(16/07/22 - Corrected license in description to match that attached to cart :facepalm)
(30/01/22 - Happy Birthday Cab Ride! 1 today!)
Drive a train, forever, through a dreamlike land.
Transport passengers to their destination.
Watch the world go by.
Listen to chilled out chiptune music.
In Cab Ride you can drive thousands of different train routes through rolling hills, winding tunnels and weaving between the tall buildings of vast cities. You can drive the train for as long as you like. When you're ready to end your journey, hold down the left arrow key to announce the last station. Stopping at stations along the way means you can pick up and drop off passengers. Try and stop at the marker at each station for a high rating. Or don't! It's up to you.
Cab Ride is a casual train simulation, not aiming for real world accuracy, but like a real train, it takes a while to brake. If you're overshooting stations, watch for the alert for the next station and reduce the throttle so you're ready to stop.
Controls
- X - horn/start/restart the game
- C - open/close doors at station (must have stopped just in front of signal)
- Up - increase braking/decrease throttle
- Down - accelerate/increase throttle
- Left - hold down to announce the last station (will end the current journey)
- Right - turn Express mode on/off aka Screensaver Mode
Version history
v1.2
- Fixed - memory leak if you run the game for a long time
v1.1
- Added - second track with train
- Added - Weather - different cloud patterns and periods of rain
- More performance fixes
v1.0.3
- Changed - tweaked station stop ratings - slightly more forgiving and more consistent
- Changed - all green signals when you're in express mode (after first couple of stations)
- Fixed - all passengers would eventually get off if you opened the doors enough times at a single station
- Various performance improvements
v1.0.2
- Added - pause menu sound toggle - deals with no hardware button in mobile view - may fix in a different way in future
- Added - 'very chilled' mode - no goal/help messages, no HUD other than station name messages, just driving trains - good for screenshots or screen savers (even better than what I claimed was a good screen saver mode before)
- Fixed - another way to drive through the last station (activate Express mode after announcing last station)
v1.0.1
- Fixed - crash bug where you could drive out of the last station when in 'Express' mode
- Changed - you now have to hold down the right key for 2 seconds to enable Express mode (announcing the last stop also has a 2 second delay) - this is to prevent ending up in that mode by accident and locking the controls
v1.0
- Initial release
Credits
Programming - Ben Jones / @Powersaurus Twitter
Music - Stephen 'rych-t' Jones / Twitter / Soundcloud
Based on code from the Pseudo-3D Racer tutorials by Tom Mulgrew/@Mot https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International​ ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/​
License
All source and assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International​ ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/​
Pre 1.1 version
v1.0.3
Very much excellent and good use of visuals to portray a train going along the track. It's very surreal.
Casual train rides are VERY much my thing, so obviously I love this. Been following the development on Twitter, happy to see it pull into the station! :)
This makes me realise I need more chillout games in my life! I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game, maybe for around 30 minutes today. Such a gentle, enjoyable flow.
Thanks for the hard work!
Thanks all!!! :) :) :)
@JimB007 - surreal definitely what I was going for
@2bitchuck - I'm glad to finish it and glad people are enjoying it
@birdwrong - that's awesome, glad you had a good time, and that it has resonated so well.
I love it! Impressive graphics and the gameplay feels like a PICO-8 Densha de Go, which is one my favorite games of all time.
Not surprised that this is an instant featured cart.
I spent 15 minutes this morning just admiring the different techniques and effects. Incredible!
Excellent - missing some action for my tastes, but a good "chilling" cart with a nice atmosphere!
@Infini123 Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it!
@Mot Thanks! As always, can't thank you enough for the tutorial that started all this off.
@freds72 Thank you! I'm working against-type here by making a relaxed game. It is the first project in a long time that doesn't have a particle system for explosions or spawning loads of clutter hahaha
When you don’t stop at the end then this happens... at least for me 
Also, great job on somehow getting a 3D game onto Pico-8!
