Simutrans Forum Archive

I've recently downloaded OTTD (yesterday), again. Been toying around with large maps, established some freight lines, even considering a little network.
But I didn't felt encouraged to do so given the lack of route of the passengers, so I got tired after 20minutes.

Also felt awkward the way to handle slopes, too much terraforming needed to lay a simple line because you cannot cut slopes easily.

The town growth I've never liked also, it only needing 2-3 serviced stations to boom. This discourages the approach of building a little regional station, because then towns won't ever grow.

Fast pace of time, the arcade feeling makes me nervous! Hehe, but I know there's a cheat to set back time (to play the same 5 years over an over if you wish

It's got a large but unfriendly community, been there, even developed nearly a whole train set (graphically), check out Japanset tracking table, for that matter. But there are great artist nonetheless.

Train routing! Made me feel so discouraged of adding a branch into a network, for trains could (and do very often!) get stuck or take the branch line looping forever.

The music, I absolutely love the music and the environment it creates.
The animation, there's movement everywhere, grass growing might seem stupid, but lets you feel a higher level of interaction with the environment.

The feeling of possesion regarding the vehicles. You can actually grab them and move them around, they're like little toys in your (virtual) hands.

The uniform style is a + +, simple but effective, tough I hate some certain  graphics (Steel  mill, for instance).

Lack of flexibility. This limits OTTD a lot, the grf support is a nightmare, and all those cool features of changing liveries with the years and the like, only hide the fact that there's a limited availability of vehicle designs. <--- This is GREAT disadvantage! No different types of roads, catenaries, no lights for cities, no no no no...

Multiplayer of course it's a +, haven't been tempted to play tough.

Menu buttons using images instead of text is something I like.

Factories have their pros and cos, for instance, instance factory production (factory receives, let's say, steel, and converts it into goods with a magic zzaaap!) is something I dislike much. But the ability to found your own industries and make the world your own is a pro.   

Silly stuff such as your face, company name, you HQ growing... might seem silly, but again, get you closer to the world you're playing in.

----

The overall feeling is that OTTD is more toyish and shiny, and appealing from the outside, while Simutrans is more serious but far deeper.

I wouldn't diss Chris Sawyer and the OTTD developers that easily, they've put a lot of work in their creation, just as the developers of Simutrans did. There are many things Simutrans has over OTTD (for me, THE thing = TRAMS), but still there are things OTTD has over Simutrans (two-way tracks anyone?).

Overall, I think that Simutrans' advantage lies not only in all the wonderful features I am growning to take for granted  but also the fact that the control over the code is higher and there is a higher chance of great features being added. I am quite amazed by some of the latest presents from the dev team to the player community (seasons, climates).

I meant corner tracks, of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Chris Sawyer's involvement end a long time ago?  From what I understand, the game was released at least ten years ago, and has hardly changed since then except for add-on-style developments.  OTTD is only a rewritten exact copy of Chris Sawyer's version.

Unless "they" are still doing development of features on the OTTD code?

Sorry for dropping in after all people have left the party, but had to spend a few exhaustive months on other stuff (my working group of three people has effectively been reduced to one person, that is: me), and still need to catch up a lot. I think not all people here know about the state of Transport Tycoon and its descendants. I have used them for years, before I came to ST. Although you could find better descriptions on the details, I hope I can give an overview without giving too much incorrect info, but actually most of it is my personal point of view and experience. I know that several of the ST developers and designers are familiar with TT's details and history, probably more than I am.


There have been Transport Tycoon (TT, which was quite flawed), TT+World Editor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe (which was a major improvement over the first TT, but still limited), and TTD's port to Windows 95 (not changing the game's behaviour at all). After that, the original makers had lost interest, and although a successor was promised for years, only the engine was reused.

Much later (after TTD's release), Josef Drexler started TTDPatch, which over several years (with support from several other people) provided a series of huge improvements to TTD, including bug fixes. TTDPatch hacks itself into the original game's executable to replace or extend many pieces of the binary code when the game is started (therefore, it's in Assembler). It's amazing what could be done that way, though some fundamental limitations of TTD (like missing destinations for pass., cargo etc.) couldn't be overcome that way. Website is: http://www.ttdpatch.net/, but the entry page shows only a very old stable version, you have to look around to get to the current beta version. TTDPatch still seems to be under active development, maybe cooled down a little since October 2006.


Yes, OTTD is a clone (under GNU GPL) of the original TTD, and is under active development (http://www.openttd.org/). It is a parallel effort to TTDPatch, but many of the features of TTDPatch have been integrated into it (means: reimplemented), so both show similar improvements over TTD.

