The latest official Rolling Line map is here!
And this one is special, since I'm currently living in Wellington!
I ride the bus past these exact buildings all the time, and it's been an absolute joy to create them in-game.
This map is called "Slice of Wellington" since it is more of a diorama than a full-on map. It takes a chunk of Wellington city (the capital of New Zealand) and recreates it to-scale.
The goal of this map is to show off the new dynamic roads system in action, and to finally make a map that features some proper modern city scenery!
Wellington is the political capital of New Zealand and features our famous "Beehive" parliament building:
The map also features the top of Lambton Quay (our main business area) and the major bus route through town:
You can explore the real location for yourself in 3D on Google Maps:
https://earth.google.com/web/@-41.27896091,174.77688965,7.92081625a,360.10171601d,35y,-71.18229337h,44.46446036t,0r
You can find the new map in the "new game" map list:
New buses
This map also features a new type of bus!
Thank you so much to Shini (a long time community member and fellow New Zealander) who made the model for this bus! It really adds to the authenticity of the scene.
You can find the drivable vehicle version of this bus in the "vehicles -> cars [drivable]" drawer, and you can find the prop version in the "vehicles -> cars [props]" drawer.
Vehicle audio
Also included in this update is audio for cars! Vehicles now make engine noise and have horns.
There is also a new ambient audio preset for "Birdsong Tui" which is used in this map.
Tui's are a native bird in New Zealand with a very distinct birdsong, and Wellington happens to be full of them!
Another audio related change is that the "random train horns" setting is now off by default. This setting enables/disables the random horns that go off while trains are driving around.
You can find it in the "pause menu -> misc" menu.
New props
During the process of making this map a few minor new props were added, these are:
- stature base
- bus stop and live timetable sign
- unique playground slide based on the one at Wellington parliament grounds
- "center" snap piece for the roof top props
Pre-made buildings
This was actually added in a patch after the previous update, but it was not mentioned in the previous news post so I'll mention it here.
There is now a drawer with some pre-made skyscrapers, you can find it in the "buildings -> city pre-made" drawer:
Hidden train/vehicle regions
You can now define areas on your maps where trains & vehicles are invisible.
This is perfect for making cars disappear when they leave the table when you combine this feature with invisible track.
This method was used in the Wellington map to make cars appear and disappear when travelling off the table:
You can set up "hidden regions" using the new pop-up window on the wall "view advanced options -> view hidden regions"
From here you can place region boxes (this is the same system as both "tunnel regions" and "rain regions" added in previous updates).
Any cars/trains inside these "region boxes" will be invisible when passing through them.
From this menu you can also toggle whether this hidden effect is enabled or not, which is useful for figuring out the location of cars when they are invisible:
High-definition screenshots
Here's an album of various HD screenshots of the map, feel free to use these as you wish!
https://imgur.com/gallery/EYaMN2M
Here are some examples:
And that's everything for this update!
Making this map has been an absolute joy, since every update this year has been focused on features and programming, so I haven't had any chances to work on maps.
Making maps is of course my favourite part of Rolling Line, and it always poses a great opportunity to add new props and scenery styles (like cities and roads in this example!).
And since I live in Wellington at the moment this map was extra fun to make.
In fact this might be the first time a video game has officially included Wellington city... If anyone has ever heard of any others please let me know! I would love to see it.
I hope you all enjoy this new slice of city scenery!