When I was preparing documents for coming to Japan, I had to ride the Amtrak various times to get to and from Chicago to process and file paperwork. I had only taken the train one other time that I could remember prior to that and it was so long ago it felt like distant memory. Possibly up to nearly a decade prior. Those trips to Chicago kindled in me a fondness for trains, however. The rolling sound, the clap of metal, the gentle sway that flows through the body as the chassis shifts. I loved everything about it.
Japan was all of that, and so much more. The accessibility was far and beyond a long trip. I've found I enjoy boarding a train in my off hours and simply watching the city roll by out the window. Only recently did I decide to board and ride a line all the way to its end, simply to be in the car and see where it would take me.
I would eventually learn that my fondness is shared by others, and in fact, we have a common name: 乗り鉄 or nori-tetsu. It means "riding steel", though in this case, 鉄 (tetsu) is used to refer to the railway. In general, it refers to someone who enjoys the act of riding a train itself, regardless of destination or purpose. Similarly named hobbies would be 撮り鉄 and 音鉄, toritetsu (takes photos of trains) and oto-tetsu (expert on train sounds), respectively. I would, in fact, find I am also an 押し鉄, or oshi-tetsu, meaning I enjoy collecting the unique stamps at each train station, but that may just be my collector brain enjoying the concept of collection in general.
I grew very fond of this title, nori-tetsu, and have someone adopted it as an official moniker. It may be entirely possible that being attributed to any one of these is considered silly, childish, or otherwise, but I can't be bothered to be bothered by such notions if they are the case.
The idea of Nori came from that enjoyment, combined with my growing excitement at getting back into game development. What started as a simple experiment at getting objects to move on screen slowly grew into a few ideas surrounding this character of Nori Tetsu. Over time, her canon would grow, despite having no official media out about her just yet. So this particular blog will serve as her introduction to the world!
Nori Tetsu is a crocodile that goes by she/her and exists in a world of other anthropomorphic animal characters, not dissimilar to worlds like Pokemon and Animal Crossing. She loves trains, station stamps, lavender, and has a vivid imagination. Her favorite snack is apples. She has an older sister, Tori Tetsu, who is a bit of a bully and as of now acts as the antagonist on Nori's adventures.
Nori's concept first appeared when I was working on my first foray with Godot in January of this year, when I began developing a "cozy metroidvania" where the player navigates train stations to find and collect commemorative stamps. Hopping on and off trains as they come into stations on timers, using escalators and pushing through crowds as needed, etc. I actually grew quite fond of this project and knew that I didn't quite have the skills with Godot yet to make it as good as I would like, so I shelved it for a more traditional platformer.
My idea was to use a platformer in the vein of Mario Land for Gameboy to focus on a wider array of stages and mechanics, which would allow me to learn in a sandbox environment. How and why I landed on the Gameboy aesthetic was mostly for limited scope. Too much fidelity would make assets more of my focus than getting into the code, developing, testing and learning. There's also a charm to the restrictive nature of the Gameboy's palette that I've always loved.
Thus far, only the bare bones of the engine have come into their own. An overworld map in the style of Mario Land 2: The Six Golden Coins and independent stages where Nori can jump, move, lift and throw boxes, collect apples, and properly collide with the environment. Though production could move along faster if I utilized every tool at my disposal, I wanted to specifically work through the engine myself and solve puzzles along the way. I would not be bold enough to say my code is optimized or even efficient, but that was never the purpose of Nori Tetsu!. It was to breathe life into a character that had been forming in my head as an embodiment of the joy I've found riding trains and use that as a vessel to grow in my skills at a game engine I'm enjoying more each day.
I'm hoping to post more about Nori Tetsu! as development comes along. I often stream the development on my Discord, though mostly as an excuse to hang out and somewhat keep myself accountable to producing a little more code each day. The busy nature of life has a tendency to pull me away from hobbies I deeply enjoy, and I'm hoping to keep Nori and Godot as a strong focus for a while.