[HN Gopher] OpenTTD 1.11.0
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       OpenTTD 1.11.0
        
       Author : app4soft
       Score  : 181 points
       Date   : 2021-04-01 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openttd.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openttd.org)
        
       | Lammy wrote:
       | See also: SimuTrans, a game written from the ground up with
       | direct inspiration from TTD. OpenTTD on the other hand was
       | originally a decompiled/refactored TTD, but that parity was
       | achieved way back in the late 2000s and since then it has gained
       | many more features that the original TTD never had.
       | 
       | https://www.simutrans.com/en/
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20101031184339/http://www.funkel...
        
         | Akronymus wrote:
         | To add to your comment: Widelands is amazing too. A settlers 2
         | clone/remake/inspired.
         | 
         | https://www.widelands.org/
        
         | Jenk wrote:
         | It's a very different game though. (Open)TTD is about mass
         | movement of resources with (often ludicrous amounts of)
         | goods/passengers to move in order to chase ratings and promote
         | industry and town growth at a very macro scale.
         | 
         | Simutrans.. you buy one too many buses, or one that is over
         | sized for your route (even barely) and your company is bust in
         | a week.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | Yeah, I don't personally care very much for SimuTrans either
           | compared to OpenTTD, but I felt it was worth mentioning since
           | some people might prefer its gameplay to the fairly
           | unrealistic default OpenTTD economy.
           | 
           | e: It is also worth checking out OpenTTD's Passenger/Cargo
           | Distribution options: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Pass
           | enger%20and%20cargo%2...
        
             | Jenk wrote:
             | Mashinksy[1] also worth a shout but the outputs are much
             | more limited than OTTD.
             | 
             | [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/598960/Mashinky/
        
       | RankingMember wrote:
       | I wish I still had the time to play this game for hours at a time
       | like I did when I was a kid. Good memories. That soundtrack was
       | fantastic. The composer performed it with real instruments
       | sometime in the past few years and it really brought on those
       | nostalgic feelings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFsrmLhC00
        
         | n3k5 wrote:
         | Hehe, YouTube tells me that I'd hit 'thumbs up' on that video
         | once upon a time. Probably put it on a playlist, too. However,
         | that link is now obsolete -- behold the more official version:
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/OuJy9oCdUns
         | 
         | N.B. apart from being more official by virtue of being on the
         | channel of John Broomhall himself, which has accumulated a
         | breathtaking 52 subscribers so far (correction: 53 as of now),
         | the audio quality is also better.
        
         | brandrick wrote:
         | Amazing, thanks for sharing. Loved this game sooooo much.
        
       | jokoon wrote:
       | Is there a tutorial to learn how to play this?
        
         | dragontamer wrote:
         | 1. Create a small airport in the two largest, and furthest away
         | cities on the map. EDIT: Larger cities have more passengers /
         | mail. You're also paid per mile, so the further away it is, the
         | more profit you make.
         | 
         | 2. Buy an aircraft, and send them to deliver passengers/mail
         | between the two large and far away cities.
         | 
         | 3. As long as this aircraft doesn't crash, you're now set to
         | mess around at your own pace. It delivers a solid amount of
         | cash. If the aircraft crashes (bad luck), either restart the
         | game, or take out a loan for a 2nd aircraft.
        
           | blibble wrote:
           | as a note they went some way to resolving the unbalance
           | nature of aircraft by applying a penalty multiplier
           | 
           | though it's still extremely profitable, vs. say the
           | infrastructure costs of railways
        
         | n3k5 wrote:
         | https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Tutorial/
        
       | calin2k wrote:
       | there is also openRA https://www.openra.net/
       | 
       | "OpenRA is an open source project that recreates and modernizes
       | classic real time strategy games, like Red Alert, Command &
       | Conquer, and Dune 2000."
        
         | willvarfar wrote:
         | Awesome!
         | 
         | I remember the small but vibrant modding community that sprung
         | up around Tiberian Sun, which came out just as people were
         | getting online.
         | 
         | And then, a few years later, Glest. There were so many mods and
         | factions for Glest!
        
