This is gonna be tricky! There's a lot to do, and so many interesting rabbit holes to go down. But at a minimum, we're going to need:
Procgen
[x] #3
This doesn't have to be anything too wild. We can just have a simple plane and place our resources, businesses and some obstacles around it
Terrain and heightmaps is an unnecessary rabbit hole. If we just treat the terrain as immutable and sprinkle it with obstacles (eg. mountains, forests, lakes) that the player has to route around, that'll probably be fine
[x] #4
We'll have to randomly generate contracts for different businesses, with different company size requirements
This will need lots and lots of tweaking
UI
[ ] #5
Need to have a system where players can do the things they expect; click to build a train station, click and drag to lay down tracks, etc.
This is a huge rabbit hole, I'm not really sure how to handle curved tracks.
A shitty implementation would be something Transport Tycoon style where you pick a track orientation and just drag, but maybe we can do better than that
Signals? Ugh, those are t r i c k y
[ ] #6
Self-explanatory, but need to indicate to the player which resources they'll have access to at this station
[ ] #7
Buy / sell locomotives and wagons
Manage locomotives and wagons
[ ] #8
Add/remove stops
See estimated time (this could be tricky..)
[ ] #9
See open contracts / etc
Get notifications when a contract finishes / fails
This is gonna be tricky! There's a lot to do, and so many interesting rabbit holes to go down. But at a minimum, we're going to need:
Procgen
[x] #3
[x] #4
UI
[ ] #5
[ ] #6
[ ] #7
[ ] #8
[ ] #9
[ ] #10
Gameplay
Sound
Assets