Greetings steam engine operators!
To prepare for the release of the Power Generation DLC, a public beta-testing branch (called beta) has been created for the base Steam Engine Simulator game. The game has received many performance and interface improvements as well as improvements to the physics engine which were needed for the upcoming content. You may find that it plays slightly differently compared to the previously released version of the game. I'd love to hear your feedback and straighten out as many bugs as possible before the release of the DLC. Feel free to join the Engine Simulator Discord Server to report issues and get development updates.
Thanks everyone!
The "Spinny Valve" Controversy
I know that the new control style has not been popular with everyone. My rationale for this change was:
- With radial adjustment, adjusting the sensitivity is as easy moving the mouse further away or closer to the center of the widget
- With practice you can quickly open and close the valve but also adjust it very precisely, especially using the Shift key
- Many players actually complained that the PREVIOUS control style was not intuitive and requested that the valves be adjusted like valves in real-life
- When you master the movement, it is immensely more satisfying than dragging linearly which does not match the reality of what would be happening in real-life
I have around 350 hours of play-test time in Steam Engine Simulator and after getting used to the new control-style, I very much prefer it over the previous one. For players that have a few hours already in-game, it will take some time to get used to. I'll leave the radial controls for now and if people don't like them even after getting used to them, I'll add a setting to revert to the old control-style.
- AngeTheGreat