#train games

regular sky texture

sky texture used on the uk map

sky texture used in the roundhouse

Train Misconductor is an unreleased train game under development by myself (Luna Rose), and @msasterisk, inspired by model railway switching puzzles, in which you operate a locomotive to move train cars around rail yards on the alien planet Gymnome, whilst keeping your Slimegirl crew happy.

By the way if you are a playtester--you know who you are--maybe skip out on this post!

Well folks, a lot has happened since the last dev milestone version in March. After a bit of a hiatus, development resumed in June, and now, early in the morning of September 1st, the project is now at a mostly stable and playtestable state in. I've run the first of the closed playtests already.

Without further a-goo:

New animated level select screen by MsAsterisk.

Slimegirl sprite added to orders sheet!

HD REVAMP!

The pixel shader is set to a higher resolution, by a factor of 5/3. My main issue with raising the resolution before had been that you could tell the trucks were just photos of train wheels on boxes. Now, the trucks and the steam engine's wheels are properly modelled, so a higher resolution looks great. The loco is an all new model--the original loco was literally my first ever 3D model, and i've learned a lot since then; the common car frame containing the trucks and bufferbeams of each car has also been remodelled.

The higher resolution has also allowed the forklift to be shrunken back to its original scale, and the switch stands shortened to realistic heights as well. The rails are thinner and the ties are more realistically spaced.

Here's a side by side comparison of the old look versus the new:

New road vehicle models, including a small battery-electric pickup truck modelled by @vivvy-of-the-lake, as well as an Advanced Steam tractor-trailer and forklift.

There are literally hundreds of new cars. New hopper livery/load combinations using preexisting assets, new liveries for the boxcar and tanker, new gondolas and flatbeds with many loads.

Several of the new cars can be seen here--new liveries for the existing boxcar, as well as transporter flats for minimum gauge vans. Minimum gauge vans can appear wherever boxcars can in some of the later levels. The Short Long Way Round level has been dressed up as a narrow gauge railway.

One of the new levels is Triplenook. The previous milestone had Doublenook, based on a lego MOC puzzle by Hod Carrier, itself of course based on Alan Wright's Inglenook Sidings (which is basically 'canonical'), as a pair of inglenooks back to back with a runaround loop connecting them, such that each headshunt played double duty as one of the other half's second storage track. The Triplenook is my own design, extending the concept to three sections joined by a Wye.

Levels like this are now much easier to make because MsAsterisk implemented track snapping in the Godot editor. Previously I had to manually ensure that track endpoints and tangents lined up; now that's handled automatically and it's much less hassle. It makes it a lot easier to try out new level ideas.

The camera can also now move within certain bounds, allowing for much larger levels.

With the doublenook, I made it so that boxcars go to one side of the yard and tankers go to the other side. This makes it a little clearer and less overwhelming when you're trying to sort out 16 cars, and it gives more of a sense of accomplishment to arrange the cars by type, feeling like you're bringing order to chaos.

This was way more necessary for the Triplenook, which has 21 cars. So they're to be arranged as steel loads, boxcars, and coal/iron-ore hoppers and scrap gondolas.

Gondolas were added to replace scrap and trash hoppers, since those loads can't be discharged through the hopper's chute. But I did get a little out of hand with them. They have way more loads--crates, wood planks, various steel loads. They're now the most numerous class of cars in the game I believe, unless you count all flatbeds as the same class of car.

All told, I added 234 cars, taking the number from from 68 in 0.3 to 302 in 0.4.

There are now turntables!

Elevated tracks now have little wooden trestles!

There are now railway crossing gates which open when the level is complete.

Cars have less rolling resistance, but they are much heavier. The locomotive tends to move slower, so it has been given a realistic chuff speed based on the drive wheel radius.

Here's a gameplay video showing what the game currently looks like, as well as one of the new features: an optional setting to have switches be highlighted all the time.

There's also a new soundtrack in the first five levels by Antilinear (Spock & Step and PYR△MID). There's a main theme too, but since we don't technically have a main menu it has not been implemented.

The very last thing that was done for this milestone was the revamped tutorial. I'm sure the playtesters will rip it to shreds but MsAsterisk built a really cool system with triggers to improve the interactability of the tutorial.

The control mode has also been moved from a little onscreen button to the tutorial, changeable at any time from the setting.

Oh yeah! Settings! Settings can now be saved to a file. In addition to basic audio and resolution settings, you can also enable or disable some optional features. The new custom cursors (visible in the videos) can be replaced with a Big version or with the System Default cursors.

Some playtesters in previous versions had difficulty with car coupling, expecting knuckle coupler style behavior, despite the cars being modelled with link & buffer. This isn't helped by the coupler icons, which do vaguely look like knuckles. While I still want the default behavior to require the player actively choose to couple or uncouple, for those who just can't train themselves to couple on their own, there is now an automatic coupler feature.

The move counter and timer can be disabled for those who would get anxious about them.

There is an option to have switches always highlighted so you can read them at a glance from the track itself rather than the switch stand. This setting looks better than I had feared, and I am considering making it the default look of the game.

MsAsterisk continues to be absolutely incredible as a programmer. What you don't see in my brief overview of the features is 170 issues in our progress tracking document, which ballooned from perhaps a dozen planned goals into bugfixes and new ideas. It seemed for a good long while that as soon as one thing would be checked off, within a few hours or days of testing a dozen more things would come up.

And, if I do say so, I'm feeling quite good about myself as an artist and a designer. We're making something truly special. The consensus among playtesters is that it's a super fun, satisfying, almost addicting experience, and we're already really proud of it. We're making a game! Yay! We're not gonna get it out until it's good and ready, but the game is already fun!

