Yes. It is developed by a single dude. I have been following and supporting him for two years now, and ha has bren working on it even before that. But it's also worth noting that a big portion of this time was asset creation and building the software. Now the basics are done, so things like extending the route or adding new features can be done faster than what the current pace felt like. But I am happy to wait anyways. This was worth thr teo years wait and anything else coming will be worth the wait as well. Now DTG, with the team size they have, could produce similar results faster as well, if they had the same dedication, skill and care.
And total freedom to do whatever they want without regard for budgeting, deadlines, multiple projects to prioritize, etc....
Bro, weak excuse at trying to defend them. Several people from the community working with them have already told us that they just simply don't care and it's a pain in the ass working with them.
And the difference between a game made largely as a labour of love and the other a corporate exercise to make maximum profit to meet the bottom line.
So is this 40km of fictional route and 2 fictional trains with no branding? Just asking as that's what it reads like on steam. Looks great but if so definitely not for me. Not long enough and no freight or high speed, or realism. Though I'm tempted to try it just to see how it performs as my experience with anything UE5 has not been that good and my PCis no potato.. Also to support a new developer of train games which is always good.
The route is fictional, but the trains themselves are real japanese train models. Also there are 3 types. 4 to be exact, but 2 of them look the same basically, just a 2-car variant and a 3-car variant.
Managed to watch most of the 45 minute clip and the feast is looking good. Just a few issues of minor concern… I hope the options allow you to turn down the volume of the ATS bell when it sounds continually approaching a stop signal. Otherwise I can hear my wife shouting from downstairs, “Turn that fudging train racket down.” Replace fudging with a suitable word from the profane dictionary… I see from the menu some of the runs, presumably all stations on the main line, are 44 minutes. Should be doable in a single session but interruptions do occur and it really should have a save game facility. The warning of upcoming speed limits is fairly close, could do to be a bit further out particularly going from 120 km/h down to 70 or less. Hopefully these can be looked at in the early access period.
Reasons aren't excuses, as inconvenient as that is. The above are reality. Large companies with large teams have certain pros and cons, and small teams & single developers have other pros and cons. If you're wanting to run a viable business, you need budgeting, deadlines, and priorities. If you're essentially a hobby developer working on your own time for fun, you have much more freedom, but also fewer resources and a longer development cycle.
I'll repeat once again, we've been told several times by third party developers (or other community members) working with DTG that some DTG employees seem to just not give a LOVE and don't do a good job.
Which parts of the game are fictional and which are based on real life? For example the routes, stations, trains, companies, or timetable. If I understand correctly, the trains are realistic, but what about the route? Is it completely fictional?
Fairly certain the trains are real prototypes. As regards the route, sure I read it’s either based on a now closed line or at the least a real geographic location.
Pretty much, yeah. The trains are real Japanese rolling stock, but the operators represented in game are fictional, therefore so are the paint jobs on the trains. For example the KiHa 85 comes with a blue stripe in game, while in real life it always wore an orange one. Only thing that may be "fictional" is this 2-car 113 series, as I couldn't find anything similar to it on the internet. It also has lapped brakes, which I don't believe were a thing on the 113 series. But japan is filled with unique custom reconstructions, so it's not like this one is unrealistic in any way. As for the location, it's based in Fukui prefecture of Japan. It's semi fictional. You can see areas clearly inspired by real life landmarks and layouts coming from real railway lines.
I still like the trick Forza Horizon 4 pulled by sticking the Edinburgh trams in Lothian Buses brown and cream livery, so things still looked somewhat familiar but not trademark infringing.
