Train game

Devlog

• Train delayed (or cancelled)
  November 04, 2023 by d w roberts#design

  After my last update, I was on shaky ground with what I was doing with this game: The scope is big, and I didn't really feel like I'd thought it through properly It's a huge project that is contributi... Continue reading

  
• Back on track(s)
  June 01, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #animation, #spline

  Not a lot has gotten done on the game recently and there is one particular problem to blame: animation and movement of trains on tracks. When I introduced the train yard to add carriages to trains, th... Continue reading

  
• Train yards
  April 23, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #inventory, #yard

  I've been struggling to work out the best way to modify train carriages - what interaction for adding new carriages will feel correct. For the time being, I've opted for a temporary separate structure... Continue reading

  
• Frame timing hell
  April 21, 2023 by d w roberts#frame, #pacing

  Over the last few days I've been performing a much needed restructure of the game loop, into 'do one update' and 'draw one frame' rather than an amalgamated mess. As part of this I took the first seri... Continue reading

  
• Basic object placement
  April 15, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #objects, #inventory

  Quickly got object placement from inventories working this afternoon. These objects aren't recognised by the inventory UI yet which is why they show as an 'X' but they are placeable in the world and p... Continue reading

  
• Spline cleanup
  April 10, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #spline

  One of the more difficult and involved tasks I have happening in the background right now is being able to correctly lay-out locomotives and carriages onto the track given an arbitrary track tile. Thi... Continue reading

  
• NPCs, shops, inventories
  April 09, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #inventory

  I've now broken out inventories and inventory interactions so you can view your own inventory separate from any other UI. There is now a 'purchase' mode that treats another inventory as a store - so I... Continue reading

  
• Basic gameplay milestone
  April 03, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #milestone

  This evening I reached a basic but important gameplay milestone: After re-working the inventory UIs to function with recent changes I was able to: Pick up items from a station and load them in the tra... Continue reading

  
• Invisible technical work
  April 02, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #savegame

  Over the last week or two I've been slowly pushing through some invisible, slightly tedious, but very important technical work on the game. The crux of it is save games: I wanted to get players able t... Continue reading

  
• Putting some more thought into artwork
  March 26, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #artwork, #perspective

  This afternoon I've just been casually messing with what to do with artwork. The biggest decision/milestone is perspective. Top-down (as in: top and front sides visible) pixel art is the goal, but so... Continue reading

  
• System cleanup work and some audio
  March 25, 2023 by d w roberts#audio, #trains, #savegame

  Mish-mash of not-so-fun items this weekend: Been looking to implement modifiable 'regions' in the world, so I can have the player place objects. Aiming to have the player's 'home' region specifically... Continue reading

  
• Prototyping interiors
  March 18, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #interiors

  Today I started working out how outdoor/indoor transitions are going to work, and how world levels will actually behave when this happens. Right now switching to an indoor scene is just a debug comman... Continue reading

  
• Frame times
  March 15, 2023 by d w roberts#debug, #trains

  Did a quick errand this evening and added a debug visualisation for how long each frame is taking to complete. This is a really useful tool to spot jitter that might be easy to miss visually. Especial... Continue reading

  
• Particle tests
  March 14, 2023 by d w roberts#particles, #trains

  This is another 'fun' item I picked up to check it's doable in the game's current structure before I 'systematize' too much. The sprites and the opacity changes here are all rough and experimental and... Continue reading
• Animation support
  March 12, 2023 by d w roberts#animation, #trains

  A made-up signal serving as a crude animation testbed. This morning I added animations and playback state. Animation data exists once, and each playback state - i.e. each sprite that is actually playi... Continue reading

  
• Lighting proof of concept
  March 08, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #lighting

  Sometimes I find it nice to do a 'fun' item off the list every so often, even if it's not really essential/called-for. Lighting is fun to mess with (especially colour cycling), and I'm a big fan of da... Continue reading

  
• Separating the player from the train
  March 05, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #player

  Today I separated the train from the player controlling it (non-descript blue+pink blob in the bottom right is the temporary top-down player sprite). It's now possible to enter locomotives, drive them... Continue reading

  
• Earning money
  March 01, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #design, #money

