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. :)
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.
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!
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.
Yeah. I didn't understand the splitter. I didn't notice the gears change when you shifted the splitter selector around. This explained it and now I understand.
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 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!
Thanks for making this video! It really helped to have this stuff explained out loud, even thou a lot of it really is that obvious. The key takeaway seems really to be to only make small adjustments as needed, and otherwise just let the engine run.
Didn't feel the need for the tutorial myself, saw you made this and wanted to support with a view. Thank you for making this game and adding a great DLC. If you are considering making another YT vid as a tutorial, would you consider putting in some examples of shutdown and start up for different types of upgrades? I struggled the most with this aspect, I accidentally filled the boiler with water to cool it and found out the hard way how slow it drains.
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
@@user-jap84tlv24sq +1 for keybinding specific thing, with Arduino it will be possible to make physical cockpit for it! (okey now its probably still possible, but much harder) Or mak API for game so we can make some uHokus uPokus and meak phisical dials for it. (dreaming now :P)
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.
i had a problem in tutorial, i wanted upgrade the boiler but icant becaus i cant shut down the heater becaus i didnt get the control for it becaus the tutorial.
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.
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
it's awesome! The only thing I found a bit confusing is that the generator seems to be loaded before achieving the desired parameters in the urban scenario. IRL, as far as I know, load is disconnected when the generation parameters are outside the limits. Districts are connected one by one after the system achieves the desired parameters, gradually increasing the load.
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.
Can you put some markers in sandbox mode on sliders to show the upgrade values from urban generation mode? Just so I can set sandbox engine to some "level", not just values. I know the visuals change depending on "level" of parts (flywheel gets thicker with weight)
I managed to get the hang of running the engine with just the in-game tutorial to help, though I did have sone confusion about the 600 rpm of the generator vs the 60 rpm marker on the engine itself. I'm still struggling to shut down and restart everything for planned outages without taking too long, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.
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.
18:50 Ah ok. I adjusted the generator speed with reverser, burner heat level, touching a bit the water flow and touching a bit the throttle. What I learned with this game after decades of thinking (on and off of course) what the throttle in a steam engine does, is that it adjusts the "speed at which the energy is relayed forwards". In other words it adjusts the steam flow rate which relies the power to the piston because the steam is under pressure and it is able to expand inside the cylinder relaying the stored pressure energy to kinetic movement energy of the piston. Higher you get the steam pressure and hotter you get the steam, better your expansion in the cylinder will be and more power you will be able to extract from that steam to the movement of the piston when the steam expands. The reverser in a steam engine is more like a traditional gas pedal in a car but throttle in a steam engine is like the amount of time the fuel is sprayed in the internal combustion engine cylinder. Fully open throttle sprays the fuel as long as it can and throttle almost closed only sprays the fuel a short period of time. Then with the gas pedal we choose which amount of that power we want to use. Pedal 100% depressed = we want to use 100% of that power stored in that short or long burst of fuel. Pedal 10% depressed = we want to use 10% of that power in that short or long burst of fuel.
Does your game count with limited steam travel speed? According to recommendations the high pressure saturated steam should travel at speeds of 25 m/s to 40 m/s. For superheated steam it is 100-300 m/s
Generally, no. You can run the engine in reverse if you really want to and it should have more or less the same performance characteristics. Opposite reverser settings can also be used to slow the engine down, like an engine brake. You can see the feedback controller doing that near the end of this video. You probably wouldn't do that in real-life but theoretically it would work.
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.
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
@@AngeTheGood I think the ranges are more intuitive and easier to control than splitter. But just to make sure for @NinjaJosh5 we are on same page: - Splitter have small spacing, while the spacing between gears are too large. - Range selector works other way around. Gearbox have small spacing between gears and large spacing in selector. Order from lowest to highest gear: Only splitter: 1D -> 1S1 -> 1S2 -> 1S3 -> 2D etc. Only range selector: L1 -> L2 -> ... -> L6 -> H1 -> H2 ... I agree with Ninja about being more intuitive. I think it is easier to understand as you only touch selector when going from L6 to H1. Or maybe the splitter and gear range selector could be an upgrade to buy later? This way new players don't have to care about it. And more advanced players can try to optimize precisely the gear ratio with selector AND splitter at same time.
Maybe put a little notification circle with the number of unread messages that flashes at the mailbox to make it more noticeable. much like notifications on phones.
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.
Great and fun "game", I hope You will make more DLC for steam engine, idk maybe multiple cylinders to balance (like reusing steam), idk XD im not steam engine expert.
If you guys want to learn how to use the reverse correctly, play other video games that have steam Locomotives in them. Most of the time, its a lot harder. especially when you're trying to drive the steam locomotive by yourself, and trying to balance everything. Example playing Derail Valley in the steam locomotive on the hardest difficulty possible.