Both OTTD and TTDPatch require the original TTD to run, the first only for some graphics (buildings) and sounds, AFAIR. But many more graphics have been added by other people, very similar to ST. Oh, and I think there was a separate project(?) for reverse-engineering and documenting the internals of the original TTD, which provided much information required for OTTD and TTDPatch development.

Why am I writing this, with so many words?
I have played and enjoyed TTD for more than a decade (mostly using it to build train networks). Without TTDPatch, however, I would have ditched it after a fraction of that time, because of the annoying bugs and limitations (and the graphics becoming boring). Since I can't spend all of my time on games (*cough* any more *cough*), I have chosen to allow only one never-ending game to eat away my time nowadays, and that is Simutrans.
Switching between *TT* and ST is quite hard or at least confusing, because you need to know a lot of tweaks (some could even be called undocumented rules) to become efficient or at least successful, and those tweaks are very different between the two worlds. This might be the reason why I switched - I knew all the tweaks (though it still takes a long time to build a nice network) - it wasn't really challenging any more. Since ST is changing quite fast, it remains a challenge (even more for the users of bleeding edge versions, like me).

Some things are similar among ST, OTTD and TTD+TTDPatch: many people have spent and still spend a lot of time, effort and enthusiasm on a program, which lets you create and form a small, nice world of its known, where you don't have to deal with all the ugly things that spoil the real world (or our perception of it).


(optional reading:)

One major improvement in TTDPatch is the handling of vehicle graphics, to support many more engine and wagon types for trains, and other vehicle types, with dynamically adapted wagon type and livery, depending on position within the train and the year of purchase. That allows for realistically-looking passenger trains (e.g. ICE, ICE3, IC, local trains, S-Bahn for German DB) and freight trains (different graphics for the same cargo type), without having to deal with many different wagons in the depot. Instead of the looks of a wagon, you can choose by technical properties (capacity, top speed, weight when empty, loading/unloading throughput). Raven wrote about the difficulties this and .grf in general causes for the graphics people.
Other changes from TTDPatch deal more with the less obvious, like getting rid of nearly all of that micro-management (with servicing and upgrading vehicles, accidents etc.), or with tractive effort, loading times, shared schedules, and many more.

As said, many of TTDPatch's changes have also been included in OTTD. The graphics enhancements in TTDPatch remain mostly hidden if you don't install add-on sets, also the standard installation's graphics of OTTD weren't so much richer than TTD, last time I tried.

This applies to both OTTD and TTDPatch:
Lack of pass./freight destinations means that there is no real incentive for building an actual transport network, but you can build as if there was such a necessity, so the game becomes more challenging. You can build a very complex integrated network, which, if you follow some "best practices", will work very well, and after some time means fun just by watching it in motion.
I have thought of ways to simulate destinations in TTDPatch within the given limitations, but since I'm only a wannabe programmer, it remained a concept. OTTD could be extended in the same way, but I don't know about the current state there, they might even work on real destinations.

Having been playing around with SimCity 4 (in the interests of research of course) recently I have to say that building in 3D (even in it's fixed viewpoints) has disadvantages (worst being that it's difficult to align heights sometimes).


I would imagine that OTTD would have about the same chance of becoming 3D as simutrans.

Which allows you to do what?
Anyway, some checks like this can/could be possible in simutrans

grf format (was) a hell, the way you had to align sprites manually and all -- But I bet this has been solved.

What was themain advantage was the randomization, multiple loads, animation, and all eye candy. But I bet there's a reason it hasn't been yet implemented.

The way you can compose vehicles with graphical overrides and all that? That's just hiding the fact that you can have only certain amount of vehicle id's.

The way a vehicle's livery changes over time? hmmm, this one would be good to see, since there were a lot of options.
It could change by itself from a certain year, it could change only if bought new (that is doable in simutrans just creating another object), and it could change if brought to the depot (for free, so not doable).

About consists: So, for simutrans, you want an ICE3? ok, you still need to make the 8 vehicle graphics (is an EMU-8, right?), and then forget about using callbacks 'what would happen with', you just need 16 lines with a constraint. Hiding non-buyable vehicles gives a clean view of the depot, do it doesn't really matter if it has a lot of certain stuff (like wagons exclusive to one emu or locomotive).

The way of refitting cargo, that's just another way to hide the vehicle limit. So, you need an early hopper for grain, goods, steel? You buy them right from the start. Being honest, how many of you would recycle a train -- Oh, seems like with a more modern locomotive, I've got one spare coal train, let's use it to carry goods.
well, certainly some categries of goods 'might' be carried in hoppers, in fact, wood is, but we have Categories, and what's better, different freight images for each loaded good, I used this in the JNR set, all types of crated goods have a different loaded image for the container wagon, two variations = two wagons in the depot. Neat

Now, there's a description box for each train in the depot, 'hey, use this for freight'. Cool!
But the constraint not needing a full name extension request was accepted, so whenever it's done, you could classify your trains into passagiere and freight, how? using tags, i.e: freightLocomotive_1 --> Constraint next =_f_
Then you need to give all wagons names the tag, that will be removed in tranlation anyway.

