The Train Giant A-train 9 Patch

The Train Giant: A-Train 9 & Shanghai DLCby “adlabs6”IntroductionThe origins of the “A-Train” software line go back to 1985. Developed by Japanese developer Artdink, and through it’s history published globally by various companies with versions on platforms as diverse as the PC, consoles, and handhelds, the series has maintained a steady following. The Train Giant is the English name for the latest release, A-Train 9, published by UIG Entertainment. While significant focus of the UIG published version is European, the title and it’s DLC are available to US customers as well through digital download outlets such as GamersGate, who lists the title as DRM free.This review is based on a sample provided directly from the publisher.The Train Giant places the player in the role of managing the sole transportation company which serves any cities within the map’s boundaries. Scenarios have the player starting with initial capital consisting of cash and transportation infrastructure, as well as rail, bus, and trucking vehicles.

In addition there are a variety of third party businesses and properties which may be owned such as manufacturing plants, grocery stores, apartment buildings, or office complexes. The objective is profit. Success comes in optimizing transportation operations to eliminate waste, and in keeping an eye on profitability of investments.Cargo rail, passenger rail, and highways make their ways beside the sea.DocumentationThe documentation included with The Train Giant includes several parts.

Most obvious is the PDF manual which covers the basic aspects of UI navigation and gameplay. This manual is well done and is a good starting point.

The next part is the “Help” button found within the game menu. Clicking this will minimize the software and open Internet Explorer, which displays a local HTML help file. The details in this manual are brief, perhaps a bit thin, but they provide a greater depth on more specific topics than the PDF manual. Finally, and not as obvious, there are tool tip popups within the game when hovering the mouse over a button. These tool tips are sometimes very long, and provide interesting clues that I didn’t find in either of the other two documentations.Overall the documentation works. It’ll give a player the basics after a brief search, and with some more digging you can piece together a bigger picture of a topic, say, like the impacts of building an office tower on the surrounding areas. But a more unified documentation would be welcomed.

Something ideal could be browsed easily without needing to switch between the PDF, the game UI tool tips, and the browser based documentation.Gameplay InterfaceThe world presented within The Train Giant is a fully 3D rendering, and is navigated using pan / tilt / zoom camera system. This view system offers nearly any perspective desired, from high altitude panoramas, to street level looks at the smaller details of the city. The color coded menus across the top of the screen open dialogs which detail most aspects of gameplay and reporting the status of operations.

These dialogs are treated as panes, so that the 3D world is still visible and can be interacted with while a dialog is open. At the bottom center of the screen is a clock showing the time of day, and the time acceleration bar. A setting of 1X has a day passing in a few minutes of gameplay, and faster up through 70X where the days fly by in only seconds each.A Station Settings menu fully expanded.Clicking on some buildings, infrastructure, and vehicles opens a small dialog which is connected to the object by a line.

From here the player can check on profit or losses for the current economic period, or see the purchase or selling prices for businesses under consideration for such actions. These dialogs allow certain objects to be named for easy reference, as well as provide in depth controls where appropriate for operations time tables and vehicle routing.

Also available is a scalable 2D map overlay in the upper right corner for quickly navigating a large map with several cities.Within the World Editor, the visual display and navigation is much the same. While editing the terrain itself, a variable sized brush is shown as a circular overlay which raises or lowers the surface.

Tools for creating roads, rails, and buildings are the same as well, although the editor mode also allows placement of buildings and objects not possible during gameplay. These include smaller residential and commercial sites, farms and gardens, and foliage to flesh out the user created map.Using brush to make a small hill in the World Editor.Gameplay ExperiencesSitting down to The Train Giant as a new player, the first hurdle was coming to understand the scope of my interaction with the simulated world. Working from a background in city building games, it’s easy to mistake The Train Giant as one of the same. Looking at an area that I wanted to see become a center of office spaces, and having a variety of office buildings available for construction in the menus, going on a building spree to craft the desired layout seems to make sense.

