Beginnings and initial development

The core idea for this game was, what if you were a repair bot in charge of fixing a damaged moving train?

I first bounced this thought off of the design of WarioWare-type games, which give the player a lot of small tasks with a limited number of allowed errors. Slowly, I built the concept around repairing carriages on a high-speed train, where things may fall apart if you take too long. It felt like a simple enough concept for a small game. I know how ambitious my project ideas tend to be, so I was happy to have come up with something simple for once.

I started development on the 9th by writing my ideas down into a coherent markdown document. This helped me see both the bigger picture and individual details, catch some problematic parts and rework them, and get things ready before even opening Unity. Ideas were shelved during the development process too, but this helped establish the basic shape early.

By the start of the weekend I had a basic scene set up with all the necessary packages installed, and got to work with the picture-in-picture screens that the game would have to use. I may have spent too long getting the animation to work, but it might make things a little easier down the line.

By Sunday I had code for a basic game loop controller. Tasks are currently just skipped, but the player advances through the train as carriage repairs are completed. My goal right now is to finish implementing systems for tasks, add a single carriage 3D view and a dummy task, and make the game "playable" start to finish without using the editor. The design of my framework should make it easy to add new tasks and carriage interior views, which just involves some 3D modeling and simple task interaction scripting.