20 years of Railroad Tycoon 3, how it influences us, and Developer Q&A! | CoS Podcast

Hello all! This is our November Devlog, posted early for Patreons. Link below! In this episode, developers Mark and Wings & Strings discuss the significance of 20 years of Railroad Tycoon 3, and how those design elements influence "The Game" elements of Century of Steam. There's also Q&A with Patrons at the end.
studio346.net/
s.team/a/2517940/ - Steam Page
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/ studio346games

[@praticle]

This is easily my most anticipated game in years! Can't wait to get our hands on it! ❤

[@xXturbo86Xx]

RT3 was ok but i think RT2 was the best. Anyway, please do not scale down the maps. Please. I don't care how many hours i need to drive from station to station. That's the fun part. Please make maps 1:1. Coming from ETS2 and ATS, i know that there's a LOT of difference in the way a 1:1 map feels compared to a scaled down map. Even if the 1:1 map is overall smaller, it still feels a lot better. And don't worry about our graphics cards. Simulation fans don't have potato PCs.

[@LPB_1]

With every devlog, you all prove more and more just how much your whole team cares about the final product and making the game for the sake of it, not just for the money, and it's such a delight to see.

[@birdrails8794]

RT3 (and RCT3) was the start of my video game addiction and certainly helped fuel my train/model train addiction. Truly a magical game. I really don't think any other train game has managed to come close to its greatness.

[@rambling_railfan]

Amazing to hear more about the amazing development of Century of Steam at Studio 346! Will there be any Canadian content in C.o.S.? Will the cars/steamships/other vehicles be drivable? Will you also be able to completely modernize the Class 125 (K-27) with the walschaerts valve gear and rectangular numberplate?

[@Stooltoad5017]

I’d be surprised if anything else is drivable, kinda takes away resources from what the game is actually about.

[@cSalt1]

i cant believe im saying this, but im also just soo soo hyped for this game! this seems awesome. edit : and i cant believe that there will be like a campaign or something just gets me more excited!! i cant wait.

[@peregrina7701]

This is the game that's turning me into a gamer. Love the gameplay variety that's planned, and waiting (im)patiently to see the next vlog!! Thank you for sharing and very happy to support y'all on Patreon!! :)

[@brillbusbootcamp2320]

Like we’ve talked about in Discord, build things so people get invested in their world, and in their equipment. The customization already goes so far towards that goal. But wow, it was like poetry to listen to you both describe how you’re trying to make those same feelings shine through in world-building modes/options and scenarios/goals.

[@KayoMichiels]

That reminds of the time i discovered online that there was a command you could type in in Chris Sawyer's Locomotion that let's you control any train you like... it was ofcourse not very detailed or accurate, but boy was it fun!

[@ostlandr]

There were SO many fan-made scenarios, mods and patches for RRT3. The final one IIRC was the "Trainmaster" mod with lots of new cargos and buildings. RE: mascots- how dare you forget Chessie the kitten? 🙂 RE: music- The "back beat" of Rock & Roll is 100% the beat of a locomotive exhaust. Source: Johnny B. Goode: "He used to carry his guitar in gunny sack, go sit down in the woods along the railroad track, ol' engineer in the train, sittiin' in the shade, strummin' to the rythm that the drivers made."

[@WickedMuis]

You must have hit the nail on the head with the music, as the first thing I thought of when I heard the music for Century of Steam was Railroad Tycoon 3 :D

[@The_New_IKB]

I am watching this after a 12 hour Christmas night shift working on the railway, keep going hyce! You are making a wonderful thing with wonderful people. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

[@simsch97]

RT 2 was basically my first video game.

[@Sweetw4ter]

After this video i have now fully boarded the hypetrain :D If you achieve half of the things you want to based on this video, it will be a truly special experience. Please dont increase the scope of this game to a level where you have to half-ass things. Although when looking at what you did already, i think half-assing is an entirely unknown concept to you guys, which i love :)

[@ostlandr]

Beware the dreaded Scope Creep! Aka "Feature Creep", aka "Kitchen Sink Syndrome."

[@Stooltoad5017]

I’m not particularly concerned about it. They seem to know what they want out of the game. I think they have been surprised at how much they can simulate in Unreal, but I am personally not worried.

[@Sweetw4ter]

@@Stooltoad5017 Yeah, funny how we always hear from people how you cant do this and that in unreal and then these guys just do it.