But it doesn’t work that way.The first reality of The Train Giant world is that the player doesn’t build the majority of the buildings that populate a city. This city simulation grows by itself, based on the availability of goods. Goods in cargo crates are produced at factories, and stored on the factory storage yard. In order to be used, either by the player or by the city’s simulation, these crates must be picked up from the factory yards and delivered to warehouses throughout the city. Delivery can be via trucks or trains, but they key is that where there is a stock of these goods in a warehouse, the simulation will build around the area.Cargo being delivered to a small warehouse by truck.This growth is automatic, with roads, houses, and businesses appearing slowly over time. The more goods available in an area, the more rapid the growth will be.

But while the majority of the city building is automated, it does respond to the players actions. All those nice buildings in the construction menus serve not only to influence the kinds of automated growth in nearby areas, but they are financial investments as well.Let’s look at an example. Suppose I own a short passenger rail line with stations on each end of a small and largely under developed town. As a transit business manager I want to encourage use of my rail line. Looking at what kinds of buildings surround each station, I may recognize that one station is in an area more suitable to commercial and retail. The other with smaller homes nearby, would be ideal for some apartments to increase the population density.

Doing nothing more than delivering a supply of goods to each area might see this kind of development occur, or NOT! Where I can influence this is by investing in a few properties that may spur similar development nearby. Building a new office complex and an apartment building near the appropriate stations will encourage similar growth or renovation in those areas. Perhaps might I benefit by greater growth rates in one of the two areas?

This is where controlling the availability of goods comes into play, building roads and or truck infrastructure and warehouses as needed, and controlling the quantity of goods delivered as desired.Thus the plan is set and some investments are made toward those ends, but there are more aspects to consider. Each of the two properties built are also owned investments of capital, and each may see individual profits or losses, perhaps for an extended period until the surrounding areas develop suitably. Delivering goods also costs money, and inefficient routes may be burdened with long drives or require several trucks on the route, if cargo rail service is unavailable or beyond the budget. For either trucking or rail, long runs with no cargo operate at a loss.

Striking a balance among all these factors is important, as is being ready to realize that an investment could have been a mistake. Should that apartment building be experiencing unexpected losses which offset the improved passenger rail profits, decisions on whether and when to unload that asset are required.This is the name of the game.So it’s within these ideas that most of the included scenarios are built. Varying terrains and sizes of towns and cities with problems needing optimizations for profitability. Players will need to manage the many small details of routes, departure times, and cargo distribution while still keeping an eye on the larger financial picture and planning for the future. Some of this can be trial and error, searching for just the optimum time for departures at a station. The map creator lets you do what ever you desire, from sculpting the landscape to building up the cities and their infrastructure. These creations can be saved and then played within the simulation itself, same as any scenario.

Game progress is easily saved and loaded, and multiple save versions are possible for experimenting.

About This Game A-Train 9 - Better Than EverA-Train 9 has had many major upgrades to the feature set and gameplay options over the years, with this version, Japan Rail Simulator, being the new pinnacle of the game. What Is A-Train 9?The biggest and best city builder, transport simulation game returns with a host of new features. Drive a train! Actually step inside the cab and take control. New control options. Speed restricted track ensure your trains arrive when they are supposed to.

Vehicle groups give you the vision you need to control up to 200 trains. New track layout options. The offset X junction, very handy for your marshalling yards and control of the entrance to sprawling muti-platform stations. New road flexibility. City blocks and roads that run at 45 degrees to add greater flexibility to your cities and allow more realistic city-scapes to be built.With more trains, buildings, trackside objects than ever!

What’s New in A-Train 9 V4.0: Japan Rail SimulatorThe new version of A-Train has a stack of new features that focus on the two most important aspects of gameplay: realism and control.Enhanced RealismA-Train is about creating working, profitable cities built around a strong transport network. Over the years we have seen our players create some fantastic cities, the scale and scope of which is staggering.Whether it is the painstaking re-creation of 100 km² real-life cities, or imaginative sprawling utopias, A-Train has always allowed the player to use their imagination. The latest version increases the scale and scope of the game 100%. Twice as many vehicles can be placed on landscapes with twice as many art assets. More road and track-side features with new levels of flexibility in the way that road and rail are built.The player can now use these tools to create more realistic and involved cities either from real-life or from their imagination. This extra realism is balanced by some great new control options which work at both the individual vehicle level and the management control level of the game.Become the DriverHave you ever wondered what it might be like to actually drive one of your trains? To actually experience the challenges the engineers may face in keeping to the speed limit, providing a comfortable ride, and delivering the goods and passengers on time?

