TrainRail

TrainRail is a simple, isometric rail shooter. In this game, you'll play as a train under attack by cowboys and mad cow. To win, you must defend yourself with gunpowder and lead!

I made this game myself over the course of four weeks for a programming assessment at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE). 

I made the art assets using colored primitives so that I could iterate quickly on the programming. The voxel like art style allowed me to convey necessary information to the player without needing to spend large amounts of time or effort on developing the look of the game. 

I found free-to-use sound assets online and implemented them to further convey information to the player. Time and effort was spent attempting to create my own Foley sounds for the game, but the sound quality from my microphone was too low to be usable.

I ran into various challenges in this project, most of which was related to programming. Getting each spawned enemy to follow and target a specific train car proved to be difficult at first since it required several unfamiliar programming concepts. 

After  my instructor shared some potential methods to achieve the desired behavior, I put in research and time to determine which methods were best for my game and how to implement them quickly and most effectively. 

I learned many things working on this project, ranging from practical knowledge relating to programming and unity to more intangible skills relating to game development in general: 

• I learned that standardized naming conventions and folder structure are absolutely necessary to make sure that you can navigate your files and programs
• I learned that research is necessary before any project so that you can accurately judge how much you will be able to achieve with the resources at hand
• I learned how to re-scope and adapt for unforeseen circumstances and misjudged tasks

All-in-all this game was fun to make, fun to play, and a great learning experience!