw material types:

CoalWoodIron oreOil

Raw materials (coal, wood, iron ore and oil) are mined at several locations in the game world. Mines and refineries are typically located outside of towns. The raw materials are required by industry buildings, typically located inside of or close to towns. If industry buildings also get enough people (employees), then goods are produced. Goods are then sent to commercial buildings, which will finally sell them to people.

People not only want to buy goods in commercial buildings, they also want to go to work and have some recreation time (leisure, parks and attractions).

The game world can include up to 25 towns and even more mines and refineries. Most industries do only need a selection of raw materials. For instance, a furniture industry primarily needs wood.

The following illustrations summarize movement of people and freight:

Schematic illustration of a townDestinations of people and freight

So far we have explained the basic movement of people and freight. Let’s get a more detailed view.

People look for work places, commercial districts and recreation destinations. Freight items are sent by the producer to a destination which requires the respective item. In both cases the destination is chosen randomly within a certain maximal travelling time. The faster a destination is reachable, the more likely the destination is chosen.

Once a destination is chosen, the person or freight item is transported on the fastest way to this destination. Of course, people and freight can change transportation vehicles and can be temporarily stored at stations on the way to the destination. A player can be successful and earn money by constructing efficient transportation lines which fulfill the movement demands of people and freight.

The faster the transportation vehicles and the higher the frequency, the more items will be transported with your lines. Note that if you don’t construct or if your transport infrastructure is not efficient enough, the world will not stop to move! People will walk or use their cars. Mines, refineries and industries will transport their items by their own (manually or by using trucks). Of course, you can speed up growth and development by taking action.

This brings us to the last topic: When will towns grow and industries increase production?

• Residential districts grow if a lot of industry, commercial buildings and attractions can be reached as fast as possible
• Commercial districts grow if as many people as possible pass by for shopping and if as many goods items are delivered by industries
• Industries grow if they get enough required raw materials and employees
• Leisure locations grow if as many people as possible pass by for recreation
• Mines and refineries increase raw material production if they find enough industries to deliver their items and if delivery is as fast as possible

We have designed a simple but also quite realistic economy model. Thanks to its simplicity the game will be fun to play. And because of the realistic movement of items and impact on town growth there is a quite high complexity and depth of simulation at the same time. You may have noticed that public and freight transport are connected in this model. For instance, delivering more raw materials to industries will let industries grow and will also make well-accessible residential districts more attractive.

In a future update we will go into more details and we will also present the respective buildings (residential, commercial, industrial, leisure, mines and refineries).

Update: Thanks in advance for your feedback, questions and criticism. As usual, we will answer the most important questions a few days later (this weekend) in a Q&A post.

Update: Please find a Q&A post here.

First of all, we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season and success in the coming year. Thank you for your interest, support, feedback, comments and questions during the last year. We would like to let you know that your participation is very welcome.

Just in time before Christmas we are ready to give you an overview of the vehicles in Train Fever.

The game features vehicles from more than 150 years of transportation history (1850 – 2000+). Today we show a part (about one third) of the vehicles which will be contained in the initial release. All images below are made with our in-game rendering engine, so they will look quite similar in the final game. Of course, they are still in development.

We start with steam, diesel and electric locomotives in chronological order:

Norris D 1/3 (1847) Br 53 Preuss G3 (1877)

A 3/5 (1902) Br 75.4 (1914)

LNER Class A4 (1935) Schienenbus (1950)

Baureihe V 100 (1958) Ce 6 / 8 (1921)

Ae 4 / 7 (1927) Re 4 / 4 I (1946)

Re 6 / 6 (1972)

Next we list train cars. They can be arbitrarily combined with locomotives. Note that there are also freight train cars available (however we show only one freight car for goods here):

D 1 / 3 Waggon (1847) Di-21 Donnerbüchse (1921)

BC4 (1932) Hbis (1950)

EW II (1965) EW IV (1981)

Streetcars (trams) are a great way to master transport within cities. They are lighter and shorter than trains and – most important – they can handle more curvature. Note that the first streetcar is actually a horse-driven streetcar (unfortunately the horse is still missing on the picture 😉 ). Here are a few streetcar examples:

Horse-driven streetcar (1850) Typ T1 Gothaer (1928)

Be 4 / 6 Mirage (1966)

Buses and trucks are the ideal choice for local and medium distance transport. They are much cheaper than trains and might be a good alternative especially on hilly terrain. The first picture shows a carriage, which will be available at the beginning of the game:

Carriage (1847) Landauer (1895)

Benz 1912 LKW (1912) Aboag (1924)

Opel Blitz (1930) Sauer Tüscher (1940)

Man 19 304 (1970) Volvo 5000 (1985)

These and many more vehicles are still in development (in total the game will feature about 30 trains). Most of the vehicles are from Europe (especially Germany and Switzerland), but we will also add some more vehicles from other countries. In any case, we plan to support modding (adding user-created vehicles), and there is also the possibility to create DLCs after the initial release.

