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[Selkcip]

Locomancer is a game about building room scale model train layouts.

This is not a train simulator so it isn't going to be 100% accurate to real life trains or have all the bells and whistles (it will have bells and whistles) that you'd get from $5,000+ of DLC. Instead the goal of this project is to emulate the experience of tactilely playing with an O scale or Brio train set.

As such, in order to play you need either a Vive or a Rift with Touch controllers (my friend recently confirmed that all of the controls work with the Touch controllers even if they are a bit awkward).


The game is being built with Unity.

Some currently planned features are:

• All of the standard track pieces that you would expect from a train set
• An assortment of engines and cars real and fictional (though probably not 100% accurate do to ™/©/®/ )
• Various themed set pieces like buildings and foliage (city, mining town, etc.)
• Choo choo noises voiced by yours truly
• Remote controllable engines that must be on powered rails to operate
• Engineer mode where you get to drive the engines in first person
• The ability to build subway lines
• Importing custom models
• Support for easily sharing layouts

Some wishlist features:

• Simplistic AI commuters that ride your trains
• Slot car vehicles/roads (spin-off?)
• Explosive derailment
• Online multiplayer
• More trains/scenery

TLDR: Here's the trailer for the demo:

There are more videos sprinkled throughout this devlog, but you can find them all here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX4tyApvMlSYOKF9AUKXbgg

You can download the demo from the Steam page over here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/490250
Report bugs/request features here: https://bitbucket.org/selkcip/train/issues

About me:

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[Ishi]

Hah I love the end of the physics video!

I really like the idea of this - I haven't played with much train set stuff but this looks like a fun way to give it a go without needing lots of money (apart from buying the Vive I guess )

Can imagine doing some crazy things like launching trains off ramps that you could never do with a real train set...

[Selkcip]

Can imagine doing some crazy things like launching trains off ramps that you could never do with a real train set...

This is something that I have been planning to add for a while, but I've been too busy being serious to make it work yet.

[Selkcip]

The previous videos were from a week ago so here's a video showing some progress from the last week in preparation for a playable demo. It's now possible to build a complete layout from scratch as opposed to the editor built layouts I've been testing with:

[Selkcip]

I've added a link to the first playable build in the first post. Any feedback would be much appreciated!

[Hideous]

Totally downloading this when I can re-mount my Vive. Don't spose you need any models?

[Selkcip]

I do, but at this point I've only thought about community models being included via something like the Steam workshop.

[Selkcip]

What could it be?

That one decent trolley model made me forget that I'm not a very skilled artist.
Anyway I was trying to model a Great Western King, but I didn't like the boiler/smoke box I had so I replaced it with a half cylinder and made the pistons over-sized. I hope no one is counting on the trains being super accurate, they may end of being weird amalgamations of various trains...

The drive train motion was accomplished with a bunch of hinge joints. I'm not sure how performant this would be with a lot of trains so I might have to write a simpler piston joint script.

I also forgot to add any form of exhaust.

[Selkcip]

In watching people play I realized that I had left in the ability for pieces to be placed at 45 degree angles. This was originally meant to support diagonal track, but snapping the existing pieces to 45 doesn't actually work. As such I've set the snap angle to 90 and added a number of diagonal pieces:

I'm not going to add diagonal pieces for everything, but I think this is a good subset.

I also added a number of alternate switching tracks:

All of these pieces should greatly increase the layout complexity that you can achieve. Which means I should probably get an interface for saving an loading working. Saving and loading do already work, but my initial idea for loading saved layouts didn't work as well as I had hope, so I temporarily went with a single autosave.

If you do build a layout that you really like, you can save it for later by renaming NewSave.auto.json in the saves folder to SomethingElse.json

[CobaltHusky93]

Hey dude!

I'm loving your mod so far. Here's a video I made making my own layout and messing around a bit in the game. :D

[Selkcip]

EDIT: Unsure why my video won't show in either a link form or video form.

You just need to paste the link without any bbcode.