What's next

The next milestone will implement the characters and the narrative elements, make the scenery look really good (MsAsterisk already built a really good prototype grass scatter system)

Appendix: Changelog

The full changelog follows:

General:

The game is now called Train Misconductor.

Updated game icon.

Optimizations to audio system to reduce audio lag.

Resolution raised by a factor of 5/3 or 1.r6 to better take advantage of new higher quality art assets.

Added credits.

Added an animation to the level select screen.

Added new custom cursors representing the hand of the blue slimegirl engineer player character.

Comes in two sizes, or a fallback system cursor.

The camera can now be moved, allowing for bigger levels.

Press "L" to follow the loco.

Settings:

Save settings to a file (which should be located at %appdata%/Godot/app_userdata/Train Misconductor).

Audio settings for different sound effects.

Graphics settings: screen resolution, cursor style, and whether or not to use the easter egg Realistic Sprite Style rendering mode.

Brightness and Bloom.

Simple/Advanced controls moved to settings file.

Ability to disable the move counter and timer, if the time pressure is too stressful.

Setting to toggle whether or not to always show the shading on switches. Defaults off.

Setting to toggle automatic couplers. Defaults off.

Sounds:

Three new pieces of music by Antilinear in early levels.

Scenery:

Switch stands are now shorter to accomodate the higher resolution, more in scale.

Rails are thinner for the same reason, and have a new shape for their ballast.

Rocks and trees.

Most levels have placeholder buildings and roads.

Level crossing gates now mark the borders of most levels, rather than buffer stops.

Trestle bridge for raised tracks.

static tank models.

New warehouse model for Doublenook by VivvyOfTheLake with concept done by Scandinavian101

Off-rail vehicles:

EV Truck model by VivvyOfTheLake (based on Luna's concept art)

Advanced Steam forklift

Advanced Steam Semi Truck & Trailer.

Levels:

Level creation in Godot Editor made easier by track snapping feature.

Added turntables. They can be turned by clicking on their ends, and they have some good sound design going on too.

Tutorial 3 has artificially increased friction to prevent attempts at solving via momentum trickery.

Redesigned Interchange level.

Turnout Hell level now called Short Long Way Round, and is dressed up as an interchange with a minimum gauge railway.

Timesaver Randomized now has between 0 and 12 cars. 12 cars is possible if you get very creative, but the maximum reasonable amount is about 7.

Classification Yard, essentially a much larger Inglenook.

Triplenook, an inglenook variant built around a wye.

Why Would You, another wye-based level.

Turntable level.

Wagon turntable.

Facing Switch level.

Running the Gauntlet, a puzzle with no switch tracks at all, based on a gauntletted or interwoven track.

Switchback, a level premised around servicing a coal trestle.

Rotate Reuse Recycle, based on an old wooden toy puzzle from the 1890s, utilizing turntables. It has proven by far the hardest level in the game, despite having only 5 cars.

Train Art:

Revamp Loco model and texture.

Larger, more realistic boiler. PBR map. Weathering.

Replaced box with drawn on wheels and running gear with low poly modelled wheels and rods.

Model is animated so its wheels can spin, rods can move, and its front engine can articulate

BUT none of this is implemented, the loco is still a static model. Though its rods have been removed.

Revamp Common Car Frame model and texture.

Replaced box with photo of an AAR truck with a custom truck model which looks great.

Visible coupler hook, though only clearly legible on car variants with colored car frames.

Added 234 cars, taking the number from from 68 to 302

8 new boxcar liveries

All load/livery combinations for hoppers. (Scrap and trash loads soft-deprecated)

BlueOrange, Brown, BrownRusted, Grey, Rusted, Red, Yellow

Empty, Coal, Iron Ore, Stone, Woodchips

Flatbeds now come in the following varieties:

Skeleton flats (empty, pipes, or lgos)

Plain flatbeds (steel coils, steel plates.)

Stake flats (previously implemented, carries logs)

And in the following colors:

White, Dark Grey, Red, Orange, Yellow, Cyan, Blue, Purple

Cars support anisotropy maps. (used especially on steel coils model.)

4 refrigerated boxcars including a shiny one with PBR.

3 new tanker liveries.

Minimum Gauge Vans on Transporter Wagons:

Each transporter flatbed has two mini-gauge vans, which come in 9 varieties, as well as 13 combinations thereof.

And a narrow gauge loco on a transporter flat.

Gondolas

Three tall gondolas, four low gondolas, and three medium gondolas.

Replaces scrap and trash hoppers

And in addition: woodchips, set of 9 girders, set of 4 girders, set of 6 pipes, set of two crates, big crate, wood boards, and track ties.

Train Physics:

Cars now have more complex friction curves.

Cars are now much heavier, and trains now handle more realistically.

Engine chuffs realistically, with the rate of chuffing accurately set by the engine's wheel diameter.

Trains will now stop properly at end of track.

Tutorial:

Revamped tutorial with all new trigger system for a more in-depth tutorial script.

Added sprite of the slimegirl Conductor to the tutorial

Order Sheets:

Map camera can be zoomed and dragged.

Order sheet is on a split pane.

Added sprite of the slimegirl conductor to the order sheet.

The board. Lots more routes than Nordic Countries map; this is a 2-5 player game. There's a lot of nice detail on the map as you can see from the collage image below.

Components and destination cards (back of destination cards shown at bottom, right pic)

Bonus cards! And train cards

Back sides of bonus cards (left) and train cards (right)

I almost rejected the first Diego x Reader request I ever got because I didn't think I could or wanted to write for him. Now I've written more for him than any other character.