#derail valley

[whirligig-girl]

i woke up from a dream in the middle of the night and, for a split second, had the thought "oh huh. they forgot to make a T'lyn demonstrator. Wait."

[why485]

2024 Games of the Year

It's the time of the year where people make lists about the games of the year! I haven't done of these in a while, but this year I feel strongly enough about enough games that I really want to do one. As is always the case, I only go by games I played this year. Doesn't really matter to me when they were released. Honestly, release date means even less today than it used to because of Early Access, continued support, live service, etc. Anyway, onto the picks!

Game of the Year: Derail Valley

This one caught me completely by surprise. In every meaning of the word, this is the VTOL VR of train sims. An accessible, but still kinda simmy, approach to train simulators that is deeply interactive by virtue of being designed as a VR game first. It has an addictive game loop, and learning the ins and outs of every locomotive, and the various routes, is deeply satisfying.

There is a physicality to every action in this game that is just wonderful. You don't just press a UI element to couple two trains together. You get out of cabin, walk over to the coupler, connect the anchor points, connect the brake hose lines, open the brake valves, and then undo the handbrake on the car. It sounds mundane, but 80 hours later and it still hasn't gotten old.

This game has been out for a while in Early Access. I'd heard about it occasionally, but the B99 trailer was what really convinced me that I had to give this game a shot. I'm glad I'm playing this now, because with the current feature set it feels like the best time ever to get on board.

Best Flight Sim: Nuclear Option

Tiny Combat but good, this game, being made by an incredibly talented, small, and competent team, is incredible. It's a sim-lite in the same vein as the Novalogic sims or the Jane's Fighters games. It's set in the near future with made up planes with crazy detailed damage models, and with a love for very, very big explosions.

What's most impressive to me about Nuclear Option is the breadth of features. You have low intensity conflict trainer props and jets, a quad rotor V-22 Osprey-like tiltrotor that can also double as an AC-130 style gunship, and a VTOL electronic warfare/AWACS plane with laser turret in the nose that can shoot down incoming missiles.

This game is still in early access, but progress has been steady, and with a bright future ahead of it.

Best Graphics: Thunder Helix

Like Nuclear Option, I've been following this game since almost its inception. Thunder Helix is a modern take on the arcade helicopter sim, somewhere between Desert Strike and Gunship 2000. It's very fun, and easy to play in short bursts.

What's so exceptional about this game though is its aesthetic. It is a gorgeous representation of what you remember these games looking like, authentically recreated to a meticulous degree. This is a game that uses color palettes, dithering, and doesn't even have a depth buffer. The game opens with a fake DOS prompt! The only real departure, and a welcome one at that, is that the game runs at a buttery smooth modern framerate.

Most Rent Free: Metal Gear Solid (1 and 2)

Following the graduation of my kamioshi, I decided I would finally play Metal Gear Solid. This is a series that needs no introduction, but I thought I should at least play the first game, if nothing else because of its historical significance. In the end, I played MGS1, MG1 VR Missions, and MGS2.

These games blew me away. They are so good. Kind of. There's a lot of qualifiers actually. They simultaneously have aged super well, but also are pretty rough in some areas. However the most lasting element from these games, is that they turned everything into a Metal Gear reference. Due to just how much dialog there is in these games, along with its kitchen sink approach to writing, you can relate almost anything to Metal Gear.

For about 6 solid (METAL GEAR REFERENCE?) months, I was thinking about Metal Gear constantly. It really sticks with you, for a lot of reasons, not all of them good. There's just so much to talk about with these games but I guess this it for now!

[kalianos]

Trying to use the Dm3 in derail valley is a fun experience in being a harried yet demented truck driver in Eastern Europe using something that came from the 70's. A temperamental torque driven machine that makes you want to set it on fire. Who thought it was a good idea to make a diesel locomotive with two gear boxes!? A purely mechanical monstrosity. And the shift isn't in some logical 1:1 1:2 2:2 2:3 3:3 configuration ahahaha. No.

1:1 1:2 2:1 2:2 3:1 3:2 2:3 3:3 in that order. You can skip gear sets while shunting but you run the risk of blowing up the gear box in such spectacular fashion you smash out all your windows.

I fricken love that shutning diesel. Shame it put a career save file in over 60k in debt to fix it.

[foxerfox]

Some say Kenosha can even be heard leading up to incidents.