@ElementalKid21 Thanks and aha! Yeah a couple of people have had that. It is possible if you enable express mode (auto accelerates) and also announce the last station. I've got a fix which I'll upload tomorrow/Wednesday. It will also make it harder to accidentally end up in Express mode.
This feels so much like Densha de Go!
And I say that with a lot of praise...
@gbraad so I'm told :D Thanks! Still counting down the days til the Switch release and I will play it. All my train research was with Train Sim World 2020 after I decided the train needed to be less like a car hahaha
@ElementalKid21 I have just released a bugfix for the issue you experienced
Haha I had this idea of train sim and tried something with my VERY limited skills : https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=85925
Some weeks later you come with the perfect Pico Train Sim, even better than what I imagined. Good job !
I have a lot to learn ;)
@IvanJoukov keep going! :) I can recommend the tutorial at https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 which I used to start this project. Really good at breaking down the steps to make a fake-3D scene
@IvanJoukov You should definitely keep working on yours! Your controls felt really well balanced driving the train. I think you have a great PICO-8 train sim in you too, and I'm all for having many of them to play :).
this is lovely and relaxing, i think a "lonely mode" without the bear (or beaver?) friend would be even more lovely and relaxing because then you could just drive the train alone without a care for the world. it makes me want to be somewhere with trees and buildings
My kid is 7. He has the attention span of a flea. He has a few pico-8 favorites that he often plays. Inevitably, he loses interest in each one of them after 10 minutes... except for this one, which has kept him trance like for 45 minutes of repeat plays. Kudos.
playing this again because it makes me happy, was able to offload people at the first platform by mashing buttons. maybe they were annoyed by the whistle and decided to walk instead
@doris Thanks, I'm really glad you're enjoying it! I recently added a mode with everything but the conductor cat removed. I consider the cat part of the game's character (along with the station names) hence the inclusion in the 'very chilled' mode. I might add a further level of no-HUD, but I have several other new features planned before considering that. Sorry! Regarding the passengers getting off - I think you're the first person to come across that bug, logged it and will fix in the next version.
@gigs Thanks!
@alexr That's really cool to hear! I'm glad your son is enjoying it so much. Funnily enough I have had the same thing with my 16-month old - it seems to have a calming influence on him if he is grumpy. I originally made the game for myself to watch when I was getting him back to sleep in the early morning, but it took a year to make, so now he likes it too haha
@Powersaurus i would never demand you put him out of a job and he certainly brings his own energy to the ride! thanks for making this and making it better
I keep coming back to this cart in Splore. I'm fascinated by the 3D effect and would love to know how to recreate it. I heard theres a new command in PICO-8 v0.2.2 that uses lines in a way that can achieve something like this?
Aside from that, the game is super relaxing. Almost hypnotic. Love the music too. Great work!
@simonwilson thanks! Really glad you're enjoying it.
To start the project, I based it on the series of tutorials here https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 (really good stuff, very well explained). The nice thing is that apart from the sky (which uses tline() - see this cart for a good example https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=86610#p ) - the fanciest thing going on is sspr() calls. A lot of it is just plain old rectangles, and hiding the seams :)
This is really relaxing, seeing the visuals and everything. Like working in a cab.
@MerpleLeaf - thanks! Good to hear it is relaxing, that's a huge part of what I was going for.
Version 1.2 out now that fixes a long standing, but rarely seen bug :)
@redhead453 - there are 65,536 different lines (as many random seeds as a pico-8 number allows). All pulling from a finite number of possibilities, but gluing them together in interesting ways.
Also, time of day and weather will be different for different runs of the same line.
I'm new to Pico 8 and I'm a consumer, not a programmer. That being said, I feel this is easily the most impressive Kart I've ever run!
My first reaction; Densha de Go on PICO-8? No way!
This is such a wonderful relaxing and satisfying experience.
Everything is so well done and top notch.
I cannot nearly express how much i love this cart.
Thank you so much for done this.
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