Y’All Aboard

Procedural generation is such hard work, but it's so worth it when it's working. WHEN IT'S WORKING.

Rivers *are* generating. Just need to find some. Happy with the lake. Maybe it needs some fish.

Do I teach the dogs to swim, or just to stay out of the water?

There's a hundred million ways to do water, and I'm torn between stylised and realistic.

I can honestly say I'm enjoying making the track building as painless as intuitive as possible 🙂

I put this off for way too long, but now you need to place wood (and later metal, ballast) onto track in order to 'confirm' the blueprint layout.

Really happy with how the new loco looks. Just need to munge all the data into the right place now so that it *acts* like a loco, and hope it wasn't modelled sideways.

There, that's a lot better. This should give enough information to help the players along, but without giving everything away. I might try and put some 'wear' on the roads, and I need to work out what's going on with the text rendering, but - good!

What a terrible name for a dog.

That's pretty neat; 2 signs, not intersecting, as the there's a fork coming up. I'd prefer one on each side tho...

No clever references intended, but procgen absolutely does not care. #screenshotsaturday

Incidentals at Vistas are now back and working \o/

Oh. Found the Timbermill.

A bit more flavour text and we're looking good. I've purposely made the signs bright so they're easy to read, but part of me is tempted to make it affect the normal shading via a decal shader instead.

ProcGen does lead to some weird contradictions.

Wise words

10/10. Need to improve the sign mesh tho, that's ugly

Developing a game with both macro and micro detail is incredibly difficult; back in the days of Black and White, that was considered a major engine feature!

I shall not be accepting feedback at this time.

Iron Mines bit hard to find -> Iron Mines much easier to find!

Now you can rest for the night, I realised I need lights on in public areas at night, else I'm stumbling around in the dark!

More performance means better drawing. It's an endless task!

I shall not be accepting feedback at this time.

That's looking a bit less placeholder-y. Probably too large. Also definitely too penisy. #indielife

Towns are now using the correct min/max rules.

Mines are now correctly embedded into cliff faces. Still need to do the different variants, as well as lots of interesting clutter and detail around each one - and sign posts so I can actually find them!

Fixed. That was DEFINITELY my guess and I DEFINITELY didn't get the AI to help me, no sir.

#oneofthesethingsisnotliketheother #gamedev #consistentnamingschema

"Computer games are never finished, they merely escape"

It's always good to have a plan.

Steps towards the final track rendering happening now. This is more-or-less how the track will look in planning mode, before you start to build it. I need to work out a better visual look for the control nodes still.

I've no idea who would have made a handcart back then. I suspect I may have to do some research at *some* point

#pumpit #pumpitrealgood

Dropped objects can now have bespoke graphics. I also now have enough planks to make a handcart, and we all know Handcarts are made out of 4 planks and nothing else

I'm avoiding the art task of unique buildings for now, but I'll get the Sawmill (Timber -> Planks) done. Timber Yard is a way to purchase pre-felled Timber, for people rich in money but lacking time.

I'm getting slightly better at making neater networks, but it's probably a good idea if the game helps you to neaten them as you go along. You can tweak the route as much as you like, until you start to place the track to 'lock' it in place, then it becomes a destructive process. Maybe. It's also possible players will want to keep tweaking and I'll have to allow it ™

My next step is the ability to turn 'timber' into useful products. First object a player will want to make on a new run is a handcart, so they can carry more than 1 item.

That looks marginally less terrible. I'm not happy to sign it off yet, but we're cataloging the *process* here yo

Per-area specific rules for spawning ground clutter. This will eventually tie into the biome/tiering system, but for now it's making the... let's call it a grove... look less sparse.

My forest looks a little bare.

What's the matter? Chicken?

A loop of track, just next door to the blacksmith. Perfect. I notice that the ballast is using the wrong texture tho!

A loop at each end, this route could now be built by placing resources, or optimised. As I am impatient - I will not be optimising it.

Maybe a tad too obvious, but this will do until I get proper raymarched pass (and this may well stay in for low detail) - this is to represent the glow of a distance town. I got distracted from implementing blacksmithing and crafting - in no small part as I couldn't FIND the town! #emergentgameplay #playtesting #indiegames #screenshotsaturday #yesigotlost #yeehaw

This is fine.

Computer games are a series of smoke and mirror tricks. Never look behind the curtain, it's... weird back there #indiegames #gamedev

oh no. I harvested all of the iron ore; ore harvesting is serialised, but dropped items *aren't*. I'm gonna need some cheat keys!

Just another day on the range. Todo, implement ranges.

Finally

All I need now is a camp fire and some beans.

I shall not be accepting feedback at this time.

To add : Campfires, sleeping rolls and beans. Lots and lots of beans.

I need to do some work on the global illumination and decide on a cloud solution still. Maybe little fluffy clouds? I also certainly need some sort of star solution too!

First thoughts towards a day/night cycle.

That's looking pretty good now. I'm not sure if we'll be doing back/side roads, and I honestly have no idea where a church would have been in the old west. I think I'd also like to implement a few alternative layouts - right now we have 'crossroads' and 'high street only' - a 'town square' with a few random roads coming off it would probably work well for a final alternative. Any others you think I've missed? #indiedev #procgen

The fun part about procedural noise and procgen is that you can spend 2 hours working on something and have it worst than when you started. #indiegame #procgen

The fun part about procedural noise and procgen is that you can spend 2 hours working on something and have it worst than when you started.

That looks really nice. It's wrong, obvs. But it looks really nice.

That's not quite right. Procgen is hard.