[@dark_one1337]

if that's gonna be a "History brought tae yer screen" deal I hope we get a 1:1 scenario of the Rio grand/Southern and a Giant map. (like Railroader they bring the map landscape,indstrial sidings very good together)

[@ColtonRMagby]

I'm glad you guys discussed the games and the aspects of those games that inspired your decisions going into making this game. When it comes to how I'll play it, I'll set it up where I have to take care of the equipment, but I'm not going to make it where I feel overwhelmed by the thought of dealing with the maintenance side of railroading.

[@damianstalker4266]

Hello studio 346! I wanted to touch on certain aspect of gameplay's scale ballancing you mention in this devvlog. In particular map size/distance to travel between industries. I am one of those ppl that love to spand a lot of time driving/running/flying vehicles in simulator games. Like for example in Euro/American Truck Simulator spending hours driving 3-4k km/milesis my preferential way of plaing this game. It always gives me great feeling of efford/reward, truly sence of acomplishment. Ofcourse only in games with great simulation of mechanics, phisics and functions of certain vehices, which Century ot Steam looks like gonna bring never seen before level of detail in any train game. So just to remind you... there are weardos like me lmao! So my question is... will there be different map sizes for players to choose from, or it will be more up to the player to build a preferential railway lenght? Maybe some kind of difficulty setting? I understand how important it is to have pre determend scope for such a complex project like a video game so i'm not expecting you to concider individual prefference over more global scale of your game. I just want you to know to not feel afraid to challenge us players with said scale, or gameplay complexity of your game. (Just like i did with this lenghty comment ; ) I love everything i hqve seen so far from Century of Steam so regardless of scale you will set for the final game i will play it for countless of hours in the future. Oh! I can't wait soooo bad!

[@Sweetw4ter]

A possible solution to that would be a combination between custom very detailed maps and procedurally generated "filler" segments to increase the overall mapsize. Although implementing such a system in a good way is definetly not easy.

[@damianstalker4266]

@@Sweetw4ter Procedural generation usualy compromises detail in maps. Wings and Srings mention his care to handmade artistic look for the maps which i love so much! Def not an easy task to ballance the game for everybody's preference, but knowing their attention to detail i'm sure they will ballance that well

[@samgineer9857]

Will the as-built Class 125's have their "redesigned" counterparts (For sake of clarity, I refer to the "redesigned" ones such as modern-day 463 and 464 as K-27's) as a separate purchasable locomotive or will there be some black magic coding behinds the scenes where via the customization section you can swap out parts of the Class 125(Cylinders, tender, etc.) to make it into a K-27? I put "redesigned" in quotes because I don't know if the changes between a Class 125 and a K-27 counts as a rebuild or redesign. :P

[@FockeWolf100]

Little bit of a request What if y’all recreated the RT3 whistles in the game?

[@Hyce777]

....oh now *there's* an idea.

[@birdrails8794]

oh god please do it! would love some kind of rt3 reference@@Hyce777

[@jacobramsey7624]

Will any of the old sound tracks from Railroads online make its way into Centry of Steam? Or will Centry of Steam have a total new and custom music for the game?

[@Sweetw4ter]

Regarding maps, might i suggest a concept that i know out of the Stalker games: Multiple open world maps that are connected via loading screens or animations / videos, in a geographic logical way (you pretend to travel distance while the map loads). The resulting overall map (as a picture, PDA or something) gets very large and you have a feeling of that largeness, while keeping the actual playable maps at a reasonable size so you can detail them and keep the work at a doable level. This also opens the possibility to create a very large possible map size, that you then can fill step by step with actual maps (could also be used for DLC or mods). Im honestly confused as to why more games arent using this concept and instead create very large maps, that then lack detail. I loved that concept in the stalker games.

[@damianstalker4266]

👀 Did someone said S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ?

[@thaddeusthudpucker4175]

Okay Mister McFeely, now leave those fans alone!!!

