Dev Blog – Episode 5: Highlights
The fifth installment of the First Look series provides an overview of many improvements and features that have been implemented for Transport Fever 3 over the past few months.
The development team at Urban Games is working tirelessly towards the release of Transport Fever 3. Feedback from the community and multiple rounds of beta testing have provided valuable insights that are now being incorporated into the ongoing improvement of the game. Alongside models, atmosphere, and other visual elements, there is also a clear focus on easy-to-understand gameplay mechanics, an intuitive user interface, and balancing the new mechanics.
Easier, more intuitive and faster
To make the game easy to understand and enjoyable to use for everyone, an intuitive and self-explanatory user interface is essential. In Transport Fever 3, great importance is therefore placed on making the relationships and challenges within the game world easy to understand, presenting them in a clear and accessible way. To achieve this, existing concepts were revisited and improved in the areas where players had experienced the greatest difficulties.
Many areas of the user interface now include new quality-of-life features that make everyday tasks in the game easier. Depending on the selected object or context, for example, different information icons are displayed directly in the game world, allowing players to grasp the most important information at a glance. Information such as the flow of goods is now visualized in the world using an overlay. Similarly, when residents become unhappy, such as because of excessively long waiting times at a station, a sad smiley appears and floats upwards at the relevant location.
Improvements have, of course, also made their way into the Line Manager, the game’s central control hub. To avoid forcing players to constantly switch back and forth between windows and the game world, lines, stations, and vehicles can now be selected and edited directly in the game world. In addition to placing waypoints, this also includes adjusting and moving stops. The management window itself has also been completely redesigned and expanded with many useful features. For a clearer overview, lines can be named automatically according to different naming patterns. When assigning vehicles to lines, various distribution options provide greater control over where the vehicles begin their pathfinding. Even the order of stops can now be adjusted intuitively after the fact by dragging and dropping them within the list.
The vehicle purchase menu has also been completely overhauled. In Transport Fever 3, attributes such as loading speed, comfort, noise, and pollution play an important role alongside the established technical specifications of each vehicle. A comparison mode has therefore been built directly into the menu, making it easier to understand the differences between vehicles and select the best option. After all, the latest model is not always the best choice. Each vehicle has its own individual mix of advantages and disadvantages, ensuring that proven models from earlier years remain relevant.
All clear
More vehicles mean more traffic. This applies not only to roads, but also to the rail network. In addition to the previously announced option for prioritizing railway lines at junctions, further improvements have been made to train pathfinding, allowing even more efficient rail networks to be created.
In Transport Fever 2, for example, trains only ever reserve a route as far as the second-next signal or the next stop. This can lead to deadlocks when trains enter a single-track section with more than one stop from opposite directions. To prevent this, the reservation logic has been improved for Transport Fever 3. Trains now reserve their route beyond the next stop, up to a stop where they can change direction, or up to the next signal along the way. This means that all previous configurations remain possible, while also enabling many new layouts that did not work before. Since signals are now consistently required wherever trains are intended to pass each other, their behavior is much easier to understand intuitively, especially for newcomers.
For the more technically minded readers: signals in Transport Fever 3 use path-based signaling, just as they did in the previous games. Unlike block signals, trains do not interfere with one another when traveling on tracks that are not part of their intended routes. A signal simply turns green when an approaching train is able to reserve its specific route up to the next signal. To prevent long queues from forming outside stations, trains can consider configured alternative terminals if they are unable to reserve a route to their primary terminal, for example, because it is still occupied by another train.
Under the hood, there are also some interesting new features for modders. Not only signals, but also roadside bus stops are now implemented as full-fledged constructions. This means they can support parameters and can even be assembled from multiple models. As a result, different variations, sizes, and special designs can now be created in a single construction step. Context information is also available, allowing signals and stations to automatically adapt their appearance depending on whether they are placed on a bridge or inside a tunnel.
A Storm Is Brewing
In Transport Fever 3, the soundscape also responds dynamically to external influences from the surrounding scenery and the player’s activities. To ensure that the ambient audio matches the visual elements around the camera, the area surrounding it is continuously scanned for relevant objects and categorized accordingly. These include buildings with their various land uses and levels, different modes of transport, people, as well as the map’s flora and fauna. In addition to their individual sounds, suitable ambient background audio is then played spatially around the camera.
It therefore makes a significant difference whether the camera is currently located in an ocean biome or in a river valley between towering mountains. The weather and time of day also affect the soundscape. Not only does rain change the sounds of the environment, but it also influences which animals can be heard, as some only become active at night while others seek shelter from the rain. Listen closely and you may hear frogs croaking in the marsh or a woodpecker tapping away in the forest, as long as the sun has not yet set. Once night falls or rain begins, the animals gradually fall silent.
This can happen, for example, when dynamic weather changes are enabled, causing the conditions to alternate between sunshine, cloudy skies, and rain. The darker the clouds overhead, the more beams of light become visible in cities and along the roads. Players who find this too gloomy can instead set their preferred weather conditions permanently.
