Congrats on the release! I stumbled a bit early on and almost failed, but "you don't win the very first time you play" is not a universally bad trait for a video game. I did win the game on my first try, on normal difficulty, and I was already up to 4000 population before you made the three lower difficulties easier. I think this is excellent for your first paid game release, and good even not considering it's your first. Well done. :)
Don't be at all disappointed by this DLC release, it is an excellent addition to a refreshingly 'true feeling' miniature steam experience, you have people of all capabilities, and you have done an excellent job catering to all, worth every penny, well done!
The reverser was very difficult to grasp for me. Now I understand how to handle it better! Hope the game was a financial success and it helps you fuel your next endeavour.
Congratulations for the release. Keep up the great work. I have a minor suggestion - When you 'switch-up' the splitter-gear configuration from S3 - 1 to D-2, you should first put the gear lever to 2 followed by the splitter lever to D. Doing it the other way around would momentarily put the engine in a high stress situation.
@AshishSaxena-s1k Actually the best way to do it is to put one stick in neutral, then shift one at a time. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to overcomplicate the demonstration. I just wanted to show the order of the gear ratios
@@AngeTheGood Does the game support multi-touch on touchscreens? I know it's a niche feature but I was thinking of playing on my tablet so that I could make those up-shifts smoother by moving both levers at once.
I was really struggling at first. I had the steam pressure set much higher than necessary, which caused my running costs to escalate and eventually led to a lot of debt. I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Your video really helped clarify things and gave me a much better understanding of how everything works. Thanks so much for the insight!
First off, this is a brilliant piece of work. Good tips here, I was running too high a pressure, made it annoying to get water in. I felt like a dofus when I was playing for a while, generating away, but not at the right rpm range. A visual boolean indicator of if it's an acceptable frequency would be nice. I looked at the power output and was like "yeap I'm making power". I believe real generators will disconnect from the gird if the frequency is off too much, so I was kind of expecting that.
My suggestion is to dim the whole screen and only highlight the mailbox. It is a bit of information overload at first. Though I found it I have experience reading cad drawings and know how to look at a page full of information. But to some its just overwhelming. Being able to force someone to focus on certain portions of the page and help them learn to look at this page could be good. also I think the issue is with testing you have people way more likely to understand this stuff. Its impossible to predict what most people will do or think. Glad you made this video. The more you can help people understand the more people who will not leave the game and enjoy it more.
I think my main problem was I don't know that much about engines lol, the testers were probably a more dedicated bunch. That being said I'm having lot's of fun with it, particularly fond of the cryptic letters you receive once in a while since it reminds me of papers please.
@@AngeTheGood yeah that what i meant sorry :) Yeah, like i would like to pause the game with spacebar for instance, bind reverser to keys etc. That would be epic. Otherwise am having tons of fun, been waiting for this DLC for long time. What a great job
One thing I would like to see is how much water is being turned into steam and how much water is being put into the boiler and seing the difference in a digital format. Currently we have the water inlet flow rate gauge and the water level gauge. I would like to be able to click on the small water level gauge and see a digital number on the side like the other gauges. Overall nice game already enjoying it
very well put together DLC. already finished the game, not sure what to do next since I have about 300K in the bank in the game. More content after the main story is complete would be nice.
I played and finished the game in easy. I struggled in a couple of very basic stuff, like finding the clock or where the mailbox was. The red circle idea is not bad.
First off the DLC is amazing. I would ask for one small clarification. The water inlet valve appears to actually be a regulator. It seems to let no water pass until the valve passes a certain threshold where the water can overcome the boiler pressure. This behavior would suggest that behind the curtain it is actually controlling the water pressure outside the boiler and is not a true valve. I think some players may crash the boiler often because they might not grasp the difference between operating a regulator vs a valve. Currently there is a strong inverse relationship between the boiler pressure and the water flow. A true valve would have an Uper limit on flow even if the boiler was a vacuum. This is my only nit Pick and otherwise the simulation feels very very good. Well worth the price. PS. I think the engine's peak power is around 280 rpm in the sand box. At this point the flow restrictions in the valve assembly appear to cross the rising power curve of the "constant" tourqe engine. Would love to know what others have found.
