Progress on roads is coming along great, but it's taking longer than I hoped.
So I've decided to make BETA access available for all the road tools that are already ready to use!
This means that people can use the new roads in their maps, upload them to the workshop, and they will work fine for anyone downloading and playing them.
If you want to use roads yourself you'll need to enable access to the BETA.
How to access the roads BETA
You can gain access to the new roads tools by adding a "launch tag" in Steam.
To do this, right-click on Rolling Line in your Steam library and choose "properties".
Then click on "General" and find "launch options".
In the text box type "-roadworks"
Just like this:
You can then quit out of the menu and run the game as normal.
If you have done this correctly, you will see a new "roads" category when searching the drawers:
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Road features
More information about roads will be coming in the official release (the next update) but for now you can access a new "roads generator" which works just like the track generator but for lanes in roads:
You can use these individual lane pieces to create larger more complex road layouts, like intersections and multi-lane highways.
There are multiple drawers full of road styles and road markings you can use:
With the styles given, you can already make a range of different kinds of roads:
More info will be coming on how all the new road features work in the next update!
But firstly, here is a bunch of features this update adds which you can make use of right away:
Multi-track-generation
You can now use the track generator to automatically create groups of multiple track!
This makes creating multi-track mainlines far easier, and skips the steps of needing to create your own groups. You can use the "separation" value to change the distance between tracks.
The track generator now also remembers the styles you have applied to all track in the group, so when you switch pages/change values the styles will be kept:
More advanced side-snapping
The side-snapping feature has been improved to allow for much more options, like snapping to the sides of all kinds of turnouts!
Style painting swap
There is now a feature where you can "invert" the style of a track/road by painting it again with the same painter. E.g. this will flip any left/right only styles to the other side:
You can also do this inside the track style edit UI using the new "flip left/right values" button:
Plus you can do this for an entire group using the new option on the edit tool to "invert style" which flips all of the styles & order:
Copy whole group style
You can now copy the styles of a whole track/road group!
There is a new control binding for "clone whole group" (which is right-shift by default).
So if you hold right-shift + Return it will copy the style for the whole group, not just the single track piece. You can then use this "group style painter" to paint other groups in the same way:
Painting twice will invert the group, just like the left/right swapping mentioned above.
You can also use a group style with more/less lanes, it will just ignore any extra ones:
Flexytrack improvements
Gap-fill track (flexytrack) now snaps to more available end points, and has had some minor improvements to make snapping better.
It will no longer snap to parallel track ends which are part of the same group.
There is also now a dedicated flexytrack just for roads:
Drawers in room are saved
The two drawers by the menu now save their state in the save file.
And the default drawers for a new save have changed to the "tools" and "tables" drawers:
Switchboards layer
Switchboards can now be set to only show "track" or "roads" layers (or both).
This means you can have dedicated switchboards for your road systems that dont overlap with track:
Roads layer for train modding and style modding
Track style mods (and train mods!) can be set to use the roads layer instead of track. Basically meaning you can start making modded track styles for roads, and make train mods which will run on the new roads system.
Meaning you can use the train modding system to effectively create operational cars!
Please keep in mind that actual official cars will be coming in a future update, but they will work in exactly the same way as a modded train (a train running on "rails" which are actually just "roads").
Other minor features
- The placeable drawers prop has been fixed in a few ways, like hiding the objects inside it when it is dropped, disabling the buttons when dropped, and fixed scaling issues.
- Fixed bug where props cloned out of custom drawers would not have the correct scale.
- Fixed bug where grouped track would not re-set its gradient when cloned or picked up, which would result in strange curves when cloning track already on a gradient.
- If you are using joypad controls the on-screen keyboard shows up (instead of requiring the actual keyboard) when editing text in-game.
Lots of stuff to unpack in this update!
Roads have ended up being a much larger and complex job than I planned, so lots of other features have needed to be made in the process.
Features like multi-track-generation and the group style painting options work for both track and roads, so it's good to release them now rather than waiting for roads to be 100% done to release it all in one go.
Plus giving people access to the roads BETA early is fun!
I hope you enjoy the new features and tools, and keep an eye out for the full roads update which is not far off!