The player also has full control over the time of day, allowing the lighting and atmosphere to be adjusted to suit their preferences. The time of day can be synchronized with real time, or a cycled mode can be selected in which the time changes regularly, presenting the game world in a new light again and again. Those who prefer to view the world by moonlight or beneath the intense midday sun can, of course, simply choose a fixed time of day.
Mod-Management made easy
A major focus for Transport Fever 3 has been to expand modding, making it both deeper and easier than ever.
Alongside numerous gameplay mechanics, including time of day and weather the game’s content can also be customized thanks to the constantly expanding range of modding capabilities. Many of the new features, almost the entire user interface, and numerous familiar functions have been designed using editable scripts in Transport Fever 3. This approach provides far greater flexibility for modding, allowing entirely new and game-changing mods to be developed. Whether that’s new game modes, interface upgrades, additional functionality, or changes to fundamental aspects of the game, we have put significant effort into making modding as accessible and expansive as possible.
All mods now use a fixed, unique mod ID. This will drastically reduce problems with mods in shared save games regardless of whether they have come from different sources or how they were installed as it allows every mod to be identified unambiguously. This also greatly simplifies the handling of dependencies – where one mod requires another in order to work – as any missing mods are automatically detected and listed directly during download. This way, errors caused by forgotten mods can to not only be reduced, but in many cases completely avoided.
It is important to us that all players, whether on PC, macOS, Linux, or console, have fast access to all mods and are able to share their own content across platforms with ease. For this purpose, the Mod Hub can be accessed directly from the main menu, where players can browse, subscribe to, and automatically download the latest mods and updates. Mod.io also allows you to adjust your mod collection via web browser giving you the ability to expand or manage your mods no matter where you are.
This is made possible through the use of mod.io as our partner solution, which has already proved itself for cross-platform mod-sharing for Transport Fever 2. In the past there have been restrictions over what could be shared through our mod browser, and these limitations have been significantly reduced. For Transport Fever 3 the use of brand logos will no longer restrict mods being added to the Mod Hub on consoles, due to new agreements with Sony and Microsoft, bringing it into alignment with all other mod-sharing options. The storage requirements of mods, and therefore their suitability for consoles, are also now adapted to each platform. When a mod is uploaded, an optimized console version is generated automatically. This allows modders to make their creations available to players on every platform without any additional effort.
In the past we have also offered the Steam Workshop as an option. The issue with the Workshop has been that any player who is not on Steam – including PC players who have used an alternative store – has not had access to Workshop mods. This has created a fractured mod collection for the game, where the options you have to expand your game has been dictated by the platform you are playing on. We want to eliminate this fracturing if possible. We are, therefore, considering whether or not to offer the Steam Workshop as an option in the new game. Since many Steam players are highly familiar with the Workshop as their modding platform, we are working to ensure that the Mod Hub offers the same, if not better experience and range of features for both modders and players before making a final decision on which mod sharing options we include.
As much as no player is excited about needing to do things differently in a new game, our aim is to make modding a universal experience. The same options being available no matter where you play. The mods you have on your PC being the same as your PlayStation 5, or your Macbook – allowing you to continue your game no matter which platform you have available. That said, we will not make a final decision on the inclusion of the Steam Workshop until we have reached the level of functionality Steam players have come to expect.
Regardless of other options, manual mod installation will remain an option, allowing communities to continue distributing their mods and saves independently for PC and Mac.
Extended Modding-Tools
Alongside the game itself, the modding tools are also being continuously developed and improved with the help of feedback from the Curated Mods program. Some highlights include:
- Constructions, decorations and ground textures can be arranged and exported directly within the game. This intuitive solution significantly reduces the amount of scripting required in many cases.
- Most script-based game content can be reloaded while the game is running, allowing changes to be tested directly without having to reload the save game. This greatly reduces the time required for iteration.
- New analysis tools make it easier to troubleshoot issues and inspect simulation and rendering data directly while the game is running.
The tried-and-tested Model Editor is also receiving a major overhaul for Transport Fever 3, adding many new quality-of-life features that make working with it easier. In addition to integrating new model features such as light cones and vehicle entrances, particular attention has been paid to improving support for importing models from Blender. Basic conversion of existing Transport Fever 2 models is supported as well, allowing them to be integrated into Transport Fever 3 with just a few adjustments.
To make all the new features, tools, and further information about the modding interface accessible to everyone, an updated version of the Modding Wiki will also be released alongside the game. In addition to documentation and examples, it will contain plenty of tips and tricks to help newcomers familiarize themselves with the subject more quickly.
The Journey Continues
At Urban Games, the team is working around the clock towards the release of Transport Fever 3. Until then, the game will continue to be steadily improved, with further refinements to the user interface, balancing, simulation, and performance. We can’t wait to see what players and modders will create with it.
Matthias Gürtler
Lead Product Engineer
22 Responses
Hi i have 2 questions will the Re 6/6 make a comeback in the game series and will polish be supported when it comes to towns, bus station names and people?
cuando sale el juego en steam Habra una beta que se pueda probar gratuitamente
The game is still on course to release in 2026.