It is not a regulator but rather a true valve. The water source is best understood as a constant pressure source. The closest real world approximation to this would be a water tower with no powered pump. Alternatively, the constant pressure source could model a water pump equipped with a pressure tank that regulates the output pressure to a constant value. Note that this all comes BEFORE the valve. The valve does not regulate pressure, it only attenuates flow and it is a purely linear relationship based on the valve's effective flow area (ie how much it's opened). The flow rate itself is dependent on the pressure differential between source and sink. And yes, there is an upper limit on flow but it's not usually reached in play, at least when the engine is running. There are different kinds of regulator, but I'm assuming you're referring to a pressure regulator. A pressure regulator would not behave like the valve in the game. A pressure regular would adjust the final pressure of the fluid before entering the boiler which is clearly not what's happening in the simulation. It would imply that the user has direct control over the final water pressure which is not the case. Regarding peak engine power, the speed at which peak power is reached is dependent on many parameters. I've spent hours characterizing and studying these relationships for the purposes of balancing this DLC. Peak power RPM is dependent on reverser position, boiler pressure and especially steam temperature.
I'd love to be able to just hover a control and use the scroll wheel to adjust it. I know there are keybindigs for that but they were a bit unintuitive to me. I didn't know I had to hold the key and use the scroll wheel at first. Also having to remember which key corresponds to which control is a bit annoying - just being able to hover and scroll would be much easier.
I think you may have vastly overestimated how much more skilled you are than most of us... There's also a positive feedback loop with the water that bit me several times: if you drop the heat too quickly (or ingest a bolus of cold water), the pressure will drop and then the inflow of water will increase which then drops the temperature which then drops the pressure and it very quickly quenches the whole engine. Not that this is bad (it's a natural consequence of the physics), just that it might be something for beginners to look out for.
I'd say that yes, the mailbox should have a red circle around it in the tutorial. You have a game here that borrows some design language from existing games, but it's also very much it's own thing with it's own design. In most other games with a mailbox or equivalent it's usually an actual mailbox, or like a "phone app", or something in the inventory menu. A simple red box that disappears the first time you click on the mailbox tab and never shows up again would be the kind of thing I would absolutely expect from a game with a new design language.
Hi, comment about the transmission. I think it would make more sense to arrange the gears more like a semi truck or tractor transmission, where you’d have a low and high range, ie: low range 1-6, then shift into high range 1-6. I think it would be more intuitive than 1 low/med/high 2 low/med/high ect.
@NinjaJosh5 the arrangement that I used is based on a semi truck transmission, just not the one you're referring to. I don't think that your suggestion would be more intuitive to anyone other than those who are already used to that transmission style. For the vast majority of players, it will be a learning curve anyway and I found this to be the most fun transmission style to use in the game
Thank you for the tutorial, I really needed an explanation of the reverser and the release valve Also the Linux version of the base game is acting weird? It installs but doesn't launch from Steam, and yet running the .exe works perfectly, even on my potato laptop... I'll look for the bug report submission link later
There is no Linux version that I'm aware of and Linux is not an official supported platform. Some weirdness is to be expected. Generally though I've heard people can run the game fine through things like Proton.
@AngeTheGood must have been a Steam bug, after uninstalling it says it's unsupported Proton makes it way slower than running it with Wine though, time to use a better computer I guess
Now that you have the steam engine part done, when will you be making the DLC where the burner gets replaced with nuclear fuel rods? Maybe we can replace the exhaust with some kind of turbine? Might we more efficient. Also we're gonna need a cooling tower and lots of safety measures. We don't want a meltdown! - Sincerely, the people of Steamtown
I mean it took me several days to even get the engine running before the DLC. It shouldn't be hand fed to players. My only thing is that either I'm blind or I cant seem to find exactly how much energy Im producing. The only thing I have to go on is the image of steam town and the sound of the generator turning on.
You didn't have the problem from testing? Did you use people who already know how to use a steam engine? Because that could be it. I'm pretty sure you mentioned that in a video if i am remembering correctly. If they didn't know anything about steam engines, then idk...
