The International Simutrans Forum

A new version of Simutrans-Experimental is available to-day: Simutrans 112.3 Experimental 11.0. See here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1894.0) for more information on how to download, install and set up the latest version. For those already familiar with the installation and setup, here are some quick links:

   
• Windows binaries (http://bridgewater-brunel.me.uk/downloads/Simutrans-Experimental.zip)
• Linux binaries (i386) (http://www.43-1.org/~simutrans/simutrans-exp/i386/simutrans-exp-2013-07-14-5015c00)
• Linux binaries (x64) (http://www.43-1.org/~simutrans/simutrans-exp/amd64/simutrans-exp-2013-07-14-5015c00)
• Mac OSX binaries (https://www.dropbox.com/s/t2t3wp237jnfmc3/sim11-opt)
• Linux server binaries (x64) (http://bridgewater-brunel.me.uk/downloads/linux-x64-server-binaries.tar)
• Configuration files (http://bridgewater-brunel.me.uk/downloads/simutrans-experimental-config.zip) New for this version

Edit: Added links to Linux and Mac OS X binaries.

Note that the Windows binaries contain the Windows version of the no-graphics server, Makeobj and Nettool, and the Linux server binary contains the Linux version of Nettool.

This is a major new release, with a very great many new features, performance enhancements and bug fixes. A summary of the major changes follows.

   
• Improved performance (mainly Bernd Gabriel, some Neroden)
• Private car route finding between cities works at a reasonable speed
• Improved physics (needs pakset recalibration; Brend Gabriel)
• Merged up to 112.3 in Standard (Bernd Gabriel and Neroden)
• Walking to stations/stops counted as part of the journey time (and related enhancements)
• Some settings saved in saved games can optionally be overridden by a simuconf.tab setting (Neroden)
• Improvements to the aesthetics of city building construction (Neroden)

An update to the .dat file reference will be uploaded shortly to take account of the new features introduced with this version. The new version of Pak128.Britain-Ex, 0.9.0, which has also been released, is needed to take advantage of many of the recent features, including some features (such as braking physics) present in earlier versions, such as 10.27.

NOTE: When loading a saved game from the RC 11.9007, one must save the game as an earlier version (Standard 112.3 Experimental 11), or else it will not load in 11.0.

---

A full list of changes follows.