[@blendpinexus1416]

the only support i can offer is my hopes for the game and once it gets out to release i will definitely buy it (maybe even a few extras for friends)

[@MrBigCookieCrumble]

I still have the original CD and manual to Railroad Tycoon 2! :D

[@areht8147]

😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮

[@trainswithnickyt]

You know, I was loving Railroader until I watch CoS videos, then I see all the things it's lacking.... I still like that game and even when this releases, i'll still be able to scratch my diesel itch with Railroader, but it's clear to see which will be the superior game in (I'm guessing,) 2025

[@TB-ModelRR]

I got away from games and starting building n scale. Then I found this.... DANGIT! 😂

[@TheMostUt]

A though occured to me while you guys were chatting: When it comes to the Patreon vs EA release, I understand where both sides are coming from. The one thing I might note (of couse, I imagine you guys have talked about this at length already) is that an EA release *could* provide some extra boost to the income, along-side the Patreon members. The reasoning that brings me to this conclusion is that there are people who are not interested in subscription services, but would gladly pay some dollar amount for an unfinished product. Small scale EA release could provide some of these people with a method of helping to fund the project, without the subscription system woes. Another thought that occurs is that a small batch of EA (or beta?) releases could provide a 'product' in return for subscriptions or some fee. There is a known effect (especially in the gaming world) of dev teams starting amazing and highly desired projects, only to run out of funding or life things happening causing the project to simply die quietly, leaving the initial funders (Patreon supporters, or even people that 'puchased' the product) kind of out in the rain. I, personally, would prefer to have an offline capable playable alpha/beta should the dev(s) have other things that happen and have to walk away from the project than to have spent 500 dollars in some years of subscriptions with nothing really to show for it. I do fully understand the "I'm not releasing this until it's finished" mindset. My concern there is: at what point is the artist hoarding their work because it's never finished, so they die destitute and alone, when they could have released/sold their art and had the accolades, the love, the monies to continue making art? Sorry for the exposition, just a couple thoughts I wondered if they had been considered from the other perspective.

[@Holy_Moley]

The computer requirements for Railroads Online keeps increasing as they bring out updates. What will the requirements be for Era of Steam??

[@Atomicmodder]

Hey, really looking forward to the release! A huge thing I hope yall add is support for all types of analog inputs, not just the Rail Driver which seems to be the norm.

[@randomsnek]

I have a question about the game. Will the music be the original. end of the line, smells like Kenosha,etc. or will it be a completely new sound track?

[@Christian_S1]

So if someone wanted to just fire or just run, does the game/will the game have an AI to fill that role like Smokebox TSC locomotives? I can’t remember if this was answered or not 😂

[@slaydefranklin6637]

An idea for track laying/survey. A drivable automobile of some sort (car, truck, etc) to explore the area, see which route is best. Maybe another way to get around the map without the train.

[@donaldboyett7682]

I put tons of hours in RT3. My goal was always to do hostile takeovers of the AI players railroads.

[@eggbob1412]

Boiler explosion?

[@warmstrong5612]

Railroad Tycoon 2 was more my jam back in the day but RT3 was nice too.

[@A_person473]

Pretty neat stuff!

[@stevewilson3993]

Mark sounds an awful lot like Hyce...

[@fireutility21]

It would be so cool to see a digital model of Rotary OY!

[@shopdog831]

The music score was a banger 100%

[@bluescrew3124]

Can’t believe it’s 20 years already

[@Viporko-nb8rf]

What year will the ģame come out?

[@independenza8924]

Im so rdy for Traiiiiiniiiinnnng! 🙂

[@KeeDel]

Train game before gta6?

[@protonico1101]

Take my money!

[@commandertone809]

Really hope we get more "modern" diesel trains

[@WickedMuis]

In a game called "Century of Steam"?

[@commandertone809]

@@WickedMuis well wouldn't make much sense to have diesel horns in game already but have no diesel locomotives

[@Stooltoad5017]

There were diesel locomotives in the trailer. The game goes all the way to 1969 so you’ll probably have access to diesels in that timeframe. If you mean after 1969, than you’re out of luck.

[@Sweetw4ter]

@@commandertone809 There is at least one diesel in the game, based on the trailer. However i do think that implementing diesels is something that they can do FAR down the line imo :)

[@Donald.H]

First

[@andycon1405]

Will we see Garratt engine's in the game?

[@rockytopgaming6820]

Not likely. The game focuses on North American 3 foot gauge

[@Stooltoad5017]

Don’t think any of the 3 foot gauge American railroads used them.

[@annhinchcliff5460]

is it true that you stole kuemeas code?

[@LoPhatKao]

why steal garbage

[@Hyce777]

No one on the studio 346 team has ever gotten to see or work on any code Keume has produced so....