Some things I figured out that may help people who are struggling; More water= Less efficient fuel use. The game recommends 10CC of water, I recommend about 5-6. The more water you have, the more fuel you have to spend to heat it and that means making less money.
This is not necessarily true. Initially heating a large mass of water will cost a lot of heat energy, but after that point, you are only providing the heat needed to boil water and the rate of steam production doesn't change depending on your water level. As long as you maintain a consistent water level, the total heat going in will be roughly the same to maintain the same pressure.
@@svgPhoenix its not too bad. buy them as you can, then do a planned outage when ready to upgrade. get all the requirements ready for each upgrade, then pause the time next to the time of day, then hit install them all then wait, then fire back up. most of my upgrades where when I blew the boiler up and I was forced to do a unplanned outage. when you get the frequency converter maxed out you can replace the piston rings with shutting off the power. you do that be getting the generator up to about 1200rpms, put the transmission in neutral, kill the heat, close the throttle, put the reverser in neutral, and brake the engine to a stop, then repair the rings.
as a stupid person, all i can say theres levels of stupity and that its impossible to make things both accessible and hard enough at the same time for everyone to enjoy it. ~ A dude who doesnt know how to get to good efficiency, even on easy
was there a link to this within the game that I missed? because if not this should definitely be linked in the game edit: after watching, I realize that I didn't need 90% of it. I'm struggling to manage the load at like 3,000 population. One thing I noticed is that you were fine with the engine running really slow - like 25 rpm. I've been trying and struggling to keep my engine at 60rpm this whole time. Didn't the tutorial say that was where it needed to be? Also what can you do if you already have the reverser wide open and your pressure maxed, but you're still losing speed after dropping a couple gears? It feels wrong to be going to fourth or third when I haven't even unlocked more than level 2 upgrades.
This is precisely the issue with having a tutorial like this. Just because running at 60 rpm works for some situations does not mean it will work for all. All the NPCs says is that he will IDLE the engine at 60 rpm "for now". In no way does that suggest that you always want to be running at 60 rpm and that approach will not work. Part of the game is figuring this out. I'm noticing that people are rigidly applying what was taught in the tutorial to the rest of the game where it doesn't belong. The tutorial is also very clear that lower gears are for higher power. If you are losing speed at a higher gear, you might be need to downshift, there is nothing "wrong" about this. If you actually can't keep up with demand, then you may have expanded too quickly or your piston rings might be shot. In that situation you can raise prices (as also discussed in the tutorial) in order to reduce the demand and at least allow you to survive long enough to repair the engine or get the next upgrade.
The people that got it for "free" are patreon supporters of Ange and they got it because their lifetime contribution is greater than the price of the DLC(5$). However, the base game is free so you can play it while you can't buy the DLC, the base game is also fun!
It's not for everyone. Unfortunately you're not providing me with much information to improve the game to make it fun for you, so I'm not sure what the point of your comment is.
I love the minimalistic view of it. It's three buttons. they'll find it...
Congrats on the release!
I stumbled a bit early on and almost failed, but "you don't win the very first time you play" is not a universally bad trait for a video game. I did win the game on my first try, on normal difficulty, and I was already up to 4000 population before you made the three lower difficulties easier.
I think this is excellent for your first paid game release, and good even not considering it's your first. Well done. :)
Don't be at all disappointed by this DLC release, it is an excellent addition to a refreshingly 'true feeling' miniature steam experience, you have people of all capabilities, and you have done an excellent job catering to all, worth every penny, well done!
The reverser was very difficult to grasp for me. Now I understand how to handle it better!
Hope the game was a financial success and it helps you fuel your next endeavour.
Congratulations for the release. Keep up the great work.
I have a minor suggestion -
When you 'switch-up' the splitter-gear configuration from S3 - 1 to D-2, you should first put the gear lever to 2 followed by the splitter lever to D. Doing it the other way around would momentarily put the engine in a high stress situation.
@AshishSaxena-s1k Actually the best way to do it is to put one stick in neutral, then shift one at a time. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to overcomplicate the demonstration. I just wanted to show the order of the gear ratios
@AngeTheGood Makes sense !
