Back to basic - Yardmaster

[SurvivorSean]

I really had some high expectations but unfortunately with a son I love to spend time with on weekends and evenings I don't have the time to learn it and get enough done. I want to go back to where I wrote RTS but not focus on Run8 this time around.

My friend recently described a Merlin system as well as something else as best as he could remember. He wasn't into operatoins but it was a system that printed the manifests and another system that planned the moves and kept track of what was in the yard along with the AEI scanners.

To my surprise there was no schematics involved. Screens were mostly text based and movements were a matter of selecting a string of cars and setting up moves to other tracks. I'll make the user files totally editable to conform to any size yard or operation such as number of trains, tracks, times, etc.

If I want to challenge myself later I could always go for a graphical schematic of the yard in 2d showing the trains moving through (like FYM). They would simply perform the switching moves based on the track assignments. Later I would get into AI YM functions to see how smart or efficient it can operate on it's own on both simple and complex yards.

Thanks

Sean

[SurvivorSean]

Not quite done Unity just yet. I managed to come across someting called Pro Builder which was bought by Unity. It actually helps create any kind of primitive shape and this includes curves which is the one I've been looking for.

I already knew how to get rail cars to work on straight track. But unfortunately we need curves and switches in the real world. With the curves I should be able to create any angle with the bezel tool which will allow the game engine physics to keep the trucks on the track through the curves and beyond. The switches and frogs would be the next challenge but I still need to create some track. At least I can finally create some half ass buildings and even some half decent rolling stock and engines.

I'll probably keep my adventures in this on my YouTube until I have some satisfying results. I'm going to look into this later tonight as in theory it should work fine.

Thanks

Sean