tim
Trains in Motion (TiM) aims to change a LARGE degree of the under-workings for TC, and add support for a lot of new features that have been requested for years, without changing how TC plays.
- Most importantly it's still Traincraft. The things that make us unique won't change, we will keep the same size, style, train and rollingstock features, and controls that make TC iconic.
- Bug fixes, by far one of the biggest things, to the extent that it was the founding reason for making a rewrite.
TC has always had a number of bugs that were beyond fixing without replacing major systems entirely, and they are in everything, collisions, hitboxes, lag, desync, save data management, the list goes on.
Most, if not all, of these bugs require such a significant degree of restructuring that if we did not make the rewrite a fully new mod, each fix would require servers to restart their worlds, or at the very least lost all of whatever we changed (trains, stock, rails, etc).
- New API, I bring this up a lot because it's potentially my favorite feature, we will have full support for content packs of trains, stock, blocks, and more. The API is designed similar to flans, but I am making a significant degree of effort and taking a lot of advice from the community, not only to make an easier way to do normal forge stuff like adding new blocks, but to make it simple as possible, so even people who have never written code before can learn it quickly.
I wanted to go this route instead of a texturepack-esk one, because it's far less FPS impacting, and it allows content creators to use the full capacity of forge modding if they want.
- Animations and models, with the rewrite comes a fully new rendering system, known as TMT (Turbo Model Thingy) by GaryCXJK, reworked heavily by Fexcraft, we put our own spin on it, some of that is seen in current releases of Traincraft with support for more advanced shapes. In the rewrite we expand the features further, improving FPS, adding new shapes like cones, cylinders and spheres, and most importantly, animations. Everything from wheels and doors, to more complex things like valve gears, 3d particles, and dynamic lights, all at less of an FPS hit than vanilla Minecraft particles, and you can disable them fully in the config if your computer is exceptionally garbage.
- New rails, we wanted to take rails a step further than you see anywhere else, with the new rails we will be able to support sizes up to 32x32, and potentially even larger, with many more varying shapes that the user can modify themselves on the crafting table thanks to our new procedural model generation system for the rails. This new system allows us to even let the user choose a model they prefer, including one that looks almost identical to current TC.
Users will also have the option to use custom rails using any ingot in the game, even from other mods, alongside ties, and ballast from any opaque block, kinda like pipe facades or carpenters blocks.
Later on we will even be adding overhead lines and snow to the rails.
We will also be developing an optional add-on to give maintenance of way stuff such as overgrowth, rail damage, and snow to an extent that can derail a train. With stock and tools to deal with this stuff.
If that wasn't enough the new rails will be fully vanilla compatible, meaning you can run Minecarts, Railcraft, and current Traincraft on them, and even mods like Steve's Carts.
- Crafting, will be far more interactive, not just the rails, but trains too, you will be able to use the guide book to show the recipes on the train crafting table, we'll finally be able to fix the shift-clicking bugs, in addition there will be more support for automated crafting, ore directories, and recipe modification for servers.
- Train and Stock customization, lets face it, 16 skins isn't enough. The rewrite will have a new "paint bucket" item which will give you a full customization GUI for your train, similar to Sid Meier's Railroads, you can scroll through skins, change liveries, and even recolor different parts of the skins to any color you like.
In addition to this, users will also be able to change numberplates, and the menu will show information for each skin such as the name and some historical details on it.
- Multiple passengers and multi-type stock, the entire GUI and rider systems are vastly different, and fully dynamic, giving us new ability to support having multiple passengers, multiple stories, and multiple types, all at the same time, this goes a long way to many things you see like combo carts, trams, multi-tank tankers, and much more.
- Signals and signs, thanks to the simplified systems in the API for making blocks we'll be delving into another heavily requested area, speed signs, crossings, signals, switches, and various other degrees of management and routing, all built around redstone so you can use it for way more than just trains.
-More fuels, trains burned basically everything, from coal and diesel, to just plain weird like garbage, and coffee, no seriously, that's a real thing. And even dangerous stuff like natural gas and nuclear power.
The rewrite has a fully new fuel system that is controlled on an individual train/stock basis so mods can add their own types of fuel and management methods, and we will be taking some effort to implement several new fuel types ourselves.
- Monorails, we won't be adding new gauges, but we will be adding monorails, just to dramatically increase the types of trains we can have.
- New hitboxes, this doesn't really seem like a big feature, but it's far more advanced than forge's system, the rewrite will give trains fully rotating rectangular hitboxes, with sub-hitboxes that allow players to actually click the specific seat they want to ride, or use a stake on one side of a stock to uncouple that side specifically.
And more to come, not just from us, but the community.
- Most importantly it's still Traincraft. The things that make us unique won't change, we will keep the same size, style, train and rollingstock features, and controls that make TC iconic.
- Bug fixes, by far one of the biggest things, to the extent that it was the founding reason for making a rewrite.