@@AngeTheGood Does the game support multi-touch on touchscreens? I know it's a niche feature but I was thinking of playing on my tablet so that I could make those up-shifts smoother by moving both levers at once.
I was really struggling at first. I had the steam pressure set much higher than necessary, which caused my running costs to escalate and eventually led to a lot of debt. I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Your video really helped clarify things and gave me a much better understanding of how everything works. Thanks so much for the insight!
the transmission was definitely a point of confusion for me. now i completely understand it.
I love the DLC. The systems interlock very nicely and it keeps me motivated to improve.
>derivative gauge type thing
Variometer.
Absolutely love the dlc, its so much fun. Thank you for all your hard work!
Already finished it, great game Ange. Loved it
First off, this is a brilliant piece of work. Good tips here, I was running too high a pressure, made it annoying to get water in.
I felt like a dofus when I was playing for a while, generating away, but not at the right rpm range. A visual boolean indicator of if it's an acceptable frequency would be nice. I looked at the power output and was like "yeap I'm making power". I believe real generators will disconnect from the gird if the frequency is off too much, so I was kind of expecting that.
Yeah those dials for checking deltas become super useful. I wish they weren't so small tho!
My suggestion is to dim the whole screen and only highlight the mailbox. It is a bit of information overload at first. Though I found it I have experience reading cad drawings and know how to look at a page full of information. But to some its just overwhelming. Being able to force someone to focus on certain portions of the page and help them learn to look at this page could be good.
also I think the issue is with testing you have people way more likely to understand this stuff. Its impossible to predict what most people will do or think. Glad you made this video. The more you can help people understand the more people who will not leave the game and enjoy it more.
dimming the rest of the screen sound like a much more elegant solution than a garish red circle
Congrats on the release!
I was thinking though is there any plans for bringing it to arm systems? That is all have a good day!
Great work! Definitely worth the wait. But I did search for the mailbox for an embarrassing amount of time lol.
I think my main problem was I don't know that much about engines lol, the testers were probably a more dedicated bunch. That being said I'm having lot's of fun with it, particularly fond of the cryptic letters you receive once in a while since it reminds me of papers please.
One thing thats really needed my dude, is keybinding. Thank you very much
There are keybinds already but I'm guessing you mean customizable keybinds?
@@AngeTheGood yeah that what i meant sorry :) Yeah, like i would like to pause the game with spacebar for instance, bind reverser to keys etc. That would be epic.
Otherwise am having tons of fun, been waiting for this DLC for long time. What a great job
One thing I would like to see is how much water is being turned into steam and how much water is being put into the boiler and seing the difference in a digital format.
Currently we have the water inlet flow rate gauge and the water level gauge. I would like to be able to click on the small water level gauge and see a digital number on the side like the other gauges.
Overall nice game already enjoying it
I know what I'm doing for the next couple days. Edit I restarted and it's so much easier now thank you.
Love the dlc btw
very well put together DLC. already finished the game, not sure what to do next since I have about 300K in the bank in the game. More content after the main story is complete would be nice.
I played and finished the game in easy. I struggled in a couple of very basic stuff, like finding the clock or where the mailbox was. The red circle idea is not bad.
First off the DLC is amazing.
I would ask for one small clarification.
The water inlet valve appears to actually be a regulator.
It seems to let no water pass until the valve passes a certain threshold where the water can overcome the boiler pressure. This behavior would suggest that behind the curtain it is actually controlling the water pressure outside the boiler and is not a true valve.
I think some players may crash the boiler often because they might not grasp the difference between operating a regulator vs a valve.
Currently there is a strong inverse relationship between the boiler pressure and the water flow.
A true valve would have an Uper limit on flow even if the boiler was a vacuum.
This is my only nit Pick and otherwise the simulation feels very very good. Well worth the price.
PS. I think the engine's peak power is around 280 rpm in the sand box.
At this point the flow restrictions in the valve assembly appear to cross the rising power curve of the "constant" tourqe engine. Would love to know what others have found.