Changes since 10.27

   
• [Merged up to 112.3 - see Standard for relevant changelog]
• CHANGE: Improve performance of physics calculations (Bernd Gabriel)
• CHANGE: Convoys cannot leave the depot if they are not powerful enough to pull their load at all.
• CHANGE: Show actual rolling resistance per vehicle in the depot window, rather than the rolling resistance per unit of weight measure
• CHANGE: Deprecate goods/passenger packet merging, which virtually never produced any actual merges, but took a long time in checking.
• CHANGE: The passenger destinations display now uses the full resolution of the whole map, rather than just 256x256
• FIX: access violation in creating first new city. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: Crash when starting paksets with no demo.sve
• CHANGE: Trains now stop in the centre of platforms other than termini
• ADD: Passengers/mail will now consider the journey time between their origin and the starting stop and their destination stop and their ultimate destination as part of their journey time.
• ADD: Passengers will walk all the way to their destination if the walking time at 5km/h is within 1/2 of their journey time tolerance.
• ADD: Show stops within walking distance, together with walking times, in the query dialogue for all city buildings.
• ADD: Separately defineable station coverage area for factories (default: 1 tile).
      - Usage in simuconf.tab: station_coverage_size_factories = 1.
      - Usage in GUI: station coverage for factories will be shown when selecting a goods station/stop, otherwise station coverage for passengers will be shown. Hold down SHIFT whilst selecting the stop from the menu to show the non-default option.
• CHANGE: Fields around farms can now be removed until no less than half the specified minimum number remain. This allows for road connexions to the door of farms.
• ADD: Walking speed in km/h can now be set in simuconf.tab with walking_speed. The default is 5.
• FIX: Incorrect recording of the destination of successful passenger/mail trips
• CHANGE: The congestion level is now taken to be the percentage increase of journey times above the non-congested base, as used by the TomTom congestion index.
• CHANGE: Comparative journey times (taking into account congestion) is now the basis of choice between private car, public transport and walking, except that those who always prefer to use their car will always do so where they can.
• CHANGE: As a result of the above, the base_car_preference_percent setting in simuconf.tab is abolished.
• ADD: Buildings record the number and proportion of successful passenger trips in the current and previous year.
• CHANGE: Reduce spacing in city building information window.
• ADD: New method for finding private car routes between cities and industries and attractions using Dijkstra's Algorithm. This greatly increases performance and makes it viable to use this on larger, developed maps.
• CHANGE: Private cars tolls are now measured per km rather than per tile.
• CHANGE: Do not show a red dot (overcrowded) in the passenger destinations display unless the overcrowded stop could have got the passengers to their destination if it was not overcrowded
• CHANGE: Do not show return trips in the passenger destinations map display (for clarity)
• ADD: Private cars will disappear from the map as soon as the estimated time of the car journey that gave rise to them being spawned has expired
• CHANGE: Reduce the generic road speeds (used for private car journeys in cities and all private car journeys if always_assume_everywhere_connected_by_road is set) to reflect the lack of maximum speed at all times and the indirectness of road routes
• CHANGE: Optimisation of freight loading
• CHANGE: Convoys are no longer sent to depots that do not match their traction types if a suitable depot is not found
• FIX: Occasional crashes on loading.
• FIX: Misaligned halt detail dialogue
• FIX: failed to save standard game in experimental owing to invalid stadtauto_t::origin. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: stationary convoys after (re-)loading savegame. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: Crashes when rolling months with very small sized cities
• CHANGE: Updating and modification of the credits and related text.
• FIX: Industries were not upgraded properly
• FIX: Crash on building powerline tunnels
• ADD: Full support for the axle_load feature:
      - Specify an axel_load=X value in a vehicle's .dat file where X is a vehicle's maximum axle load in tonnes
      - It is that maximum axle load that will be the weight limit for ways and tunnels
      - Bridges will instead use the convoy's total weight (but adjusted to take into account the maximum part of the convoy that will be on the bridge at any given time)
      - Specify an "axles=X" value in a vehicle's .dat file to calculate the axle weight automatically from the vehicle's empty weight (assuming even loading)
      - The default if no value is specified for axel_load is a load of 1/2 of the weight (assumes 2 axles, load evenly distrubuted, empty weight)
      - The value is in *tonnes*, not kg as for vehicle empty weight.
      - Axle weights do not depend on the convoy's load
      - Total convoy weight for bridges does depend on the convoy's load
• FIX: convoy stuttered if it enters a brake zone already slowing down while going up-hill. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: Trains stopped before non-reversing waypoints. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: Did not properly read station values.
• FIX: Compile on Clang (Matthew Collett)
• FIX: Allow setting a higher station coverage radius than 8 in the in-game GUI (maximum is now 32)
• FIX: convoys get stuck going downhill. (Bernd Gabriel)
• FIX: Crash on rotation in some cases.
• FIX: When expanding the map, if 0 cities are to be created, create 0 cities! (Neroden)
• FIX: City bridges did not have weight limits set correctly. (Neroden)
• CHANGE: More skewed normal distribution (as suggested by Kieron) for passenger journey time tolernace calculations.
• FIX: Some memory leaks and allocation errors
• CHANGE: Ships will now only dock if they are within a 1 tile radius of a halt (previously the coverage radius)
• FIX: Copying convoys now also copies the livery (also, more consistent treatment of liveries when purchasing new vehicles)
• FIX: Crashes on deleting industries in some cases.
• CHANGE: Reorganise the text in the depot/replace windows to make it more efficient in layout and better in appearance, based on the current Standard code, adapted with Experimental features.
• FIX: Could not set maximum waiting minutes high enough in the GUI
• FIX: Incorrect calculation of tolerable journeys by comfort for the depot/replace windows
• CHANGE: Make the effect of catering on comfort more transparent in the depot/replace windows
• CHANGE: Private cars cannot use roads with a maximum axle weight of zero
• FIX: Power supply to cities would fail in certain conditions.
• FIX: Crash when using CTRL+click to build a power line tunnel