If you signed up for beta testing last year you may still be considered for the beta program, however we received many times more applicants than we can support so we cannot make any guarantees.
In TpF2, new users often had trouble getting the model editor to work correctly.
If at all possible, please ensure that the Model Editor will just work, right out of the box, rather than requiring a configuration routine.
If you can’t get away from that, it would probably be a good idea to use O/S dialogs for the configuration routine, rather than command line entries.
We want the tools to be as accessible as possible and are making an effort to help where possible, but some level of learning is to be expected. That said, if a user has managed to work through the learning curve to make a new model, the next steps to make it game ready really shouldn’t prove too much of a challenge.
So, why don’t residents hold umbrellas on rainy days?
they like the free shower
Looks to me when it rains it’s only on the camera lens and not the ground
The ground does not get even wet
verry good news, game still looks promissing.
sadly nothing in here for me to write 20 comments, 40 paragraphs long here,
im sorry to dissapoint…
much love,
enderlais
ダイヤグラムは機能しますか？
昼夜の区別があるのだから当然朝と夕には需要が多く、日中はまぁまぁ、早朝と深夜は需要が少ないようにできますか？
貨物は朝と夕の需要の多い時間には走らせないように、また役割を終えた車両はそれ以外の時間では車庫に止めておけますか？
The game does not include timetables since the day and night options are a cosmetic choice rather than representing any change in the demand of towns. That said, changing priorities to force freight trains to give priority to passenger or express services is part of the new game, even if the schedule on which those trains operate isn’t affected.
Hi. There is a timetable mod in TpF2, which is ok, but it’s very basic. You only have a 1 hour timeslot to put in set times for trains to depart. If TpF3 is going to have a day and night cycle, then this won’t suffice, especially if the new game is going to have real citizen daily life behavior where they wake up in the morning, go to work/school during the day and then go to sleep at night. I would need to have different times and frequencies per line, where there would be less vehicles per hour for a certain period during the night time eg. from 10pm to 6am I would drop the frequency right down to not waste money and maintenance, especially if there’s going o be a drop in passenger demand. Basically I want to assign different frequencies and departure times for different times of the day, including a rush hour if that’s going to be implemented in the game. Then obviously you would need somewhere where the vehicles that aren’t needed during the night to be stored until they’re needed again the next day.
I at least want a more detailed and immersive timetable system than the modded one in TpF2.
Is this something the team has thought about?
The addition of timetables was considered during development, but it’s not a feature that we felt was in-keeping game experience we wanted to design. The day and night cycle was a feature that was heavily requested by players after the last game, so was added as a cosmetic option so you can view your created network at any time of day.
“ Trains now reserve their route beyond the next stop, up to a stop where they can change direction, *or up to the next signal along the way*.”
Does this mean, that if there is a block post midway between two multi-track stations on a single track line (which is a scenario on many real-life lines), it is still possible for two trains running in opposite directions to deadlock face-to-face at the block post, like in TF 2? I really hope not, because that severely limits throughput on single-track lines, when you can’t have two trains running in the same direction at the same time, but in different blocks, on single-track lines.
As much as the longer look-ahead will help with single track running, it will ultimately come down to how many signal you’re choosing to use on those routes. The scenario of running multiple trains on single track can work, but even with increased look-ahead it won’t stop trains deadlocking if your signalling permits it.
What plans are there to reduce vehicle stuttering as a game progresses in TpF3 as it has been an issue in TpF2?
The performance of the late-game is something we’re spending considerable time on. The issue is that once you reach more individual citizens in the world than your system can keep up with you will get some performance drop-off. At what stage this happens depends on the hardware you’re using and the scale of the map. While we’re hoping that maximum performance will continue through larger populations, you will reach a point where your speed starts to dip since we do not prevent players from growing beyond the capability of their hardware.
Hello developers,
I have a question and a feature request regarding Transport Fever 3.
Will it be possible to build curved railway stations (stations on curved tracks) in the base game? This would make railway construction much more realistic and flexible, as many real-world stations are not located on perfectly straight tracks.
If this feature is not currently planned, I would really appreciate it if you could consider adding it. I believe it would be a valuable addition that many players would enjoy.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts
As a player, not a modder, I would rather have ALL mods a mod.io and step away from the Steam Workshop. It has been difficult to keep large mod collection organized and up-to-date when spread out over various services.
I’m even more excited now. Espacially the improvment for single track lines will help me so much for building rural rail lines.
I also think the addition of mod.ids is a very clever move.
I do have one question regarding signal aspects. If i understand correctly, the signals will only know 2 states, free and blocked. So am I right in assuming that, even with mods, it will not be possible to have signals that shows diffrent aspects depending on the train’s route behind the signal?
Either way, I am already looking forward to getting into the game.
The revamped sound design is extremely welcome. I just wish the camera doesn’t need to be so close to hear those sounds. In TpF2, you can hear industry and forest, but the camera must be way too close. From a distance, you hear nothing, and most of the time I’m not too zoomed in.