How did you not implement a save?

[Stelly]

The further I get into the game, the more I start doubting if you once played through the game without dev tools.

A save allows save scumming. It's an offline single player game, nobody cares about cheaters.
But a lot of people care about losing hours of progress in missions because random events happen that make you lose objectives. The random events are not the problem but it's a problem that they make you lose objectives.
Another part where the lack of a save feature shines is objectives where you can't pause the game. This is not the game where you make your players do half hours missions where you're not allowed to leave your keyboard. Know your audience.
And another place is every time you click a train icon or a station icon while you were trying to click a switch because the switch is on the lowest layer and it makes you fail the mission.

All these things force the player to restart the missions and waste hours. It is not just a bug that was unforeseen. It is the designer of the game purposely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with you and wasting your time. That is just bad game design that could have been spotted by simply playing the game without dev tools and from the perspective of someone who didn't spend months making the missions.

I don't understand how you can come to this game after already doing TV1. That's the game where you should have learned. But instead you come with TV2 that has less features, less content and a worse engine.
Don't even think about TV3 or TV2 DLC before you fix this game. Because people remember and right now your reputation needs heavy redemption.

[AlexMBrennan]

Person brags: I've just made $9 million on a map that only needs 10 things to be delivered in 3 minutes - me thinks not by fair means!

That's not even what save scumming means - it's using the ability to save and reload to ensure than random events in the game are favourable to the player (e.g. reroll the dice until you get a 20). It's also trivial to prevent by storing the random seed in the save file (e.g. XCOM does this)

Yes, this it is annoying that you can click on things that mean you lose your objective, but this just means that more care needs to be taken next time, following an expletive or two!

My reaction when that happened for the first time: OK, let's restart.
My reaction when that happened for the 2nd time: Screw these sadistic optional objectives
My reaction if that happens for a 3rd time: Screw this garbage game - I have better things to do than wasting 15min of my time because you can't be bothered to implement an undo button.

The fundamental issue here is one of identity: what kind of game is Train Valley supposed to be?

A puzzle game like, say, a Zachtronics game where you spend hundreds of hours tweaking your solution to find the best way of doing things?

Or an arcade action game like, say, Cat Mario, where you memorize the basic moves but are primarily judged on your ability to meticulously execute steps?

Because right now Train Valley is firmly in the latter category - e.g. if you fail an objective by accidentally stopping a train you need to restart, redo all previous steps from memory until the point where you made the critical mistake, and only then do you get the chance to make interesting decisions.

Part of this is by design (dispatching trains in real time makes it impossible to tweak strategy and observe the results) which is why a rewind/undo option is the only thing stopping it from becoming Cat Mario.

A solution to this is to simply stop playing (pause, or hit 'options' (if pause not allowed)), then put the computer to sleep

Great plan - let's delay critical kernel updates until I have a chance. Also, everything's a file - I can edit the money in memory just as easy as I can edit the money stored in a text file. The fact that you don't realize how computers work doesn't mean that it will stop "hackers".

[CTyler7]

Really disappointed this feature *still* hasn't been implemented, nearly 2 years after release. I find myself just skipping by this game now because I just don't have the time to waste restarting levels. The main game has plenty of content and features, it's time for some QoL improvements.

[radrex3]

this game should have had a save funtion period its not worth nothing when it keeps crashing in game and i lose my progress to have to restart the level over and over its a fun game but not when i have to keep redoing what ive already done

[madPav3L]

I bought the game a few days ago and I have to agree that the game needs some save function or undo funcion, for example go back 10 seconds.
It has happened to me 5 times or more (16 levels finished so far) that trains collided or entered a wrong station because I simply forgot to click a switch and send the train on a different path. In the last two cases I pressed ALF+F4, because these little mistakes make me replay the whole level. I do not know how long I will be able to tolerate this obvious design flaw... but in the end it will become clear in my game rating.

[madPav3L]

Now it has happened again, I was in tunnel building mode and when I clicked to build the tunnel I instead stopped a train that was passing by on a level where I was not supposed to stop a train! This is annoying... now the whole level again!
And why the hell can I stop a train in build mode!

[The Renderer]

The whole point is to complete the level without making (too many) mistakes, that's why it only takes 15 or 20 minutes. Saying "oh, I forgot to set a switch, I should be able to undo that" is kind of missing the whole point of this game. It's not a design flaw, it's a puzzle/arcadey game where you have to concentrate and do some time management. And not click on the wrong things.
If you can simply undo everything, why play at all, there would be no challenge whatsoever.

