Now ever since I played Kairosoft’s Railroad Manager, I’ve wanted to create something like one. Now I need ideas on how to make this game fun, I’ve already thought of the feature of where you can customize your own railway, and trains. I also thought of quests like “Transport this goods to , within , and I’ll give you $”. But I thought that won’t be fun enough.
So you draw routes between destinations and then assign destinations to trains which then travel along those routes at a fixed speed- is that right?
So it seems like your core activity is 1.) design and then 2.) prioritization.
With design, I’d say the way to make it fun is to provide interesting problems to solve- perhaps other railways or obstacles that you have to design around, perhaps special laws you must comply with. Another thought is that perhaps the player gets access to some kind of new tools that are much better than their old ones, and now they have to design around all of their own older infrastructure.
On the prioritization side of things, perhaps the player has to organize what train uses what railspace according to a number of variables- like one train being faster than another- two trains can’t arrive in the same station on the same rail, organizational problems like that.
Try out OpenTTD, its free and I find it quite addictive. The point of the game is to build your transport network with cars, trains etc although the main focus of the game are the trains. In the game you get to influence the construction of cities which is quite interesting.
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This is a great idea- the more the game changes to reflect the actions of the player, the more weight is given to the player’s decisions.
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Hmm…That ought to take care of the challenge, and I also thought of the player making their own train, and it has some stats, on how many percent of people it will attract (e.g. 30% adults, 10% elderly, 60% kids)
Like when you are a terrible station manager, the city’s population drops?
Oh, and should I use spline-based railroads, or just different prefabs of rails?
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Yeah, but the point of the game is to build supply chains so the goods and people you transport would affect the development of cities and cause them to build banks, high rises etc.
Oh, and should I use spline-based railroads, or just different prefabs of rails?[/QUOTE]
Are you making a 3D game? If so it really just depends on how much freedom you want to give the player. Good luck!
After reading some of the above post I thought maybe place the game in a war time Era. You choose which side to supply and it changes which side is winning. They could try out bidding each other or even rob a train.
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Also checkout railroad tycoon 3 as its a railroad business simulator, & there’s digital versions of ticket to ride (a Boardgame with lots of expansions)
Don’t forget some of the weaponised carriages they had. Not just moving troops & supplies but also heavily armoured trains with cannons fixed to whole carriages that were designed to try & fire shells across the English Channel.
I like this idea …
A world war II context might be more interesting if you are looking for a specific time period. Please support good controllers like RailDriver for your train simulator.
Why not try something new with it? Take the idea of a train management sim and place it into a new context that’s not been done before. Maybe instead of trains you could have space craft and you design space lanes and space stations?
This just became more of a war game, instead of a simple, nice, relaxing railroad sim XD
So an… on rails shooter?
There are other train simulations being worked on also. Here is just one example …
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/odyssey-train-simulation-technical-demonstration.390332/
It could be cool to explore upgrades to train cars carrying capacity, or being able to add more cars to each train as you progress. Watching a dinky 3 car train evolve into an 80 car mega train could be very satisfying.
It could also play into a strategic element if you’re trying to optimize several different train routes that intersect each other. Like if one train is super long and another trains tracks need to cross over, players could weigh out scheduling trains vs train length to try and optimize the whole system
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Go back to the fundamentals. Start with Flow, which is that state when you are completely focused - nothing else matters, time distorts. It has 4 requirements:
- Clear Goals
- Feedback
- No Distractions
- Balanced Difficulty
Ensure you have these 4 things. It’s a good place to start.
Gigi
That could work…noted!
But what I need is a goal for the player, I can’t release this like I’m telling players “Download this game, then construct a railroad”.
What were you thinking when you designed everything that a player could do? Is it just like a digital trainset with lots of cool models so people can build their own train tracks, put models in & then set up schedules & have a number of trains running around it like some people do in their lounge rooms or basements? Is it for people that want to have the driver cab view & have to control all aspects of running the train? Are they railroad tycoons trying to identify a market & build train lines, balancing passenger with cargo to maximise income while minimising track duplication?
Pretty much everything you just said, they will setup their own train tracks, while connecting other stations. Setup schedules for specific trains. Well its not a train driving sim, so you cant control the train yourself. And yes its about balancing the passenger with cargo.
Although I thought of the train being late for schedule. But I don’t know what to tell the player on how to prevent that from happening (I can’t let the player handle the speed of the train, that’s a given when you buy or upgrade the train) If I let the player handle the speed of the train, while the train is running. It’s like a train driving sim
But if they need to reschedule other trains to get the cargo delivered on time then they need to weigh up the cost of late cargo with the cost of the other changes to the network (pause passenger trains? Switch it to another train going near the destination to free up the engine etc). It could make for interesting decision points. In real life there are limited ways for commercial train operators to control that stuff so you could make it a tycoon/management sim. Have land prices affected by various things so they could buy land cheap & hope stuff develops near the lines or wait and build the lines later when they know where everything is but then the land costs more.