TC has always had a number of bugs that were beyond fixing without replacing major systems entirely, and they are in everything, collisions, hitboxes, lag, desync, save data management, the list goes on.
Most, if not all, of these bugs require such a significant degree of restructuring that if we did not make the rewrite a fully new mod, each fix would require servers to restart their worlds, or at the very least lost all of whatever we changed (trains, stock, rails, etc).
- Version support, everyone likes to be on the biggest and best version, and due to a very modular design we will be able to support several versions of minecraft at once, everything from 1.7.10 to 1.12.2, and unlike other mods, we won't be dropping support for older versions because we understand the need to keep an old version because of some one else's dead mod.
Unfortunately this only extends so far, forge isn't currently stable for 1.13 so we can't say if we will support it. And 1.14, along with bedrock, won't be supported due to their inefficient, unreasonably difficult, and insufficient modding API's.
Unfortunately this only extends so far, forge isn't currently stable for 1.13 so we can't say if we will support it. And 1.14, along with bedrock, won't be supported due to their inefficient, unreasonably difficult, and insufficient modding API's.
- New API, I bring this up a lot because it's potentially my favorite feature, we will have full support for content packs of trains, stock, blocks, and more. The API is designed similar to flans, but I am making a significant degree of effort and taking a lot of advice from the community, not only to make an easier way to do normal forge stuff like adding new blocks, but to make it simple as possible, so even people who have never written code before can learn it quickly.
I wanted to go this route instead of a texturepack-esk one, because it's far less FPS impacting, and it allows content creators to use the full capacity of forge modding if they want.
- Animations and models, with the rewrite comes a fully new rendering system, known as TMT (Turbo Model Thingy) by GaryCXJK, reworked heavily by Fexcraft, we put our own spin on it, some of that is seen in current releases of Traincraft with support for more advanced shapes. In the rewrite we expand the features further, improving FPS, adding new shapes like cones, cylinders and spheres, and most importantly, animations. Everything from wheels and doors, to more complex things like valve gears, 3d particles, and dynamic lights, all at less of an FPS hit than vanilla Minecraft particles, and you can disable them fully in the config if your computer is exceptionally garbage.
- New rails, we wanted to take rails a step further than you see anywhere else, with the new rails we will be able to support sizes up to 32x32, and potentially even larger, with many more varying shapes that the user can modify themselves on the crafting table thanks to our new procedural model generation system for the rails. This new system allows us to even let the user choose a model they prefer, including one that looks almost identical to current TC.
Users will also have the option to use custom rails using any ingot in the game, even from other mods, alongside ties, and ballast from any opaque block, kinda like pipe facades or carpenters blocks.
Later on we will even be adding overhead lines and snow to the rails.
We will also be developing an optional add-on to give maintenance of way stuff such as overgrowth, rail damage, and snow to an extent that can derail a train. With stock and tools to deal with this stuff.
If that wasn't enough the new rails will be fully vanilla compatible, meaning you can run Minecarts, Railcraft, and current Traincraft on them, and even mods like Steve's Carts.
- Crafting, will be far more interactive, not just the rails, but trains too, you will be able to use the guide book to show the recipes on the train crafting table, we'll finally be able to fix the shift-clicking bugs, in addition there will be more support for automated crafting, ore directories, and recipe modification for servers.
- Train and Stock customization, lets face it, 16 skins isn't enough. The rewrite will have a new "paint bucket" item which will give you a full customization GUI for your train, similar to Sid Meier's Railroads, you can scroll through skins, change liveries, and even recolor different parts of the skins to any color you like.
In addition to this, users will also be able to change numberplates, and the menu will show information for each skin such as the name and some historical details on it.
- Multiple passengers and multi-type stock, the entire GUI and rider systems are vastly different, and fully dynamic, giving us new ability to support having multiple passengers, multiple stories, and multiple types, all at the same time, this goes a long way to many things you see like combo carts, trams, multi-tank tankers, and much more.
- Signals and signs, thanks to the simplified systems in the API for making blocks we'll be delving into another heavily requested area, speed signs, crossings, signals, switches, and various other degrees of management and routing, all built around redstone so you can use it for way more than just trains.
-More fuels, trains burned basically everything, from coal and diesel, to just plain weird like garbage, and coffee, no seriously, that's a real thing. And even dangerous stuff like natural gas and nuclear power.
The rewrite has a fully new fuel system that is controlled on an individual train/stock basis so mods can add their own types of fuel and management methods, and we will be taking some effort to implement several new fuel types ourselves.
- Monorails, we won't be adding new gauges, but we will be adding monorails, just to dramatically increase the types of trains we can have.
- New hitboxes, this doesn't really seem like a big feature, but it's far more advanced than forge's system, the rewrite will give trains fully rotating rectangular hitboxes, with sub-hitboxes that allow players to actually click the specific seat they want to ride, or use a stake on one side of a stock to uncouple that side specifically.
And more to come, not just from us, but the community.