It is not a regulator but rather a true valve. The water source is best understood as a constant pressure source. The closest real world approximation to this would be a water tower with no powered pump. Alternatively, the constant pressure source could model a water pump equipped with a pressure tank that regulates the output pressure to a constant value. Note that this all comes BEFORE the valve. The valve does not regulate pressure, it only attenuates flow and it is a purely linear relationship based on the valve's effective flow area (ie how much it's opened).
The flow rate itself is dependent on the pressure differential between source and sink. And yes, there is an upper limit on flow but it's not usually reached in play, at least when the engine is running.
There are different kinds of regulator, but I'm assuming you're referring to a pressure regulator. A pressure regulator would not behave like the valve in the game. A pressure regular would adjust the final pressure of the fluid before entering the boiler which is clearly not what's happening in the simulation. It would imply that the user has direct control over the final water pressure which is not the case.
Regarding peak engine power, the speed at which peak power is reached is dependent on many parameters. I've spent hours characterizing and studying these relationships for the purposes of balancing this DLC. Peak power RPM is dependent on reverser position, boiler pressure and especially steam temperature.
I already finished the game haha. was great.
I'd love to be able to just hover a control and use the scroll wheel to adjust it. I know there are keybindigs for that but they were a bit unintuitive to me. I didn't know I had to hold the key and use the scroll wheel at first. Also having to remember which key corresponds to which control is a bit annoying - just being able to hover and scroll would be much easier.
I think you may have vastly overestimated how much more skilled you are than most of us... There's also a positive feedback loop with the water that bit me several times: if you drop the heat too quickly (or ingest a bolus of cold water), the pressure will drop and then the inflow of water will increase which then drops the temperature which then drops the pressure and it very quickly quenches the whole engine. Not that this is bad (it's a natural consequence of the physics), just that it might be something for beginners to look out for.
I'd say that yes, the mailbox should have a red circle around it in the tutorial.
You have a game here that borrows some design language from existing games, but it's also very much it's own thing with it's own design.
In most other games with a mailbox or equivalent it's usually an actual mailbox, or like a "phone app", or something in the inventory menu. A simple red box that disappears the first time you click on the mailbox tab and never shows up again would be the kind of thing I would absolutely expect from a game with a new design language.
interesting that you do not use the rangebox for shifting through the gears. very important later on if you have a heavy flywheel.
Key point being later on; this was just a beginner basics video so they probably didn't want to get into details like that.
Hi, comment about the transmission. I think it would make more sense to arrange the gears more like a semi truck or tractor transmission, where you’d have a low and high range, ie: low range 1-6, then shift into high range 1-6. I think it would be more intuitive than 1 low/med/high 2 low/med/high ect.
@NinjaJosh5 the arrangement that I used is based on a semi truck transmission, just not the one you're referring to. I don't think that your suggestion would be more intuitive to anyone other than those who are already used to that transmission style. For the vast majority of players, it will be a learning curve anyway and I found this to be the most fun transmission style to use in the game
Thank you for the tutorial, I really needed an explanation of the reverser and the release valve
Also the Linux version of the base game is acting weird? It installs but doesn't launch from Steam, and yet running the .exe works perfectly, even on my potato laptop... I'll look for the bug report submission link later
There is no Linux version that I'm aware of and Linux is not an official supported platform. Some weirdness is to be expected. Generally though I've heard people can run the game fine through things like Proton.
@AngeTheGood must have been a Steam bug, after uninstalling it says it's unsupported
Proton makes it way slower than running it with Wine though, time to use a better computer I guess
Now that you have the steam engine part done, when will you be making the DLC where the burner gets replaced with nuclear fuel rods? Maybe we can replace the exhaust with some kind of turbine? Might we more efficient. Also we're gonna need a cooling tower and lots of safety measures. We don't want a meltdown! - Sincerely, the people of Steamtown
I mean it took me several days to even get the engine running before the DLC. It shouldn't be hand fed to players. My only thing is that either I'm blind or I cant seem to find exactly how much energy Im producing. The only thing I have to go on is the image of steam town and the sound of the generator turning on.
You didn't have the problem from testing? Did you use people who already know how to use a steam engine? Because that could be it. I'm pretty sure you mentioned that in a video if i am remembering correctly. If they didn't know anything about steam engines, then idk...