It’s now released on steam, 10% off until end of May so only £15.97, remember it’s Early Access and will only get better and better as time goes on. A message from the dev, copied from Steam- ——– Developer Rizu here. Finally, after more than 3 long years of development filled with ups and downs, RUNNING TRAIN is officially coming out! Although it is still in Early Access, I have spent a lot of time polishing it. I truly hope you enjoy the game, and I want to say a massive thank you for your long-lasting support! Before you buy, I would like to address a few important points: I have added an additional note to the minimum requirements. Some testers reported crashes on 8GB RAM systems during the loading screen. I highly recommend adding 1–2GB of virtual RAM (paging file size) to act as headroom while the game loads the maps. I apologize for the inconvenience. If you notice the gameplay is unusually quiet, it is because the menu music, in-car announcements, and departure melodies are still being implemented. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for these, and I sincerely apologize. They should be finished by mid-June, so please bear with me! There is currently no official tutorial menu. For now, the best way to learn is to enable the In-Game Instruction HUD and practice in Free Mode. The gameplay itself is quite straightforward, so you should be able to pick it up quickly. If you're using master controller, please note that it can only be used while driving. For menu navigation, please use your keyboard or mouse instead. Additionally, custom keybinding for the mascon is currently unavailable. Roadmap & Expectations Note: These targets are not set in stone and may change based on user feedback and technical challenges. (2026, Q3-Q4) Implementing the passenger system and a Passenger POV mode. (2026, Q4) Localization. (2027, Q2-Q4) Sankai Main Line: Extension to Hayase (bringing the final route to approx. 80km). (2027, Q2-Q3) Fukugawa Main Line: Extension to Tenryuko (bringing the final route to approx. 20km). (2027, Q2-Q3) Conductor Mode. Once all of these goals are met, the game will be considered complete (v1.0). From there, I plan to move on to my next project or develop DLC extensions. hopefully next time is based on a real-world route and with better support for User Generated Content (UGC). Finally... Since this is an Early Access release, there will inevitably be some shortcomings. I hope you can understand, and I welcome your patience. Please help me improve the game during this development phase by reporting bugs, sharing suggestions, or sending ideas to the Steam Community forums, via DM on X/Twitter or in our Discord server. Cheers, ~Rizu
With the exception of the Shinkansen high speed trains, all trains in Japan are narrow gauge. So: yes.
The predominant gauge in Japan is 1067mm (also known as Cape Gauge). For the Shinkansen (due to high speeds) the gauge is 1435mm.
I’m very late to the party on this one, mainly due to on-going heatwave the UK is experiencing. From the reviews I’ve read on Steam, this seems to be a cracking effort from a single dev. I hope this game continues to receive regular dlc and support as the game looks absolutely gorgeous. Picking this up once I get home
I would believe that, as some developers are just doing their job and want to get paid. There’s very few developers who have a passion for the railway and want to go that extra mile to make sure everything is accurate as possible. I can’t think of a single time a piece of dlc has released by DTG and they’ve missed out crucial infrastructure, assets that the community have pointed out.
So is anyone running this on a system at or below the minimum specs? At the moment I'm holding back as I don't want to waste a refund strike if it doesn't run or runs like a dog. My GPU is adequate, it's the CPU which is a bit under.
I am running it above minimum spec and the short runs are fine but it crashes for me when I upload the 44 min ones. Also beware blurry textures when you run on lower spec
It was a judder fest on the default settings but turned a few down and now okay, at least on a short run. My run was in the dark (which looks miles better than TSW pathetic nights so can't really say how much of a hit it makes on the overall quality. Main issues so far is that the tutorial doesn't work - tells you to switch on help, which is already on and the lapped braking is a bit of a handful. Anyhow, up for another run now, let's see how it goes. Second run completed. Only real issue I had was unable to cancel the ATS warning despite having the brakes slightly applied as indicated. So think there might be a bug there. But otherwise it's just drop dead wonderful. Even on 1440p and lower settings it looks gorgeous and almost photoreal. And the sounds... when the ATS bell isn't going off, again absolutely superb. IMHO DTG need to wake up and smell the coffee here. TSW is a poor second by comparison with its cartoon graphics and lacklustre flat sounds. My only concern with RT as it stands is replay value. Obviously there are different times of day to play around with and the two seasons, but like the TSW commuter routes it will be one to dip into for a run now and again, once the novelty wears off.
Incredible work, sounds, physics, gameplay and of course visuals. Runs amazingly well on my old rig, after playing around with the numerous graphics settings. The Dynamic illumination Lumen setting does hurt performance a bit on my system (down to 45fps), but by turning it off you lose the amazing lighting effects. I'm leaving it on and turning down some other settings, works well. Getting mostly 60fps as well which is astounding really. No annoying stutter as well which is welcome. Got a lot to get my teeth into with this one, hudless driving will be so rewarding. The scoring system is well thought out. Great effort.
From my understanding, there is no in game tutorial. The "tutorial" is essentially the text reminders telling you which keys to press to release/apply throttle and brake and to cancel ATS. I don't see how this has any less or any more replay value than a typical TSW route on console. Other than custom timetables on PC, what you see is what you get, so I don't see how that's a knock on it. Even freight services in game are railroaded A to B to C experiences. Fantastic product, and for less than the price of a typical TSW route, I have no problems with the pricing on it. If anyone is interested in similar experiences, try out the Korean Hmmsim which is a real life depiction of a Seoul Subway Line.