           | midasuni wrote:
           | Annihilated.com was a major early community for me
        
       | jan46 wrote:
       | I love OpenTTD, the only game i played even more is probably
       | dunemud.net as i'm also a big fan of Dune ;-)
        
       | dragontamer wrote:
       | I got into OpenTTD when I realized that it was a major source of
       | inspiration for Factorio.
       | 
       | Some notes:
       | 
       | * OpenTTD is more "purely" about transportation. While Factorio
       | has very good train-logic (block-signals vs chain-signals),
       | OpenTTD has bridges, tunnels, terrain modifications, basic
       | signals, path-based signals, entry/exit signals and more. OpenTTD
       | Trains slow down going up hills and around turns: meaning optimal
       | train pathing requires significant thought into terrain flatness
       | and turn radius.
       | 
       | * OpenTTD also has planes, boats, trucks, and busses.
       | Furthermore: log trains can only carry logs, passenger trains can
       | only carry passengers. While the item-tree of OpenTTD is simpler,
       | the overall logistics of transportation are far more complex. Of
       | course, Trains are the most interesting part. (Boats have no
       | collision detection. Trucks have very low throughput and are
       | mainly just an early-game / simplicity option. Airplanes are
       | relatively simple: fill them up until your airports are full)
       | 
       | * OpenTTD train scheduling is far deeper than Factorio. Your
       | schedules can include target dates (ex: 30 days between TownA and
       | TownB, with 4 days target of loading/unloading time), as well as
       | multiple trains that share a schedule. Trains also require
       | maintenance and begin to break down if you neglect maintenance.
       | Learning to build high-throughput maintenance networks is part of
       | OpenTTD.
       | 
       | * Trains evolve throughout the years based off of technology.
       | Early on, coal-based trains are slow, clumsy and unreliable.
       | Eventually diesel trains pop up but are unreliable until the
       | technology matures (in contrast: coal/steam is at max
       | reliability). Then electricity (but diesel is now max
       | reliability, and electric is low reliable). Etc. etc.
       | 
       | * No "inserters", no "biters", no "defense". No blueprints, no
       | factory designs. Its purely a game about moving items from one
       | place to another. Turns out that in of itself is sufficient to
       | make a game around.
       | 
       | * You cannot control the placement of primary industries or
       | cities in OpenTTD. They're part of the "terrain" so to speak, its
       | your job to connect them somehow.
       | 
       | * OpenTTD automatically grows factories / towns / industry based
       | on how quickly you service them (aka: Trains grow things the
       | fastest). The better you service a town, the more passengers it
       | generates. As such, you INEVITABLY will grow until your network
       | saturates.
       | 
       | * As such: good players aim for extremely high bandwidth designs,
       | knowing full well that all aspects of the game will grow to meet
       | whatever bandwidth you design. (In contrast: Factorio only needs
       | to be designed for the level of traffic you ever plan for a
       | region. In fact, mines begin to run out of ore eventually, so
       | traffic slowly declines in any given situation, sans "infinite
       | mining productivity science".) The growth-formulas for towns /
       | industry seems a bit unintuitive at first: but know full well its
       | all about encouraging you to make faster-and-faster train
       | networks.
       | 
       | EDIT: * Latency matters in OpenTTD. All goods have a "rot" rate,
       | so to speak. Things like Coal almost never lose value, but
       | passengers and mail (two things you can transport) are extremely
       | sensitive to latency. Running partially-empty trains for lower-
       | latency is possibly more lucrative than running full-trains (but
       | having your passengers and/or mail wait longer).
        
