Time Train was on hold.
Feeling lost and confused and in a way pushed towards something I never wanted to do are the feelings accompanying me whenever I think about my Time Train project.
I feel like I am in a trap or a maze and do not know how to head in the right direction.
The initial idea was to create an experience that would immerse a child/young player in a VR train journey to distract them from the pain in real life.
I got my train inspiration from the London Transport Museum, the Pumphouse Museum in Walthamstow, and my child’s trains fascination but also by living in London and commuting on the tube, trains, buses, and the whole TFL options basically.
I was supposed to produce an idea for the experience and start working on it with the team I should have created. When I say idea, it is not about the concept anymore. It was supposed to be a detailed storyboard where I should know where the player would be placed, what would be around them and depending on the direction they looked what they would see or interact with. I should have figured out the interactions with specific objects/characters and the mechanics behind them so in different words, what do I as a player do and how do I do it?
The more I was thinking or listening about it, the more lost I felt. I simply didn’t know at that stage what of the above I wanted to implement into my Time Train.
Not knowing resulted in focusing on something completely different. I decided to skip the planning stage and looked for the train asset for the experience. I searched for a free 3D model that could be used in Unity, with elements such as doors that I could animate. I was lucky enough to source a very well-made London tube carriage from Sketchfab called the Bombardier S Train Carriage – London Underground.
Not knowing also meant not working on the project for several weeks. It meant pushing it away and hoping that on the day I pick it up again, it will be easier, and I will know. It also meant not reaching out and not asking for help and guidance.
At the time when the break between submitting the thesis and starting another term was ending, I sat down and opened the unity project with the London train carriage 3D model inside. Nothing but that model. I still did not know what story I wanted to tell but I knew that I had to work on that project. I felt bad for not knowing but also for not working on it, not trying to jump over the wall I was hitting my head against. Since I still did not know, I started with something technical, something I could complete on my own, finding the right tutorial on YouTube if needed.
I animated the door of the train as that is something that is visible, and I could present it next week to my tutor saying that I did that. I have spent half of the day animating three pairs of doors on one side of the train. I followed a straightforward tutorial called Unity 3D: Animate & Trigger A Door, and while the doors were opening and closing, they were uncoordinated – the left and the right doors opened at the same time but then they were not synchronized at all. It was extremely annoying and therefore, I spent extra time troubleshooting but could not figure out what was wrong. I decided to leave the dancing doors as this is how they looked animated as if they were dancing and trying to attract each other; I wanted to ask for advice in the class next week.
On that day I also did another tiny but with visible results task, I assigned material to the seats on the train. They were originally flat brown and to add the character to the train I decided to create a material based on the actual seats on the Victoria line of the London Underground. The seats looked much better straight away but the pattern was a way too big. I received a tip to increase the number of tiles used in that material, and that worked out well.
These two little tasks meant I worked on and added something semi-functional to my project. At the same time, I knew that very soon I needed to face my tutors and myself about still not knowing the story I was about to tell.