Great video. You have no idea how awesome it is to watch someone enjoying playing a game that I've been having fun making!

There aren't any sounds in the game yet, the things I listed in the first post are planned and some are implemented.

Other people have pointed out the bug with the switches. I think I made a code change, but didn't actually check that they still worked :/

[CobaltHusky93]

EDIT: Unsure why my video won't show in either a link form or video form.

You just need to paste the link without any bbcode.

Great video. You have no idea how awesome it is to watch someone enjoying playing a game that I've been having fun making!

There aren't any sounds in the game yet, the things I listed in the first post are planned and some are implemented.

Other people have pointed out the bug with the switches. I think I made a code change, but didn't actually check that they still worked :/

Thank you for the tip!

I can't wait to play the next version you release. I see you already have sort of a cool save file type thing going on. :D

Another thing would be maybe a way to customize the type of table that you can build on?

[Selkcip]

I see you already have sort of a cool save file type thing going on. :D

Yeah, it doesn't currently save the state of pieces, but it saves all the pieces that are on the table. There's also technically support for multiple saves, but I'm still trying to work out the best way to expose access to that functionality.

Another thing would be maybe a way to customize the type of table that you can build on?

I've been thinking about this. I saw that you just about ran out of space. At some point I'll probably add support for big spaces with teleporting, but I don't really want to mess with that right now. One way that I could increase the play space without requiring the player to move further would be a wrap around table where the player is in the center and the table goes around the edges of the space.

----

I ended up spending my dev time tonight trying to figure out if Itch's new tools would allow me to bake self updating into the game so that people don't need to keep downloading new builds. It doesn't look like something they planned for, but worst case I think I can hack it.

[Selkcip]

I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, but I now have a hacky self-updating system based on Itch's Butler https://github.com/itchio/butler

[Selkcip]

I just uploaded a new build. The major changes are:

• Added ability for game to patch itself
• Added 4 new switch types
• Added 4 new diagonal track pieces
• Removed 45 degree snapping for track pieces (scenery can still snap to 45)
• Reduced time it takes for objects to snap (still needs improvement)
• Fixed controllers being able to control different trains (made things confusing)
• Capped train speed to 10 (for now)
• Removed texture from table
• Made trolley windows easier to see through

The next thing I'm going to work on is the interface for manual saving and supporting multiple saved layouts.

[I_smell]

I'm maybe more interested in this than any other VR game I've seen.

It's so cute and simple, and translates to the virtual reality space so well. Gonna try the build myself tomorrow when I have time!

[Selkcip]

It's so cute and simple, and translates to the virtual reality space so well.

Simplicity is what I'm aiming for. At least in terms of interactions. It uses the controller buttons to do a bunch of stuff right now, but I want to move those to more physical interfaces like a dial for speed control.

[CobaltHusky93]

New update is looking good! I'll wait another update or two to make another video on it. :D

I just had a question though: Is this a game you want to leave more as a Sandbox game for free build, or turn it into a game where you have to maybe start small and earn money to buy larger layouts and tables and better trains?

[Selkcip]

New update is looking good! I'll wait another update or two to make another video on it. :D

Awesome!

I just had a question though: Is this a game you want to leave more as a Sandbox game for free build, or turn it into a game where you have to maybe start small and earn money to buy larger layouts and tables and better trains?

I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure. At least for a while it's just going to be free build. I was thinking that once I get passengers in there could be stats about riders and revenue and maybe basic achievements. But those achievements could be goals. Or it could be a puzzle game where you start with some fixed stations and you have to connect them efficiently.

Either way it might be interesting for revenue from passengers to give you meta game money that lets you buy new trains at the hobby shop.

[CobaltHusky93]

That's what I was thinking.

In a brain storming I had; I was thinking almost like you're building you layout to be "realistic" looking and you have people from Magazines and such come look at your layout and you'd get money from your layout being featured and you could make comments on what you did.

The money you earn could be used to purchase more realistic looking grades of trees, scenery, background, trains, and more.

But! That's just my idea. :D