The bell continuing to ring until the train comes to a stop is accurate for some Japanese ATS systems.
Well, for 17.99€ on early access I didn't have much choice did I? Obviously there are some improvements that need to be made and a few little hiccups to iron out (I had the ATS alarm that stayed on for a while despite letting me drive on), but in the first hour of play I am VERY impressed. TSW7 has some serious graphics and gameplay to contend with. I'm playing in 4K with every single setting on ultra and it is absolutely silky smooth, not the slightest inkling of stutter or frame rate drops every 15 seconds while the scenery loads.
Having a lot of fun with it- and fully playable with gamepad (thank you devs!) My biggest issues are terribly blurry textures on the gauges and even the HUD speedo (which is weird cause the rest of the HUD is fine). Anyone have any good midrange (1080p) GPU settings for Running Train? Fwiw i have no blurriness on TSW (on any routes) playing in 1080p
Okay, so im not the only one with blurry gauge textures, whilst the gorgeous world remains looking gorgeous. I was about to chalk it up to, I'm playing this game on a gaming laptop. Regardless, I am also loving the game and look forward to what is to come! Running Train Sim has already stolen my gaze from TSW. I'll check back in on the TSW side whenever we get our next Tadami Line update, I guess.
Definitely a bug. I had stopped at the passing station on the branch line, brakes applied and the ATS still wouldn’t cancel. Even when the signal cleared to green and I was able to depart, it continued sounding all the way to the terminus.
0.9.1 Hotfix -Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would get stuck in the upper-left corner when controller input was registered. -Changed the default/first selection train to the HR1500 Series, which is easier for beginners to drive. -Restricted longer trains from spawning at Kofuku Railway. -Resolved an issue causing anomalous XBOX controller inputs. -Increased Zoom/FoV (Field of View) sensitivity. -Added the ability to reset the FoV by clicking the middle mouse button. -Fixed a bug where starting Hard Mode at Takahashi Station with a 4-car KR5000 train resulted in an immediate failure. -Adjusted the manual lapping brake notch behavior for the ZUIKI mascon. -Corrected various mistranslations and grammatical errors. -Fixed a water graphics rendering issue between Komori and Omishima stations. Timetable Fixes: -Fixed an issue at Nagara Station where certain timetable trains were unable to proceed to the next station. -Corrected an issue where certain AI trains would switch into the wrong line. Note: Due to time and hardware constraints, the timetable fixes have not been fully tested yet. If you encounter any remaining bugs, please report them via our Discord server or Steam Discussion page.
That was quick! I shall be configuring my trusty PS3 controller with the game this evening, but it's mainly for the comfort of playing in my living room as otherwise the ability to remap the keyboard keys is more than enough. As an AZERTY keyboard user the default mapping was maybe a bit less intuitive for me than it is for those with QWERTY or Japanese keyboards. Looking forward to trying out the updated release. JB
Everyone mentions the game's visuals, and it is really great. I also want to note that the game doesn't have that hellish blurriness typical for UE games at 1080p. Maybe that's because of DLAA. I look at the picture and there is not a gram of blurriness in it, not a gram of oversharp, it is beautifully clear(at least for modern games on UE). The downside is that there are very few assets. For example, there are tunnels in the game. Bu it is the same tunnel asset. Optimization - freakin masterpiece. No stutters, no drops. FPS is smooth as silk and stable as granite. Sounds. Em... some of them are good, but others not quite. Everything is very flat, the volume levels are not adjusted properly, there is no difference between inside and outside. Simulation. More arcade feeling. Definitely not a sim, sorry. Controllers feel like buttons, not levers. There is no coasting, the train simply loses speed. But I really liked the way the train passe switches. It felt much better and realistic than the bouncy jelly that the DTG gave us in TSW suspension™.