         | mediumdeviation wrote:
         | > log trains can only carry logs, passenger trains can only
         | carry passengers
         | 
         | Not technically true since you can mix carriages, but like in
         | Factorio having mixed trains is probably a bad idea.
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/ff1q7j/trainmall_.
           | ..
           | 
           | Mixed trains in Factorio offer some awesome benefits if
           | you're a bit creative.
           | 
           | Especially because filter-inserters are cheap and plentiful.
           | So its very easy to reconstruct "main belts" from a mixed
           | Factorio train.
           | 
           | I've lost the blueprint for this 'Trainmall' I made a few
           | playthroughs ago, but the idea is to:
           | 
           | 1. Have a generic train loadout that can build any base.
           | 
           | 2. Have a small set of "standard" assembly machines that can
           | feed red-requester chests, so that construction-bots can
           | build any (reasonable mid-game) design you can imagine.
           | Remotely and automatically.
           | 
           | Carrying Electric Miners / AM1 machines is inefficient. One
           | base may require miners, while a 2nd base may require
           | assembly machines. By "assembling in the field", the singular
           | iron + gears + circuits (+other stuff) train can feed many
           | different bases without any reconfiguration at all.
           | 
           | Only made possible with mixed-trains.
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | > You cannot control the placement of primary industries or
         | cities in OpenTTD.
         | 
         | Please excuse the minor nitpick of your excellent comment, but
         | there is actually an option for founding new towns in OpenTTD:
         | https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Archive/Manual/Settings/Advanced...
        
           | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
           | I've discovered that the most fun way to play is by turning
           | industries off and sending only mail/passengers. Industries
           | give far too many opportinities to earn big, but towns are
           | small, and grow only when you drive people around, eventually
           | growing to extraordinary sizes. (best trick is to serve the
           | whole town with just one station, made by sprawling an
           | airport with bus-truck stations and extending it to cover as
           | much town area as possible.
        
       | whywhywhywhy wrote:
       | OpenTTD was a godsend when I only had a 15 year old laptop and
       | was visiting family with bad internet. Also if anyone doesn't
       | know OpenRCT2 also exists now and works great too.
       | 
       | https://openrct2.org/
        
         | alexktz wrote:
         | Same here. It runs on a potato and is a prime example of
         | gameplay over eye candy for me.
         | 
         | It's pretty cool that some of the community for this game ended
         | up on the dev team for Factorio, another graphically lacking
         | but deeply wonderful game.
        
           | tasogare wrote:
           | > Factorio, another graphically lacking
           | 
           | Not true anymore with HD graphics finalized.
        
             | alexktz wrote:
             | What I meant was it's not a Cyberpunk eye candy, but
             | lacking in general substance type of game. It's a fairly
             | basic top down 2d game still.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | If you liked Factorio but wanted something with a little more
           | eye candy, check out Dyson Sphere Program. It doesn't have as
           | much depth as Factorio, but it'll still scratch that factory-
           | building itch. It also came into early access only a couple
           | months ago, and the devs are actively improving it.
        
       | danielg0 wrote:
       | I've lost many hours to OpenTTD, so great to see more people
       | might find out about it now it's on Steam. To anyone who has only
       | played single-player, I would recommend trying out one of the
       | many servers - the massive networks some players make can be
       | crazy.
        
         | progval wrote:
         | Any tips to find a server that has just started yet has
         | players, short of convincing friends to start a game with you?
        
           | edejong wrote:
           | I'd join!
        
           | danielg0 wrote:
           | Some servers restart automatically as soon as it gets to the
           | year 2050, so by figuring out how long a game usually lasts
           | and when the current game started you can make a guess as to
           | when the next one will start.
           | 
           | The servers run by the OpenTTD reddit even have an online
           | status website with game logs (https://ttdredd.it/). I tended
           | to play there as whenever a game started, there were always a
           | half-dozen players online.
        
       | Jenk wrote:
       | It's hard to put into words what I think this game really excels
       | at. I've played this game since it was launched as Transport
       | Tycoon in 1994. Nothing else has anywhere near that kind of
       | longevity for me, and I don't limit this to games either.
       | 
       | Of course I use all kinds of "mods" now to enhance the gameplay -
       | notably JGR's Pack[1] - mostly for the programmable signals and
       | similar extensions, but the core game is mostly the same.
       | 
       | Simply brilliant. It deserves some kind of
       | award/title/recognition for it's.. je ne sais quois.
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/JGRennison/OpenTTD-patches
        
       | princevegeta89 wrote:
       | Great game. Picked the original Transport Tycoon up as a kid back
       | around 2000. However I've been following OpenTTD since my teens
       | and now recently started playing online when time permits. This
       | is a no-frills game and is a lot of fun in multiplayer mode.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-01 23:01 UTC)