[madPav3L]

I have absolutely no problem with the puzzles, they are too easy! The problem is with bad programming / design decisions oir how to call it, like the example above where I clicked to build a tunnel and it stopped a train.
Clicking an arrow on the screen to send the train to another location is just micromanagement and not a puzzle.
Punishing the player for small mistakes, one wrong click, by replaying the whole level is not a good decision imho, this looked like a relaxing game and in the end its very frustrating for me.

[Vauban]

Train Valley 2 was built around a train driving puzzle game concept that centered on getting the best possible time on any given level, completing the side objectives and ultimately replaying it later - to try a different approach and improve your run. Furthermore, adding a save function would mean a fundamental change of the game's code that could break many things along the way - neither an easy nor a planned task I'm afraid.

[Y2K]

Vauban eredeti hozzászólása:

Train Valley 2 was built around a train driving puzzle game concept that centered on getting the best possible time on any given level, completing the side objectives and ultimately replaying it later - to try a different approach and improve your run. Furthermore, adding a save function would mean a fundamental change of the game's code that could break many things along the way - neither an easy nor a planned task I'm afraid.

I was about to start a discussion for this and then I noticed this thread. It is unbelievable that this feature wasn't implemented after so many requests and that it wasn't part of the evolved game design; evolved at the point where certain levels in the campaign and otherwise were given a target of upwards of 25 mins to achieve a star. Clearly not everybody will be able to complete those levels within 30 mins as so many people give as an excuse to not have the save function.

Cheating and save feature have little to no connection. A foolproof way to cheat would be to cheat by manipulating in memory data - which of course doesn't bother anybody in an offline single player game. If global statistics are a concern then a straight forward solution is to disable / disqualify that attempt from being ranked globally where a player saves their game. If an user decides to save they will not be considered for the global ranks in that attempt. There are games that do that.

Save scumming is meant for games where every instance when the game is loaded from save file regenerates something basis random seed generation. It is sad that the developers let a thread pivot on this point without intervening or clarifying that save scrumming is barely possible here, if not impossible even if save feature was implemented here.

For those who don't like saving - they have a simple resolution - just don't use the feature if you don't need it. Why ruin it for those who need it. The game is very punishing and video games punish people by making them lose time. A single unintentional action like clicking/selecting a track tile while having demolish mode on, or creating a track while not being zoomed in enough in an obscured spot thanks to the isometric view, deleting something that you didn't intend to delete, putting the track on the wrong spot because you couldn't know ahead that you would need another connection at that exact spot next to a slope - there are many reasons to go wrong and restarting the level after 20-30 mins is not fun. Do that a few times and you put the game away. There is a very strong case for having a save feature. The case to not have it is simply that certain people enjoy playing without it. Can these people enjoy their game even if the save feature was present? Yes and they can do so by not using it because it is an optional feature unless we talk about autosave feature.

Now coming to exciting bit.
Don't get me wrong. It is an absolutely lovely game. I was considering buying it on Steam (Got the game on Epic, kept crashing, utter waste of time and efforts and after exhausting my gaming session time I was left with no fun and all frustration, now fixed with an update, thank you) and I am still considering to buy on Steam for the level editor but the added filter of only being able to play short levels reduces the value proposition because I have come to realise that some of the later levels in the campaign are exorbitantly complex and long. No way to play them whenever I can't afford a long session. However, the topic has actually been put away in a very clever way by the mention of "fundamental code change" and possibility of breaking the code. If it is the case, I know it is not an easy task nor fun, rather frustrating. I know because I was a professional programmer, still a hobbyist/freelancer, just that I moved to other roles and yet very much involved in software delivery. But just so you know playing the game without save feature and having to restart levels is equally uneasy and not fun, rather frustrating. I can only hope that the development team / producer / designer or whoever makes the decision at this team considers this in the next iteration of the game.

It is an optional feature so it doesn't break the gameplay for anybody but a must feature for many to enjoy the game. A feature that many would use and appreciate even if it means their attempt is not counted towards global ranking as a trade-off because people play the game for fun and not always competition. It is a casual genre right.

[aintnobody]

i'd like it only to fight mission issues and lost progress happening frequently. The forced repetitions are quite many and i personally don't repeat a mission. Right now first mission of Pandeia success - UI overlay gone, no success announcement.. have to kill & repeat.