Blog
Notes from building Traluno: voxel geometry, model-railway rules that turn out to be real constraints, and how to get more out of your own layout.
· 5 min read
What Else Is on the Shelf: Traluno Next to the Games It Resembles
Traluno gets compared to Minecraft, Cities Skylines, Railroad Tycoon and half a dozen train sims. Here is an honest account of what each of them does better, and the one thing none of them do.
· 5 min read
The Other Model Railway Games, Compared Honestly
Model railway games are a small genre with a long history. Trainz, Rolling Line, Model Railway Easily, Bahn and the old Märklin discs all solved the same problem differently, and each got something right.
· 4 min read
What the Table Teaches You
Traluno could have been a god-game on an infinite plane. Putting the layout on a wooden table in a hobby room, seen from standing height, decided almost everything that came after.
· 4 min read
Lay Your First Loop
A working circuit takes about four minutes and eleven pieces of track. Here is the order to lay them in, and the three mistakes that stop a beginner's first loop from running.
· 4 min read
Why Tight Curves Break Voxel Track
Sweeping a box along a curved path is the obvious way to build rail, ballast and kerbs. Below a certain radius it produces a starburst of raised fins instead, and the fix is not more boxes.
· 4 min read
Two Material Languages, and Why They Must Not Mix
Everything on the layout is either built from blocks or manufactured as one piece. Getting a model into the wrong category is the fastest way to make it look wrong, and it is not obvious which is which.
· 4 min read
Building a Town That Does Not Repeat
Twelve houses from one model, and none of them look like the same house twice. The trick is not more models — it is deriving the variation from where the building stands.
· 4 min read
The Loading Gauge, or: Why the Crane Ate the Train
Every real railway has a profile that nothing may intrude on. Traluno needed one too, and discovering that took a harbour crane demolishing a goods train at walking pace.
· 4 min read
Roads Are Harder Than Rails
Track goes where you put it and only ever meets other track two ways. Roads have junctions, kerbs, footways, crossings and pedestrians, and every one of those is a special case.
· 4 min read
When the Lights Come On
Day and night on a model railway is not a lighting change. It is a second copy of the world that only exists after dusk, and keeping the two copies honest is most of the work.
· 4 min read
A Desk, Not a Menu
The controls that drive the layout are levers and switches on the front of the table, operated with the mouse. Putting them in the world instead of in the UI cost a lot and was worth it.
· 4 min read
Riding in the Cab
A camera at the front of a moving train turned out to be the most-used feature in the game, and generalising it to everything you can sit in was four lines of code and a rename.