• FIX: Unowned bridges were initialised on loading a game with the wrong weight, speed and way constraint data
• FIX: Bridges owned by the public player were not properly set to be ownerless when the public stop/way tool was used.
• ADD: Transshipment time for goods at a station, assuming a dispersal speed of 1km/h (fixed).
• ADD: Timings for goods transport now take into account transfer from the factory to the origin station at a fixed speed of 1km/h.
• FIX: Maintenance costs were deducted twice when a bridge was removed.
• CHANGE: Goods will now take into account the transshipment time from their destination stop to their ultimate destination (at a nominal dispersal speed of a fixed 1km/h).
• FIX: Crashes on loading games saved with very long folder names/pakset names
• FIX: Crash when enforce weight limits are set to 1 and the weight limit of a way is 0.
• CHANGE: If enforce_weight_limits=3 in simuconf.tab, a convoy will still be able to use a route if its weight is within 10% of the weight limit, but at a greatly reduced speed. It will not be able to route if its weight is more than 10% over the weight limit.
• CHANGE: enforce_weight_limits can now be set in the advanced settings GUI.
• FIX: Passenger generation, arrivals and departures from factories was not recorded properly.
• ADD: New city building clustering feature (Neroden)
• FIX: Trains would sometimes over-run signals when waypoints were in their route.
• CHANGE: Added an alternative mechanism for calculating congestion: see the notes in simuconf.tab for instructions on how to set it. It is based on the TomTom Congestion Index's method for recording congestion.
• FIX: Properly calibrate old method of calculating congestion so as to avoid rounding errors.
• CHANGE: Add the ability to alter the congestion density factor in the advanced settings GUI
• CHANGE: The congestion level is now affected by the traffic_level setting. This is intended to adjust for private vehicle occupancy.
• CHANGE: Alter the calibration of the traffic_level setting to allow for more rounded mapping to average vehicle occupancy levels.
• CHANGE: Implement new dud player removal for multi-player games in the simuconf.tab settings
• CHANGE: Alter the passenger generation algorithm so that all journeys have return journeys: without this, there were significant anomalies and large towns would generate fewer passengers than small towns.
• FIX: Make the calibration of mail levels more accurate
• CHANGE: Remove internal anomalies in passenger generation. This means that the passenger_factor setting needs to be reduced to 1/3rd of its current level. Saved games with an Experimental version of less than 11 have their passenger factor divided by 3.
• CHANGE: The "level" of buildings is represented consistently.
• FIX: Traffic numbers were recorded incorrectly (too high).
• FIX: Goods teleporting to their destinations in some cases.
• CHANGE: Scale factory passenger demand according to the meters per tile (necessary as this changes the time scale)
• CHANGE: Change credit limit to use operating profit as the basis; this avoids "surprise" crashes in the credit limit due to construction work. (Neroden)
• FIX: Bug which caused revenue to be realized when unloading zero passengers/freight. (Neroden)
• FIX: Fix for "ghost convoi" crash bug after emergency depot teleportation. (Neroden)
• FIX: Make all versions of depot arrival behave consistently. (Neroden)
• FIX: Make backup convoi-destruction for stuck convois which cannot be teleported to depot. (Neroden)
• FIX: bug where ships at sea would not go to a depot which was also a docking location for a dock. (Neroden)
• FIX: unit conversion bug related to vehicle comfort display. (Neroden)
• FIX: Rounding error lead to crashes on a new month in some cases. (partly Neroden)
• FIX: bug which failed to properly clear waiting times for trips to a deleted halt. (Neroden)
• FIX: numerous bugs (sign errors, omissions) in creditworthiness checking (Neroden)
• FIX: Errors in when "Company bankrupt" is displayed in player list (Neroden)
• CHANGE: remove revenue penalty for travelling through overcrowded stations. (Neroden)
• CHANGE: Cities do not adopt elevated or underground roadways. (Neroden)
• FIX: Spurious way constraints on bridges and tunnels
• FIX: Allow ways with weight limits > 9999t
• FIX: Incorrect determination of whether a player can afford to build a substation
• CHANGE: Choose orientation (layout) for city buildings using a more sophisticated system (Neroden)
• CHANGE: Prevent inappropriate downgrading of ways in cities. (Neroden)
• CHANGE: Allow city buildings to build DOWN to meet a road. (Neroden)
• FIX: Errors in bridge pillar construction. (Neroden)
• CHANGE: Allow override of bogus, broken, obsolete values from saved games for cityrules.tab, speedbonus.tab, privatecar.tab, and electricity.tab as well as for simuconf.tab.  (Neroden)
• FIX: bug in setting of meters_per_tile which caused it to be rounded to nearest 10 under some circumstances (Neroden)
• FIX: charge correct cost for buying house. (Neroden)
• CHANGE: check affordability before bulldozing player-owned houses.  (Neroden)
• FIX: Maintenance costs were not upgraded when ways were upgraded.
• CHANGE: Hard-coded 50km/h city speed limit replaced in all places by the speed limit of the city road set in the pakset for the current era
• CHANGE: Cities will only adopt roads that already have pavements/sidewalks (i.e. those which have neighbouring buildings)
• CHANGE: When cities construct buildings near existing roads, always take them over and add sidwalks/pavements (thus reducing the speed limit), but retain the existing road if it is superior
• CHANGE: Building a road over existing city road does not remove pavements/sidwalks
• FIX: Upgrading a road in a city would always cause its speed limit to be reduced to 50km/h even if it was not near any buildings
• FIX: The way remover tool did not respect city buildings and the rule that they must not be cut off
• FIX: Some issues with loading games saved in previous semi-version.

Feedback and testing

Thanks also to all those who have tested Simutrans-Experimental and provided useful feedback: it is very much appreciated. Any feedback from this version would, as ever, also be very much appreciated, including (1) the new features introduced in 11.0 (see above); (2) online play (see here (http://servers.experimental.simutrans.org/list) for a list of Simutrans-Experimental servers); (3) general bug reports; (4) information as to how well-balanced that the game is; (5) any difference in approach/strategy needed for Simutrans-Experimental as over Simutrans-Standard; and (6) any other useful feedback.

I should also be grateful for feedback on how the performance of this version compares to recent previous versions (10.27 and earlier).

I shall bid people good playing, and look forward to any feedback!

Note

This topic is locked, as it is intended to serve as an announcement. To report a bug or otherwise give feedback, please start a new thread for each bug/topic. To ask a question about how to obtain Simutrans-Experimental, use this (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1894.0) thread.