Sorry, but no. Look again. Analyse what is being used and then tell why this is a "masterpiece". I don't see a masterpiece at all. Only really good thing is how it looks. But that is down to a single person doing the game and can match colors directly when creating the assets. In TSW (or similar games where 50 people work on a single route) this would need a matching pass after all was created and placed what is a way to huge pile of work for a non AAA game. On my end (TR7970X, 4080s) the game runs at about 50FPS average and 40-45fps in "dense" areas, at 4k resolution. Not really good. DLSS is on. I basically changed no settings except the resolution. Since there are just a bunch of distinct assets on the route (repeating big blocks of same assets are used) and there are basically no real trees at all, this is not what i expect from a UE5 game. That there is no stutter is a result of very few different assets being used, nearly trees that cause stuttering a lot, no tiles, no origin-rebasing, no other big-map stuff that is normally needed for such a game. This also limits the game to what is possible in terms of expansion. It's all laying on Nanite and Lumen. can only be as big as a single map is able to expand in UE5 (i am sure it is still only 16*16km). Uses Brushify (from FAB Asset Store) as the terrain painting system (performant, but very low res textures with lots of sugar glace surface things). The whole map is loaded all the time with all assets. No streaming of assets. It's very basic. A "Asset Store Game", (what is not a bad thing for a single dev though). Whole map loaded always: Big asset blocks of same type used all over
I don't have a technical understanding of these aspects, but I'm judging from a user perspective. For me, as a user, if a game runs incredibly smoothly on a far from top-end PC, without any FPS drops or stutters, while giving very pleasing graphics, I'm happy. The fact that the game has very few assets is really noticeable. But you have to admit, the tracks, the stations, the hills covered in fake greenery. It all looks much better than in TSW. Because it looks harmonious, like a single whole. While the TSW looks like someone assembled a complex structure from various construction kits from different manufacturers. But thanks for the clarification anyway. It was really interesting to learn.
Yeah, that is what i mean with the colour matching. The assets in Running Train are not utterly high end or such, but they all match in how they look. This is definitely missing on most TSW routes. But the assets in TSW are of way higher quality than the ones in Running train, but clearly that is not all to satisfy the players. Not really sure how far one can go with TSW in these terms. I have seen a lot of good things but also lot of ugly assets among these. Making TSW routes look like the Running Train one is probably possible but would expand creation time by 3 or what, and therfor the prices would need to raise more to satisfy the company for doing that.
I hope that DTG will at least start to match the tracks to the ground textures. At least tracks, DTG. So that it is unnoticeable that the tracks are a separate object on the ground surface.
It just looks very natural, the way the ballast blends with the surrounding land is awesome, with all sorts of weathered ground and ballast as well. Not sure why TSW can't do the same. Also the foliage assets are excellent, it really is about time TSW had some more realistic looking trees/bushes/grass. I keep seeing the same old trees (especially that annoying unrealistic small poplar type thing), makes all routes that use them feel very 'samey' (The Czech route aside). And the lighting, especially in the cab - brilliant. And we get a movable cab cam as well? Nice. Come on DTG, give us a better cab view cam please. Still, I do enjoy TSW very much, but if this is taste of UE5 in a train sim maybe it's time DTG started moving with the times and start using it (Metro Rivals maybe was a test-bed). Easier said than done though, obv.
I doubt that is possible yet, at least not to the extend you (or even me) expect to see. The tracks using a different renderer with different shaders that the terrain can't use (for performance reasons i would say). Adding POM / or Tesselation to terrain textures is not what you want performance wise. Look at these ugly tessellated ballast textures in Running Train. It's ok for a game where you are not allowed to walk around near the ground. In TSW that would start minimum two new shitstorms
But they don't hover above the ground. It's a matter of personal preference. Personally, I'm always annoyed by levitating objects in TSW, especially if they're tracks. I'll accept a loss in detail if it solves the problems with levitating tracks and the noticeable transition between the track asset and the ground surface.
I think you are being unfair with this observation, some TSW routes also have horrible repetitions of small asset variety, some DLC have literally the same house copy and pasted in rows that stretch for miles (RIVET). Sometimes placement and surrounding terrain/assets can mask where repetition has been used to improve optimisation.
They do, here and there, just look closer. It will not solve levitating track. That is a cause of terrain sculpting possibilities (2m performant in TSW, against full tessellated performance heavy in Running Train), track position to landscape (as from real life position, not fictional where you can place it by visual fidelity aligned to the grid). And for the transition, still a performance thing. TSW was doing that in earlier iterations but with bigger routes and more dense yards it is not possible on current hardware to do that. And alpha blended looks ugly.
Yes, Maik is right. The graphics are excellent, but I agree that it's a combination of cleverness on the part of the developer. It looks like a blend of shapes. That said, the current TSW certainly needs a refresh. The textures in the absence of sunlight are decidedly too flat. So what? If it's no longer possible to work on the current assets, I'll wait patiently for something more satisfying to come along in the future.
