Hello everyone! I dunno how it could possibly be Thursday already, but here we are. Let’s talk about rails!

The rail system is something Metadept started over the Christmas holiday, and we’ve since taken a little bit of time to polish it up so that it’s ready in time for 1.0. We’ve tried to include the key elements of the Skyrails mod by Apjjm as well as craftable elevators in order to create something that’s more in line with Starbound’s design: general purpose, flexible and creative!

The core of the system are rail materials, which are non-colliding blocks that players place in the world. These materials will automatically connect to each other and to adjacent rail objects, so it should be easy to create anything from simple elevators to large rail networks!

Players can currently make use of the rails in two different ways: by placing self-propelled moving platforms, or by sliding along rails using a special rail hook item driven by gravity.

In addition to basic rail tiles, there are also several objects to make more complex rail networks possible: a rail bumper that caps rail endpoints and sends riders back in the opposite direction, a rail stop that stops and starts riders based on a wire input, a rail switch that connects and disconnects rails based on wire input, and a rail sensor that triggers a wire output whenever a rail rider crosses it.

We’d like to expend the system in the future with more types of rails, objects, and things that travel along them!

Let us know what you think in the comments!