It’s time to write about the railroad tracks in Train Fever. The implementation was quite a challenge, but we have now developed a system with unique features. The user interface is simple and intuitive. All tracks and switches can be built with drag and drop.

Main features are:

• Parallel tracks (multiple)
• Block and path signals
• Standard and high speed tracks
• With and without catenary (electricity)
• Tunnels
• Bridges
• Switches
• Street crossings
• Drag and drop user interface
• Auto and fixed slope build mode

Parallel tracks are a great feature to create realistic and space saving tracks. In construction mode, new tracks automatically snap to existing ones. Standard tracks with and without catenary can be arbitrarily combined with high speed tracks (the two parallel tracks with concrete sleepers on the right image). Track sections can also be upgraded with newer electric or high-speed tracks. Tunnels can be built with one or multiple tracks (left).

Switches can be built everywhere. Let us mention that it’s also possible to connect two parallel tracks. The implementation of these crossover tracks (right) was quite challenging, because there is only very little space for the two switches. We believe that these crossover tracks are an essential feature for constructing realistic tracks.

Old and modern signals are available. There are block and path signals. The right image shows three modern path signals and one block signal. As soon as a train crosses a block signal, all tracks behind the signal are blocked for other trains. Path signals work similar but block only the tracks behind the signal which are actually used by the train. This allows for realistic switch configurations e.g. in front of train stations.

By default, tracks align to the terrain elevation. However, it’s also possible to build tracks with a fixed slope. This can be useful for e.g. overcoming a certain difference in altitude with a constant slope. In order to allow the construction of sophisticated railroad lines, there are some visual layers which show the contour lines of the terrain for instance.

We know you are all waiting to see the most important component of the game: Trains! The next update will be about trains and vehicles.

This time we would like to show and explain the street system of Train Fever. The community has asked for a wide range of features and we have now made a selection. Basically, we selected the features which have been requested more often than others and which are most important from a game-play perspective.

And here is the result. Train Fever features:

• Straight and curved streets
• Old and modern streets
• City streets and rural roads
• Narrow and wide streets with multiple lanes
• Wood, stone and steel bridges
• Tunnels
• Bus lanes
• Streetcar tracks
• Traffic lights at crossings

The pictures above show different old streets (left) and modern streets (right). Streets can have one, two or four lanes with and without streetcar or bus lanes. There are city and rural streets. All types can be arbitrarily combined.

Bridges can be built with wood (left), stone (right) or steel. The construction material limits vehicle speed. Bridges are built manually by the player, i.e. the player has to choose the type of the bridge, and the start and the end point. There’s no automatic bridge construction (where bridges are automatically constructed everywhere a street has a certain height). We believe this way of construction is more fun and gives more control to the player.

The left image shows a rural street bridge overcoming a small valley. The right image shows a modern street crossing with traffic lights, streetcar tracks and bus lanes (red). Streets can be extended with bus lanes or streetcar tracks at any time. Cars are not allowed to drive on bus lanes. Also, traffic lights can be added to crossing if there is too much traffic.

Vehicles and people move on streets and sidewalks. In order to realize this, artificial lanes are created, which are illustrated in blue on the left side. Of course, these lanes are only visible here in order to explain how it works, they will never be visible in the game.

The image on the right illustrates bridges on multiple levels. There is no limit for constructions as long as enough space for the bridge pillars is available. You can also see railroad tracks on the right image. This is what we feature in the next update!

Due to many community requests we decided to start with frequent development updates. Every update will show a specific part from Train Fever during the development. We start with screenshots from the new terrain we have created. We know this is not the most interesting part of the game, but it’s the foundation of the game where everything is built on top.

The terrain in Train Fever is up to 256 square kilometers large, with a very detailed horizontal resolution of one meter. Compared to other games, this is a very high degree of realism. On the one hand, details in the small scale can be modeled. On the other hand, realistic dimensions are present in order to allow the construction of long railway lines.

The game world in Train Fever is randomly generated. The main elements are hills, rivers, lakes, forests, rocks and fields. The terrain is dynamic and gets automatically updated / aligned during the game (e.g. when constructing railroad tracks).

In order to create these screenshots, we have removed civilization. Don’t miss our next updates, where we feature streets, tracks, buildings, vehicles, industries, simulation and so on. The last screenshot teases already our next update, it’s going to be about streets.