I fill about 1/3 will water then shut water off. I run near the redline all the time, who care about money unless you need it for upgrades / repairs. My #1 tip would be DO NOT BLOW YOUR BOILER! I like how I can make engine repairs while the generator is still sending power. My engine is not efficient nor is my power delivery but be patient and let the money roll in. I dug myself out of a -$10,000 hole. Just takes time.
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.
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
I'm loving the game. It's fantastic, I'm just stuck on how to clean the boiler water getting contaminated. Can't seem to empty all the water out of the tank even with pressure.
@zex992001 It's impossible to get all the water out. The best thing to do is to dilute the contaminated water with clean water, then drain the boiler again. This effectively removes the contaminants. It's even possible to do this while the engine is running, by always having a net positive inflow of water and periodically draining a bit of the water to flush out contaminants. This is a similar technique to what real life steam engines do
@@AngeTheGood Interesting. I think there wasn't any explanation for this and I didn't think about it. I guess the training need a section about this cleaning method and it would be great to be able to pay for this as maintenance same as Boiler Descaling option. In general I think if we could upgrade the generator to get it to more modern day it would be great. Outside all of this, thank you for this game, I'm learning and getting addicted. I can see real people getting trained with this game.
The main throttle valve is underperformed. I think the RPM should be controlled mainly by the throttle vale. When the valve is at 0% or at 100% it means it no longer is possible to regulate something. I think the RPM limit should be more strict. +/- 100 RPM is IMO too much.
@jaromirandel543 it would not be realistic for speed to primarily be controlled by the throttle and this is a very inefficient way to run a steam engine. The reverser is specifically designed for this kind of control. Regarding the RPM limit, I think it's a pretty reasonable range and in testing it was about the limit people were okay with before the game became frustrating.
@@AngeTheGood As far as I know the reverser works as the transmission. High value means high power but not possible to achieve high RPM. The low value allows low torque with high RPM. Which means I don't want to limit RPM by using more steam. I know, this is the "game". But IRL difference like more than 0,5 hZ is critical.
@@AngeTheGood At high reverser value the RPM is limited by slow steam flow which is not fast enough to enter or escape the cyllinder which limits the maximum RPM.
@jaromirandel543 This is not exactly how a reverser works. A reverser primarily adjusts cutoff. Early cutoff is good because it enables high efficiency operation. The downside is that you can't admit as much steam into the cylinder during the piston's stroke which limits power. Late cutoff allows higher power but lower efficiency operation. Speed is not an important variable in this equation. While this might be a "game" it runs a physically realistic fluid and mechanical simulation. I didn't program these reverser mechanics based on my own knowledge, they arise because that's how the math and physics works out.
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
mister ange i bought the dlc and its beautiful and i have one more suggestion why dont you make a nuclear power plant simulator like this it would be GREAT!
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.
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...
Only after seeing the price and buying the game have i realised you're Polish lmao EDIT: NEVERMIND, the price of 5euro just happened to be 21.37PLN, and 2137 is a very meme number in Poland
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.
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.
This is interesting but piston steam engines used for electricity generation don’t use transmissions. The generators are typically directly driven from the crankshaft. The reason is unlike typical internal combustion engines that have large horsepower numbers and need speed to generate torque, steam engines are all torque and very low speed. Steam engines are also double acting as in the steam pushes the back and front of the piston every stroke. A typical 25 hp reciprocating steam engine produces 150-200 lb-ft of torque.
@stvnsnyder I'm aware of this already. Now consider this, this is a miniature steam engine that will not always be running in its powerband so a transmission is necessary
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 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. :)
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.
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!
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.
It's so fun micro-managing the engine and really trying to push efficiency to the max, a very fun DLC
I love the DLC. The systems interlock very nicely and it keeps me motivated to improve.
the transmission was definitely a point of confusion for me. now i completely understand it.
Yeah. I didn't understand the splitter. I didn't notice the gears change when you shifted the splitter selector around. This explained it and now I understand.
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
Already finished it, great game Ange. Loved it
Thanks for the tutorial, I never got into the highest gear because I thought I was stalling the engine
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!
Absolutely love the dlc, its so much fun. Thank you for all your hard work!
Excellent and needed video to explain the basis ! More over, very good explantation about the gear ratios. Thank you.
Thanks for making this video! It really helped to have this stuff explained out loud, even thou a lot of it really is that obvious. The key takeaway seems really to be to only make small adjustments as needed, and otherwise just let the engine run.
Its a great dlc, but I was really having a hard time figuring out how to work everything. Thank you for this.
Love the new dlc. I got nervous that it would be too hard, but overall it’s not very hard to run. Very well done
Didn't feel the need for the tutorial myself, saw you made this and wanted to support with a view. Thank you for making this game and adding a great DLC. If you are considering making another YT vid as a tutorial, would you consider putting in some examples of shutdown and start up for different types of upgrades? I struggled the most with this aspect, I accidentally filled the boiler with water to cool it and found out the hard way how slow it drains.
