Hi there! Were a small team working on Railroad Scheduler, and every once in a while, we get together in person for a few days to focus entirely on development. We call these little sprints DevPa (short for Development Party). It's not all confetti and pizza but it's pretty close. During our latest DevPa a couple of weeks ago, we spent about five days improving two big parts of the game:

Better Early Missions

Weve been refining how the game introduces you to its mechanics. The early levels are getting a smoother difficulty curve, so you can learn the ropes without feeling thrown in at the deep end. The goal is to teach you while you play. Step by step, youll get to grips with:

• Accelerating, braking, and stopping at the right spots
• Switching tracks (left, right, straight ahead)
• Reversing the train and adjusting the camera
• Fast-forwarding and rewinding time
• Pulling off more advanced maneuvers

It should feel like a steady ramp-up not a spike.

More Functional Menus

Because were building Railroad Scheduler in the Rust programming language without a traditional game engine, weve been crafting a lot of systems from scratch including the UI. The in-game HUD is made from basic shapes and text, which worked fine until we wanted things like volume sliders or display settings. To make that happen, we integrated egui, a Rust-based UI library. That allowed us to start building proper settings menus with:

• Audio sliders
• Display mode selectors
• Scrollable panels

Its a work in progress, but it already makes the game feel more complete.

[hr][/hr] Thanks for checking out the project! If youre into thoughtful scheduling gameplay, trains, or just like seeing a game built from the ground up in Rust wed love to have you on board. More updates coming soon. Until then: stay on track!

[ 2025-05-12 13:16:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

To make the world of Railroad Scheduler more visually rich, were working on an optimized system for decorative object placement.

Dingbats & Biomes

Decorative elements (dingbats) like trees, rocks, houses etc. are placed around the rail tracks to enhance the visual atmosphere. Depending on the region, the game will feature different biomes, each with its own set of dingbats (e.g. urban vs. countryside).

Smarter Dingbat Placement

Previously, we used rejection sampling to scatter dingbats around the rails. While this worked, it didnt scale well especially when placing lots of objects. To solve this, were moving toward importance sampling based on the distance to rail tracks. This means: Dingbats spawn where they should (at the desired distance to the tracks). We dont have to discard as many placements, making the algorithm more efficient. The end result? A more diverse and natural-looking distribution of decoration with less computational waste.
Here you can see the outlines generated around the tracks, directly in the environment. These areas guide where dingbats can appear, helping us place decorations naturally and efficiently based on their proximity to the rails.

[ 2025-04-08 19:37:05 CET ] [ Original post ]