Railroad Game Devlog #2
May 30, 2026
I created a shader using the Unity Shader Graph editor. It shows contour lines and elevation shading on the terrain. The contour lines are indispensable when surveying new track segments. The coloring is just a nice touch to give this a more refined look. The shader graph was…
Continue readingRailroad Game Development Log: State of the Game
May 19, 2026
I have not been able to work on the game for a while. The most recent changes are happening to the survey mode “start” point handling. Specifically, I’m changing the code to calculate all possible variations of the track at the selected start point so the user can…
Continue readingTrain Game Development Log: Designing with Notepad, and Current Progress
April 25, 2026
I’m adding code to the train game that will add segments to the track network. At moments like this, where I’m adding in a new feature, I often get a little stuck not knowing where to start. In these moments, I usually open any text editing app and…
Continue readingMy Railroad Game Development Log #1
April 15, 2026
The title of this post is misleading; it implies that I’m just starting work on this game. The reality is that I started work on this game over 20 years ago (around 2004) and I just took a bit of time off to wait for 3D rendering to…
Continue readingUnconscious Mind: A Board Game Review
February 7, 2026
I played Unconscious Mind twice before writing this. Both times were with one other player (2p games). Unconscious Mind is a medium‑to‑heavy eurogame with very little randomness beyond the shared tiles and cards available to all players. The game’s theme centers on treating and curing people receiving mental‑health…
Continue readingAntikythera Mechanism Tree Structure
January 21, 2026
I just wanted to make a note of the Antikythera mechanism tree structure as it is currently generated in the Linkage (Mac) simulator. The code is not handling multiple gears on the same connector, so this is not completely resolved. But it is a good example of how…
Continue readingSpectrophonix: The Audio and Effects Queueing App
December 20, 2025
In about 1994, I wrote software for Windows 3.1 that let me add icons over an image in the app window and then create timed sounds and effects using these icons to represent the locations of the outputs. I built a crude timeline editor that triggered items only…
Continue readingUndercutting Disbelief (AKA Breaking the Suspension of Disbelief)
November 15, 2025
I watch a lot of TV, and I can suspend my disbelief quite easily. I’ll watch MgGyver (the new one) build an energy-beam weapon out of a junked microwave oven and a car battery. But sometimes a TV show is written in a way that totally breaks the…
Continue readingGame Rules Optimism
November 5, 2025
I was playing a complicated board game, Inventions: Evolution of Ideas, and I noticed something about another player that I’ve noticed before; They are Game Rules Optimistic. I’ll explain: The game has a map, and on the map are some tiles. The tiles are double-sided, with very different…
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