Those of you who have followed Iron Village for awhile may have noticed the train cars getting a little more colorful recently - some parts get a little splash of color, others getting a full paint job. For today's Dev Diary, I wanted to talk a little about the train cars and their designs.

First, the steam engines - the locomotives that pull the trains. Unlike with a lot of the art in Iron Village, these were put together by me from the start (with the help of references of course, some of which were in Minifantasy anyway). The very first train asset was the engine you predominantly see in progression level 2: a 4-4-0 locomotive.

A note on "4-4-0": that is an example of Whyte notation. Basically, there's 4 wheels (2 per side) in front that are basically just supporting the engine, 4 wheels that actually drive the train, and 0 wheels behind the drive wheels. (This makes me sound like much more of a train nerd than I really am, please don't give me that kind of credit, haha...)

Since the trains are the stars of the game, and the locomotive is the face of the train, I figured there should be some variety and a sense of progression with them. So the next locomotive is the first one - the little dinky 0-4-0. This one basically involved shrinking the height by a few pixels, and then chopping off a section from the front, resulting in a locomotive approximately 200% cuter. Because yes, apparently that is an adjective you can apply to coal burning steam tanks.

To wrap up the locomotives so far, here's what the star of the third progression level is going to look like - this bigger 2-6-4 engine. It is "done", but I'm still not entirely happy so far. Maybe I'll like it more once it's actually in the game, or maybe I'll be redoing a decent chunk of it, who knows.

Next, you need fuel for your train. For these steam engines, we're using one of the most dangerous chemicals in history - coal! Rather than take up space on the locomotive though, we can just tow along our fuel in a separate car - and that is the tender. It's just barely big enough to fit four Latin characters, giving the railway some identity. (Can you change them? Not yet.)

The locomotive exists to pull other things though - so now we dive into all of the train cars. Your villagers arrive (and depart) on passenger cars, which are designed to at least be somewhat comfortable for people to ride on.

Everything else is a freight car. Depending on the particular good's size, shape, and sensitivity to outdoor exposure, they can go on flat cars, hoppers (both open and closed), tankers, or box cars.

Flat cars are good for carrying big goods that don't mind getting a little wet. In Iron Village, that means stone cars (although they have a raised lip) and log cars, which have stakes on the sides to keep the logs in place.

Hopper cars are basically big buckets carrying loose resources. These are ideal for things like coal, and you can slap a roof on top to protect loads of grain. Then there's tankers for when the resource is so loose, it's literally liquid.

I've saved box cars for the end though, because they are the most versatile. Containerization isn't a thing in Iron Village, so most goods are just going into boxes. The exteriors also serve as blank canvases, so of course I had to get a little creative!

That flexibility of colors was also what let me put together the pride train for my 2024 Pride Month demo release. (That train has since been rotated into the regular cast of trains in progression level 2.)

Hope you found that interesting, or at least enjoyed looking at the pretty pictures! To close out, here's a preview of a couple of level 3 freight cars!