September 30, 2015

Start!

I decided to start making a game about trains using an idea for motion I had left over from Starbounder 2. More about that next post. First, the inspiration. There is a clever little 2D Flash game called "Train of Thought" that I enjoyed when I was paying for Lumosity earlier this year. Here is what that looks like:


I wanted to make my own version in 3D, and expand upon the gameplay too. To see if this maddening split-attention brain exercise could be made into a real game.

I will be using Unity's free engine (v.5), the included features of which have been greatly and graciously expanded since we used it (v.3) on Starbounder. We get shadows now! It's the full engine and one only pays to be able to output to a device (iPad, android, Xbox, etc.) other than your computer. It's a smart move, thank you, Unity!
Also, I will be programming in C#, learning it as I go along. C# is a bit stricter than Javascript, which was the preferred language 4 years ago on Starbounder. For the stricter rules, I've been told you get more efficiency. C# is a lower-level language, closer to the "assembly language" a computer actually "thinks" in, and therefore quicker to translate and execute. Theoretically. 
Anyway... the question boards and tutorials accommodate both languages, and the community is really, really good. I have never run into a problem in Unity that was un-google-able.

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