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.
Great work! Definitely worth the wait. But I did search for the mailbox for an embarrassing amount of time lol.
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!
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
@@AngeTheGood finished your game with almost 12k population and I must say it was worth every cent.
So what's your next game?
@@user-jap84tlv24sq +1 for keybinding specific thing, with Arduino it will be possible to make physical cockpit for it! (okey now its probably still possible, but much harder)
Or mak API for game so we can make some uHokus uPokus and meak phisical dials for it. (dreaming now :P)
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!
That little gauge you pointed to, is called a delta gauge, in this case Delta-P as it's showing you the change in pressure over a period of time
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
i had a problem in tutorial, i wanted upgrade the boiler but icant becaus i cant shut down the heater becaus i didnt get the control for it becaus the tutorial.
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.
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
it's awesome!
The only thing I found a bit confusing is that the generator seems to be loaded before achieving the desired parameters in the urban scenario.
IRL, as far as I know, load is disconnected when the generation parameters are outside the limits. Districts are connected one by one after the system achieves the desired parameters, gradually increasing the load.
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 already finished the game haha. was great.
Can you put some markers in sandbox mode on sliders to show the upgrade values from urban generation mode? Just so I can set sandbox engine to some "level", not just values. I know the visuals change depending on "level" of parts (flywheel gets thicker with weight)
I managed to get the hang of running the engine with just the in-game tutorial to help, though I did have sone confusion about the 600 rpm of the generator vs the 60 rpm marker on the engine itself.
I'm still struggling to shut down and restart everything for planned outages without taking too long, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.
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.
>derivative gauge type thing
Variometer.
18:50 Ah ok. I adjusted the generator speed with reverser, burner heat level, touching a bit the water flow and touching a bit the throttle.
What I learned with this game after decades of thinking (on and off of course) what the throttle in a steam engine does, is that it adjusts the "speed at which the energy is relayed forwards". In other words it adjusts the steam flow rate which relies the power to the piston because the steam is under pressure and it is able to expand inside the cylinder relaying the stored pressure energy to kinetic movement energy of the piston. Higher you get the steam pressure and hotter you get the steam, better your expansion in the cylinder will be and more power you will be able to extract from that steam to the movement of the piston when the steam expands. The reverser in a steam engine is more like a traditional gas pedal in a car but throttle in a steam engine is like the amount of time the fuel is sprayed in the internal combustion engine cylinder. Fully open throttle sprays the fuel as long as it can and throttle almost closed only sprays the fuel a short period of time. Then with the gas pedal we choose which amount of that power we want to use. Pedal 100% depressed = we want to use 100% of that power stored in that short or long burst of fuel. Pedal 10% depressed = we want to use 10% of that power in that short or long burst of fuel.
Great work!
Can you make the fuel costs a bit lower, I keep going into debt and can't get out of it
Does your game count with limited steam travel speed? According to recommendations the high pressure saturated steam should travel at speeds of 25 m/s to 40 m/s. For superheated steam it is 100-300 m/s
is there a time when you'll need the reverser in the opposite direction (as in the negatives)?
Generally, no. You can run the engine in reverse if you really want to and it should have more or less the same performance characteristics. Opposite reverser settings can also be used to slow the engine down, like an engine brake. You can see the feedback controller doing that near the end of this video. You probably wouldn't do that in real-life but theoretically it would work.
I've gotten the engine to 4000 rpm, is that viable to run the city?
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.
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
@@AngeTheGood I think the ranges are more intuitive and easier to control than splitter.
But just to make sure for @NinjaJosh5 we are on same page:
- Splitter have small spacing, while the spacing between gears are too large.
- Range selector works other way around. Gearbox have small spacing between gears and large spacing in selector.
Order from lowest to highest gear:
Only splitter: 1D -> 1S1 -> 1S2 -> 1S3 -> 2D etc.
Only range selector: L1 -> L2 -> ... -> L6 -> H1 -> H2 ...
I agree with Ninja about being more intuitive. I think it is easier to understand as you only touch selector when going from L6 to H1.
Or maybe the splitter and gear range selector could be an upgrade to buy later? This way new players don't have to care about it. And more advanced players can try to optimize precisely the gear ratio with selector AND splitter at same time.
Maybe put a little notification circle with the number of unread messages that flashes at the mailbox to make it more noticeable. much like notifications on phones.
Thanks for the Tutorial !
(from that dumb dragon who didn't understood at first how to win money (today i'm the richest steam engine engineer))
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.
Great and fun "game", I hope You will make more DLC for steam engine, idk maybe multiple cylinders to balance (like reusing steam), idk XD im not steam engine expert.
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.