  Reached an important milestone today: it is now possible to earn money by moving items from one place to another. And you can see how much money you have (top left in image). The game is getting close... Continue reading

  
• Working station-to-station cargo transport
  February 27, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #inventory

  It's now possible to move cargo into a train and back out of it again into another station. It's still very awkward in a number of ways - for example you can't "Unload all" or change increments, but t... Continue reading
• Carriage inventory tests
  February 25, 2023 by d w roberts#inventory, #placeholders, #train

  This is all still placeholder/test art (especially the items) - but today I got a basic inventory interaction working, allowing you to transfer items from a station into your train. The train is also... Continue reading

  
• Quick carriage variations
  February 22, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #carriages

  Quickly added some different carriages ( placeholder art ) - importantly, these are different sizes/lengths, and also have a real data model for what cargo they contain. This is ready for when the giv... Continue reading

  
• Testing out first user interfaces
  February 20, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #economy, #ui

  Note: All wording and text here is for test purposes only Been doing some UI tests today. The image above shows the station interaction window where you would give and take items. Right now it's just... Continue reading

  
• Station beginnings
  February 19, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #collision, #debug, #tiled

  This afternoon I quickly got the beginning of 'station' zones working - collision zones that is. It's now possible to mark up where a station is, and the presence of the train in the station area is c... Continue reading

  
• Better spatial partitioning
  February 18, 2023 by d w roberts#quadtree, #trains, #collision

  Last time I had a classic quadtree going for spatial partitioning. Although it worked, it didn't deal with overlaps properly. I've now reworked it to be based on bounding boxes (AABBs) instead of the... Continue reading
• Spatial partitioning
  February 16, 2023 by d w roberts#quadtree, #trains, #collision

  Today I messed with spatial partitioning, finally getting a first-pass on a quadtree working. This is still inefficient and not fully correct (it's allowing some pointless dead space) but it's nice to... Continue reading

  
• Collision detection
  February 15, 2023 by d w roberts#collision, #trains

  Pictured: Basic carriage vs. mouse overlap being detected (red highlight) This evening I started to properly consider how collision is going to work. It's an underappreciated concept but it really is... Continue reading

  
• Placeholder graphics
  February 12, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #splines

  Authored some very simple placeholders and transitioned over to them today. Notable is that the 'locomotive' (crude graphics aside) here is correctly longer than its carriages and the track splines et... Continue reading

  
• Working junctions
  February 11, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #splines

  I now have trains moving from spline to spline crossing in-between junctions. It turned out to be quite straight forward: Because the carriages receive u values relative to the head of train, those va... Continue reading
• Primitive follow camera
  February 09, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #camera

  Quickly put together the very basics of a follow camera. Very crude and only follows the lead carriage right now - but it will be good enough for a while. Currently this is just based on breaking out... Continue reading
• Camera basics
  February 08, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #camera

  The rail track path splines aren't done yet, but in the meantime I hooked up a proper camera. Now I can properly move the view around, and the debug view is working properly with it too I've used Tile... Continue reading

  
• Track as a graph
  February 06, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #graph, #spline

  So far the track has been modeled a series of points with a spline constructed between them. That approach has no way to support junctions/forks. So this evening I quickly swapped over to modelling th... Continue reading

  
• Track following on a real track
  February 05, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #spline

  This is still ugly and there isn't enough information to interpolate the carriages turning quite right yet (so they look a little odd as they turn corners) - but finally have a little train running ab... Continue reading
• Level editing
  February 04, 2023 by d w roberts#trains, #tiled

  Although the rendering is still super inefficient, spent the morning getting Tiled maps loading and drawing. (The tile map being used here is not mine and is just a placeholder - the great little Cave... Continue reading

  
• u-value track following
  January 31, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #spline

  I've prototyped a more spline-like approach to track following. Here (see video) a u value tracks % across the entire path and is used to lerp point-to-point. Critically, compared to the previous prot... Continue reading
• Track-following
  January 30, 2023 by d w roberts#train, #spline

  Been working on a proof-of-concept for having trains follow tracks in 2D. Currently this does not use splines of any kind, but simple linear interpolation dense enough to emulate corners. The major he... Continue reading