Just curious, What does D, S1, S2 and S3 stand for?
Direct, Splitter_1, Splitter_2, Splitter_3
@@AngeTheGood thanks. I sometimes have trouble understanding what some of the symbols mean.
1:07 yes need make red in mail box
Some things I figured out that may help people who are struggling;
More water= Less efficient fuel use. The game recommends 10CC of water, I recommend about 5-6. The more water you have, the more fuel you have to spend to heat it and that means making less money.
This is not necessarily true. Initially heating a large mass of water will cost a lot of heat energy, but after that point, you are only providing the heat needed to boil water and the rate of steam production doesn't change depending on your water level. As long as you maintain a consistent water level, the total heat going in will be roughly the same to maintain the same pressure.
I second what Ange said.
I run between 50 and 70cc of water for safety.
@@JoshKilen that must be a nightmare when you have to do upgrades
@@svgPhoenix its not too bad. buy them as you can, then do a planned outage when ready to upgrade. get all the requirements ready for each upgrade, then pause the time next to the time of day, then hit install them all then wait, then fire back up. most of my upgrades where when I blew the boiler up and I was forced to do a unplanned outage. when you get the frequency converter maxed out you can replace the piston rings with shutting off the power. you do that be getting the generator up to about 1200rpms, put the transmission in neutral, kill the heat, close the throttle, put the reverser in neutral, and brake the engine to a stop, then repair the rings.
How do I wake Isambard?
Have you tried taking the hoggits to Isembard? /j
read the letter in the mailbox. It asks you to blow the whistle at 5 am
as a stupid person, all i can say theres levels of stupity and that its impossible to make things both accessible and hard enough at the same time for everyone to enjoy it. ~ A dude who doesnt know how to get to good efficiency, even on easy
The sandbox could be helpful for new players if only they will use it correctly to test and compare different settings.
i am -$30,000 in debt rn and the number keeps getting bigger 💀
was there a link to this within the game that I missed? because if not this should definitely be linked in the game
edit: after watching, I realize that I didn't need 90% of it. I'm struggling to manage the load at like 3,000 population. One thing I noticed is that you were fine with the engine running really slow - like 25 rpm. I've been trying and struggling to keep my engine at 60rpm this whole time. Didn't the tutorial say that was where it needed to be? Also what can you do if you already have the reverser wide open and your pressure maxed, but you're still losing speed after dropping a couple gears? It feels wrong to be going to fourth or third when I haven't even unlocked more than level 2 upgrades.
This is precisely the issue with having a tutorial like this. Just because running at 60 rpm works for some situations does not mean it will work for all. All the NPCs says is that he will IDLE the engine at 60 rpm "for now". In no way does that suggest that you always want to be running at 60 rpm and that approach will not work.
Part of the game is figuring this out. I'm noticing that people are rigidly applying what was taught in the tutorial to the rest of the game where it doesn't belong. The tutorial is also very clear that lower gears are for higher power. If you are losing speed at a higher gear, you might be need to downshift, there is nothing "wrong" about this. If you actually can't keep up with demand, then you may have expanded too quickly or your piston rings might be shot. In that situation you can raise prices (as also discussed in the tutorial) in order to reduce the demand and at least allow you to survive long enough to repair the engine or get the next upgrade.
put a bright red ! bubble on the flashing mailbox
W dlc
First maybe?
Seems like
I want to get it so bad fr
its £5
Work at McDonald’s for 15 minutes
@@pamperedspider I bought it 👽
@@5APPH_13 sweet
I wanted it but its paid and i can't spend money right now. is there any way i can get this free?
please give me an answer
there are guys that got it for free
The people that got it for "free" are patreon supporters of Ange and they got it because their lifetime contribution is greater than the price of the DLC(5$). However, the base game is free so you can play it while you can't buy the DLC, the base game is also fun!
@Bartekwis oh i just wanted to play the dls been waiting from bveggining for dlc
Not fun
It's not for everyone. Unfortunately you're not providing me with much information to improve the game to make it fun for you, so I'm not sure what the point of your comment is.