So, we are slowly approaching another milestone for the Rail Route! We really like the communities that evolve around the good games and we want to support that also for our train dispatcher simulator as much as possible! That’s why we are running our community Discord server you can join. But yeah, that’s not enough. So, the very first thing we would like to introduce that can boost our community experience is a level editor. It will be publicly available soon ™ through the alpha preview of Rail Route on itch.io platform.

The Map Editor

If you are already bored with our predefined map in the campaign mode or if you hate our Prague station names or there’s just something else – do not hesitate and create a new map! With the editor we allow the players to create fully custom board with everything that comes with it. Create a schematic of your hometown railroads, your imaginary railroad network or even create a London tube map using it! The rectangles you see moving can be modern or historic trains, the underground trains, trams, monorails, just whatever you imagine.

What about the Schedule?

The first version of the editor does not allow you to create a custom timetable for your map. But we will include this feature in the next update. Right now, you can use the editor for the campaign part of the game only. In this game mode a time table is created with the contracts that player can choose and accept. The contracts are generated randomly with some predefined rules and there is a huge magic under the hood of the contract generator. But you can tune that magic in the editor by assigned the weights to the stations.

Each station has three percentage values – Com, IC and Freight. These values represent the possibility for the station to be included in a newly generated contract of the given train type. Let’s explain that by example: if you have 50% IC value for a station named ‘New York‘, it means that if a new IC contract is generated, there is a 50% probability that it will go through the ‘New York‘ station.

So the only thing you need to do is assign these values to your station. If you do not want Freight trains go through your new Central Station, assign zero there. You won’t see a freight contract that has to go through the Central Station in the game.

The station can have a border flag turned on. It means that in this station trains will arrive and leave to your dispatcher interface through the sinks and is used during the contract generator. No contracts cannot be generated without the border stations (just for now until we introduce the coach yards / depots).

Sharing the Maps

We make all this to allow the players to share their maps among the community members. Thus we want the sharing of custom maps be as easy as possible. So to save the map, you store the level string. It looks like this:

H4sIAAAAAAAAC+3bPWvCQBzH8V3wPfwhYwg+9GlJHVo6dO5UqgRNAg6lBambiDr0jfQVJNH
SDvYlXN5DX0n/d4moaJa7VEv5nYQMIX6+3p1mkkZEI2rwcZOf5VGX52qFjjvgw4cPHz58+P
Dhw4cPHz58+PDhw4cPHz58+PDhw/8TvrUzDupbD/6F53UcMReRkw+x1GowSDjjBC5IxGLd0
NaJ0GrYmPN0St+vby4H8NES7zoROg2W6594XkssVcREfOYJeUTRKLuhwQ2OXAReikRE6whH
xGKx3iGr4QZ8x5gKOzQzmjIj6/gQ882KiLPi3Ypm+RWW5WcT3K4Ria/VlnDS2d6FCOQthe+
mOQ+nah7kJPDcq71h8Buh2XCerUUit0TM38riaf6lBtr6vOk0nR68QFXwEaqCSTo5UsE45K
9bJ53VTHyzgKYKMPINntVGj8gS/HIGfPjw4cOHDx8+fPjw4cOHDx8+fPjw4cOHDx/+v/Nt2
65WfLqk6/DpZdB9pBHRrfojcT17VSsBX70b9oaDnrx4tX0xlLc+d/0+3XcHwZ67fwAOtoYa
qjwAAA==

This string can be used to start the custom game as well as load the map in the editor to make modifications. It’s simple and easy. We may include some cloud storage for your creations but not in the near future. Feel free to share your maps in our Discord until then.

What to Expect Next?

We will release the Editor Update probably the next week and then we will start works on the puzzle levels. We will write about them later.

Follow us on twitter not to miss anything important! And try our game if you have not done it yet!