Well, in A-Train 9 V4 Japan Rail Simulator, it's now possible to step on the footplate and take control. Either from the first-person engineers point of view, or from a bird’s-eye 3rd person viewpoint, experience your cities like never before.It’s not just trains. Jump on board a car or boat and see your creations from whole new perspectives. Ever wondered what it would be like to be a citizen or a worker in your city? While now you can find out.Double the VehiclesDoubling the number of vehicles in the game adds a massive amount of scope and scale to the game, and that brings with it its own challenges.

It might be overwhelming to have 200 trains running simultaneously. Understanding what they are all doing and how to optimize their timetables and routes with so much going on would be a challenge for anyone.Plan Your RoutesA-Train 9 V4 Japan Rail Simulator adds new features that bring you control from the transport planner level.It's now possible to sort and filter your vehicle by type and group them into color-coded teams. How you use these features is up to the player. You may want to group your trains by the routes they travel, or perhaps separate them into long distance and commuter trains.

It might certainly be a good idea to colour code passenger and freight trains separately, but that choice is yours and with the filter and sort options it’s very easy to set up.The control is there, and the choices are yours. Experiment and develop your own system using the new tools provided, and then see at a glance how your network is operating.Precise Layout ControlThe new version of A-Train offers more control than ever. Track laying has been improved, trains can now have their own custom consist and speed settings, land can be raised and flattened within the game itself (at a cost).It's your world, creating the perfect rail and road transport system has never been more satisfying.Assets to Create Realistic EnvironmentsHundreds of new art assets are included in the game. From roadside elements such as post boxes and bus stands right up to suspension bridges, landmarks airports. You can now create detailed and interesting worlds alive with detail.Realistic or Model ScalingMassive areas of land to expand in to. View it all in 4K resolution (with a suitable monitor) and decide whether you want to use the new 1:1 scale modelling in the game which adds a new level of realism. Whether it's the big image or the fine details, A-Train 9 V4 Japan Rail Simulator has scale covered.Degica – Here To Support YouDegica brings a new level of support to the worldwide release of A-Train.

With effort spent on localization before launch and our commitment to continue to support the game with updates, and improvements after launch, you can feel confident that this is the definitive version of A-Train. Massive Train and Rolling Stock UpdateMore Than 40 New Trains!The world of A-Train moves up a step with the introduction of our free DLC pack.Adding more than 40 new trains, you can now create worlds more diverse than ever. Each train has its own strengths and weaknesses.Should you choose the slow powerful work-horse capable of pulling large numbers of carriages over long distances economically?

Or is the light nimble local commuter the right tool for the job?Did We Mention – This is Free?This huge update is completely free to existing owners of the game! It will be added to your Steam account automatically on release day.Highlights from this DLC include:303 Series CommuterA passenger friendly local commuter built to cope with a shortage of trains.

A Train 9 Mods

Cheap to operate415-1500 SeriesA light stainless steel engine designed for passenger comfort485 KrishimaWith re-introduced green livery. The work horse of the Nippo Main Line721 CommuterEfficient and temperature regulated. A short stop sprinter for the busy Sapporo suburbs883 “Renewal” LiveryA tilting EMU.

Handling sharp curves and rapid but comfortable acceleration and deceleration are the strong points of this light, fun vehicle. A-Train 9 Japan Rail Simulator. The Ultimate A-Train 9 ExperienceA-Train 9 V4 Japan Rail Simulator is the latest and greatest version of the game, having all the benefits of all previous versions and these great new features added here.Whether you are new to the game, or a returning player, there has never been a better time to ride the A-Train.