Review: Googol Choo-Choo 3D

Product Name: Googol Choo-Choo 3D 1.5
Company: Googolplex Ltd.
URL: http://www.googolplex.co.jp/index_us.html/
Category: Simulator
Price: $21
Requirements:
- PowerMac G3 or better
- Mac OS X 10.1 or later or OS 9.x
- 3D Graphic acceleration required.
Rating: 4 bounces - Pure Lust

It's rare for AppleLust to review entertainment software, but once in a while something comes along that is so much fun and so unlike anything else we've seen, that we feel the need to share. Googol Choo-Choo 3D, from Japanese software developer Googolplex Limited is just such a program. At its simplest Googol Choo-Choo 3D is a model railway simulator. It allows the user to lay down railway tracks, place stations and other structures along the tracks, and finally decorate the model railway with trees, hills, and tunnels. Once the model railway is set up, locomotives and rolling stock can be put on the tracks and run, and the complete model railway can be watched either from the point of view of a human looking at the model from above, or from someone actually on the railway, as the engine driver for example.

Googol Choo-Choo 3D is a model train set simulator with the accent on ease of use rather than prototypical accuracy, but is fun nonetheless.

Installation is easy, simply download the archive and extract the application. Included in the archive are some sample layouts, and these are well worth looking through before you get started. One of the nicest is called Night Town, and as its name suggests you get to see this layout by night, with the buildings illuminated and trains running with their headlights on.

While not meant to be a realistic simulator, the layouts you can make with Googol Choo-Choo 3D are attractive nonetheless.

Googol Choo-Choo 3D is basically a graphics program, albeit one that works in a 3D way. Palettes contain the various elements needed - lengths of track, buildings, locomotives and so on - and these are simply dragged onto the document window. Overall, the program feels a lot like AppleWorks, and this should make the learning curve especially easy for the average Mac user. There are some complexities, such as building gradients and elevated sections of track, but putting together a simple loop of track is very easy indeed.

Googol Choo-Choo 3D resembles many graphics programs in using palettes as the sources of the elements used, and a document window for arranging and connecting them.

Playability

Once the track is laid down, other elements of the layout can be added. Some of these are static objects just added as scenery, for example stations, buildings, and trees. But other things move, and these provide the action that makes the layout come alive. Locomotives and trains are of course the most important things in a model railway, and Googol Choo-Choo 3D comes with three different locomotives (two steam engines, one electric), a bunch of different wagons and coaches, the famous Shinkansen bullet train, and an electric monorail train for use on monorail layouts. Roads can be laid down as well, in the same way as train tracks, by drag-and-dropping sections from the Track palette, and then adding gradients as necessary. Cars can be placed wherever you want on the roads, and when the trains are running, these drive about by themselves, adding an extra bit of action to the model. Both tracks and roads can be enhanced by adding level crossings where they intersect, as well as road signs, fences, telegraph poles and so on. You can also import your own hand-made objects, including new locomotives and rolling stock, using models made in the VRML 2 or DXF formats.

3-D objects can be imported and used to add unique dynamic or static components to your layout.

Landscaping is easiest if the automatic landscape generator is used. This adds a randomly patterned overlay to the design where large blocks of colour represent altitude. When you switch over to the 3D View window, this pattern is turned into hills and valleys, and appropriate tunnels and embankments are added to accommodate the roads and railway tracks. If you don't like the way it looks, you can discard that terrain and generate a new one. You can also create your own bitmap pattern in a painting program (such as Photoshop or the paint module of AppleWorks), but this is a bit time consuming. There's a room light that floats above the layout that can be switched on and off, depending on whether or not you want to see the train and building lights, and it can be moved around the room as well to change the shadows on the layout. Different skies can be used, including a pretty starry night sky, as well as fog and water, and all this adds to the three-dimensional feeling of the model.

Terrain can be added on the fly, either using built-in templates or importing your own bitmaps.

Driving the trains is simple, and more a question of configuring the layout to get the moving parts moving than actually simulating the job of driving a train. A simple keyboard command can used to start and stop the trains, while the Management Palette lets you change the speed and direction of the train, and choose the direction to take at the switches. Besides moving and having lights, some of the trains make noises and puff out smoke.

Educational Value

Googol Choo-Choo 3D has significant educational value, particularly for children of about age 7 upwards. The techniques used to create the layout of the track are based upon two- and three-dimensional spatial arrangements, such as the alignments and gradients. To make complete ovals, straight and curved sections need to be used, but there are three different curved sections that needed to be joined to make each 90-degree curve.

Younger children will find simple, flat layouts easiest and have their work cut out for them dealing with the different curved sections of track and flipping them around to make curves going to directions they need. Older children will enjoy introducing sloping and elevated sections of track as well. While getting the upper and lower levels of track properly aligned and interconnected is tricky, the rewards of seeing trains go up slopes and vanish into tunnels make the effort more than worthwhile. Since Googol Choo-Choo 3D does not restrict you to having just one train running at a time, with care it is perfectly possible to have different trains running on the upper and lower levels of track.

Placing curved section of track requires choosing the right lengths and then rotating them as required to complete the full 90-degree bend.

Parents and teachers could easily slot Googol Choo-Choo 3D into lessons on geometry, technical drawing, and design. The connection between arranging the track and watching the trains run properly provides an engaging feedback that makes the lesson fun as well as worthwhile. The scalability of the problems possible, from simple flat ovals to complex three-dimensional loops with junctions and sidings, give the program enormous depth and utility for working with children across a broad range of ages.

Bugs

The only real bug I noticed was the occasional "flying building" when playing with the terrain. Sometimes, if I changed the altitude or depth of the terrain, a building that had been on the peak of some hilly part of the layout would get left in the air when the terrain was drawn down to a lower level. The solution is just to delete them from the layout and replace them with a new item of the same type, which will be redrawn correctly.

Sometimes changing the terrain can cause objects to appear in inappropriate places.

Conclusion

Googol Choo-Choo 3D isn't a train simulator for the Macintosh. It's a pity that such a program doesn't exist for the Mac (Windows users have a number of such programs to choose from, both commercial and freeware), but that's another issue. In many ways Googol Choo-Choo 3D isn't even a realistic model railway let alone a realistic train simulator: the graphics are cartoon-like and the control the user has over the train and the appearance of the scenery is limited. Despite this, Googol Choo-Choo 3D is one of the nicest shareware programs about and easily earns a four-bounce rating.

Because the accent is on ease of use rather than prototypical accuracy, any child comfortable with the Macintosh interface will find Googol Choo-Choo 3D a breeze to use. There are valuable design and mathematical skills to be learned from using it that place it a big step above the average computer game, and many adults will find the 'playing in the sandbox' feeling fun and entertaining as well. Even the more discerning model railway enthusiasts will enjoy the program too as a neat toy to play with instead of computer solitaire or whatever, simply because it is so easy to understand and yet rewarding enough to hold your interest. All in all, a shareware application well worth downloading and trying out, and it has to be said at $21 a heck of a lot cheaper than buying and building a real model railway!

- Dr. Neale Monks

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