[crouchingtoasterhiddenpastry]

Yall should check out Derail Valley. It's a train game for people who find trains boring

[eject91]

Solid first go in the diesel-mechanical

[tumblesdownhill]

I play a game called derail valley. The keyboard control rebind menu is a fucking .txt file that opens when you hit "rebind controls". So many people would lose their shit and think they broke the game because they don't understand that under the fancy skins of AAA titles, controls are probably stored as a .txt file.

another thought about "gen z and gen alpha don't know how to use computers, just phone apps" is that this is intentionally the direction tech companies have pushed things in, they don't want users to understand anything about the underlying system, they want you to just buy a subscription to a thing and if it doesn't do what you need it to, you just upgrade to the more expensive one. users who look at configuration files are their worst nightmare

[enbyindex]

Just got the DH4 in Derail Valley, so it's time to relisten to The Magnus Protocol!

[tumblesdownhill]

New derail valley update dropped and it fuckes but I can't play it since my room contains a man who just today called a variety of protein drink retarded

[whirligig-girl]

The S282 from the train sim game Derail Valley, interpreted as a prop built in the first two or three seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.

I tried to imagine how a prop builder would actually put something like this together on a children's TV series budget. Like the other original props, this one uses kitbashed parts from Marklin model trains as well as plastic card bodies and sculpted faces. The chassis is taken from a Marklin BR55 0-8-0 and the pilot and trailing wheels, and cylinders, modified from a Marklin BR78.

There are some design changes to make it just look more Thomas, like the thomas style headlamp, the flat prominent buffer beam, and the blocky red-sided footplate. The geometry has been simplified as it needed to be made out of folded, bent, and cut plastic card.

More details and alternate versions under the cut:

The actual locomotive as it appears in Derail Valley: Simulator. Note the much larger cylinders. They could have built more proportional cylinders--they did so when they built Murdoch in season 7, but I wanted it to fit in better with Henry and Gordon.

The valve gear shown is accurate to the BR55, not to the BR78 Gordon and Henry use nor the game model (which has much thicker rods)

Other details, like the air pump (not needed on sodor, which seems to use vacuum brakes), bell, and dynamo (again, not used on sodor) have been removed. The ladder detail on the running board has been simplified. A cowcatcher is not needed, but i kept it as more or less the only obviously foreign feature of the engine. The electric headlamp on the top of the S282's smokebox has been replaced with a white

The S282's tender is a four wheel tender on a pair of freight car trucks. The thomas version is a six wheel tender based on Gordon and Henry's.

The livery was changed to make it feel more Sodor. The sides of the running board were painted red, and red lining was added to the boiler bands, cab, and tender. And 282 was given as a number on the tender, in red-lined yellow text. The wheels retain the red paint of the model that contributed their wheels, but dulled a bit by weathering. The game model has black wheels with white walls and red counterweights, but that didn't look right with the small counterweights on most of the wheels and the one single large counterweight on the number three axle.

With so many red accents, the loco bears more than a passing resemblance to Hiro from the cgi series, though this is only a coincidence.

Here's a variant with a game-accurate livery. No striping, and the wheel spokes are black with white walls and red counterweights.

Here are squeaky clean versions of both liveries.

and here are NWR green, blue, and red variants. I actually made a texture pack for the previous major version of Derail Valley, before they updated the model and the UV maps changed. (obviously my texture pack did not go so far as to add faces)

Final variant, the ES&DT version. [sniff sniff] can you hear a guitar riff slowly building tempo?

[tumblesdownhill]

I wield the Splodey Bois! OBLITERATE!

In honor of pride month, I’m reviving and revamping an old post:

The LGBTQ+ armory :)

- L: Laser

- G: Grenade Launcher

- B: Bazooka

- T: Tank

- Q: Quarterstaff

- I: ICBM

- A: Anthrax

Tag yourself, I’m anthrax

[hasrock36]

This is still the best mod and video I’ve ever made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7NG0MmpcY

[kalianos]

Happy 4th of July!

[shrimpari]

"I see all of you as rats. Nothing...but...rats."

The Abbot of Saint Markovia

[ice-to-orange-blossoms]

She hydraulic on my diesel till I 4

she mechanical on my diesel til i 3

[subwaytostardew]

▲ Subway to Stardew - Ingo 4-Heart Event ▲

This plays after getting at least 4 hearts with Ingo and entering the woods on Monday. Ingo also sends an invitation!