If you guys want to learn how to use the reverse correctly, play other video games that have steam Locomotives in them. Most of the time, its a lot harder. especially when you're trying to drive the steam locomotive by yourself, and trying to balance everything. Example playing Derail Valley in the steam locomotive on the hardest difficulty possible.
I fill about 1/3 will water then shut water off. I run near the redline all the time, who care about money unless you need it for upgrades / repairs. My #1 tip would be DO NOT BLOW YOUR BOILER!
I like how I can make engine repairs while the generator is still sending power. My engine is not efficient nor is my power delivery but be patient and let the money roll in. I dug myself out of a -$10,000 hole. Just takes time.
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
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.
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
I'm loving the game. It's fantastic, I'm just stuck on how to clean the boiler water getting contaminated. Can't seem to empty all the water out of the tank even with pressure.
@zex992001 It's impossible to get all the water out. The best thing to do is to dilute the contaminated water with clean water, then drain the boiler again. This effectively removes the contaminants. It's even possible to do this while the engine is running, by always having a net positive inflow of water and periodically draining a bit of the water to flush out contaminants. This is a similar technique to what real life steam engines do
@@AngeTheGood Interesting. I think there wasn't any explanation for this and I didn't think about it. I guess the training need a section about this cleaning method and it would be great to be able to pay for this as maintenance same as Boiler Descaling option. In general I think if we could upgrade the generator to get it to more modern day it would be great. Outside all of this, thank you for this game, I'm learning and getting addicted. I can see real people getting trained with this game.
The main throttle valve is underperformed. I think the RPM should be controlled mainly by the throttle vale. When the valve is at 0% or at 100% it means it no longer is possible to regulate something. I think the RPM limit should be more strict. +/- 100 RPM is IMO too much.
@jaromirandel543 it would not be realistic for speed to primarily be controlled by the throttle and this is a very inefficient way to run a steam engine. The reverser is specifically designed for this kind of control.
Regarding the RPM limit, I think it's a pretty reasonable range and in testing it was about the limit people were okay with before the game became frustrating.
@@AngeTheGood As far as I know the reverser works as the transmission. High value means high power but not possible to achieve high RPM. The low value allows low torque with high RPM. Which means I don't want to limit RPM by using more steam. I know, this is the "game". But IRL difference like more than 0,5 hZ is critical.
@@AngeTheGood At high reverser value the RPM is limited by slow steam flow which is not fast enough to enter or escape the cyllinder which limits the maximum RPM.
@jaromirandel543 This is not exactly how a reverser works. A reverser primarily adjusts cutoff. Early cutoff is good because it enables high efficiency operation. The downside is that you can't admit as much steam into the cylinder during the piston's stroke which limits power. Late cutoff allows higher power but lower efficiency operation. Speed is not an important variable in this equation.
While this might be a "game" it runs a physically realistic fluid and mechanical simulation. I didn't program these reverser mechanics based on my own knowledge, they arise because that's how the math and physics works out.
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
mister ange i bought the dlc and its beautiful and i have one more suggestion
why dont you make a nuclear power plant simulator like this it would be GREAT!
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.
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.
If the fps bad, you may be running the game on onboard gpu.
A note to my past self
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...
We need Watt Centrifugal Controller. :D
1:07 yes need make red in mail box
"So what happens is, when you raise prices, people just tend to buy less, so it becomes a net-zero..."
Economics 101, everybody :)
Only after seeing the price and buying the game have i realised you're Polish lmao
EDIT: NEVERMIND, the price of 5euro just happened to be 21.37PLN, and 2137 is a very meme number in Poland
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.
I find it bad that i cant play it anymore, stupid intel, pentium doesnt have AVX support, WHY INTEL, WHYYYYYYYY
The sandbox could be helpful for new players if only they will use it correctly to test and compare different settings.
The generator should be synchronous that locks onto the grid's phase.
@381delirius there is no "grid". It's a single producer system. You ARE the grid
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.
This is interesting but piston steam engines used for electricity generation don’t use transmissions. The generators are typically directly driven from the crankshaft. The reason is unlike typical internal combustion engines that have large horsepower numbers and need speed to generate torque, steam engines are all torque and very low speed. Steam engines are also double acting as in the steam pushes the back and front of the piston every stroke. A typical 25 hp reciprocating steam engine produces 150-200 lb-ft of torque.
@stvnsnyder I'm aware of this already. Now consider this, this is a miniature steam engine that will not always be running in its powerband so a transmission is necessary
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
We need languages bro
(turkish please)
put a bright red ! bubble on the flashing mailbox
W dlc
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
I want to get it so bad fr
its £5
Work at McDonald’s for 15 minutes
@@pamperedspider I bought it 👽
@@5APPH_13 sweet
Ukrainian power grid simulator 2025
First maybe?
Seems like
Noob
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.