Oh, but the sets are not compatible, they need so much internal finetuning that it's a hell. It's completely anti-intuitive to have to build passenger wagons to an EMU head to make it longer, why this?

But the format is hell, all those bits, and having to count all the tyme, adn the sheer amount of time spent in rutinary things like changing a name! well, I bet some things could be automatized, but I felt it was like trying to go from Berlin to Rome via Madrid.

One thing I feel is better on ttd is the feeling that trains are yours, dunno why, perhaps because of the looks of the train info box, or the way you can move them around, stop them, reverse them, crash them.

THere's always features here and there that add to each of the games however. As whoami said, the tractive effort is a good one, since you are supposed to be able to create a locomotive that is powerful, can keep a high speed, but due too it's axle configuration can't really pull much, so takes it's time to accelerate.

But most of the credit goes to simutrans, line handling, try to play a game without clone convoi and lines, heheh, I tried to play TTD some time ago, and when I started building locomotives for an intercity line I soon discovered that if by any chance I needed to change stations, I would have to modify each locomotives schedule (this has changed in OTTD?I think there were some advances), arg!.

About going 3d? Lol. Even if they go 3d, how many years it's going to take them to create just a city set? Some sets are being drawn years! They need a coder, a drawer, coordination... And they don't work with each other!

You can dump pakjapan vehicles, industries, goods, and cities into main64, and it works.  
And no need to fight.

Other issue, factories, they close if not supplied, they have varied production... I know some people prefer to build on a steady world, but if this were switchable, some of the hyperactive gamers would be much more entretained by the challenge of profitable lines becoming not so profitable anymore, and all that.

To sum up, there are not a lot of reasons to move back to OTTD.  

Oh, I was just comparing

For example, the vehicle servicing and breakdowns, no thanks!

By the way, I made a patch for passenger destinations for OTTD: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14761&start;=640. I made also one for towngrowth an seasons, but still OTTD is way too easy to satisfy my challenge. Also the need to constantly upgrade you vehicles and network is quite boring.

Do you mean http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=9201&postdays;=0&postorder;=asc&start;=380 instead, perhaps?

OpenTTD might be a good game if you have a huge network as the breakdowns and servicing etc...  but can give you headache while also at the same time challenge the time. But if you have a small one you will find that some stations will stop serving, in such cases you must improve your service for the station to be reopen which is actually trying to boost your amount of traffic. From my past experience one line could have a 100 buses if not the station will closed, is liked every second there must be a bus if not the station will closed until your service has been improved. Hence I always get a line of buses jam up.   Well since I have my settings to have a time limit for each buses which most of them are 15 years, so I have spent a week to clear out all the old buses and then realise that the first replaced bus is already two years old. OpenTTD station is only limit to the end of each road, which means you only able to build bus stop at the end of each road not in the middle of the road etc..., so it actually can stop you from putting stops near monuments, attractions etc... which add on to their disadvantage list and the strange thing is even you put it in a deserted place, the passenger level and be the same as the ones in the city. It is fortunate that Simutrans do not have such thing or else it will be terrible

That is about their road transport, now when it comes to railway, it can be irritating laying down tracks as sometimes the grass will grow and land will grow higher too hence you have to keep lower down the land and have to quickly put something on top to hold the ground (if you plan to build tracks at a later part). While their curves between two tracks can be so sharp that it looks like a inverted V.

R = Rail Tracks

     R
   R  R
  R    R
 R      R  
R        R

Which it is so unrealistic in real life

While indeed their economic features might be a little bit better then Simutrans, as it features a button that you can able to buy the whole transport company (provided you have competitors mode turn on). I bought at least 10 companies and that is why I took so long to change all my buses to the new ones. You can advertise people to use your transport company and also able to see what is your serving standard in the city. The feature that your headquarter can grow can be a litttle bit stupid (do not meant to critise them) and you able to change your look and name which is humorous cause their faces most of them are very ugly. You can change the transport company anytime you wish too but not much company in realism change their name that often (I changed more then 15 times in just 1 day of OpenTTD Time). While sometimes City Road will block you from developing or build things hence you need to delete them but sometimes it won't be allowed as the City Authority do not allowed you, so that means you have to improve your service.

Well they also have accidents and incidents which are coded inside initially. One of the accidents is a UFO Attack, which is so unrealistic. While you can have monorail crashed onto buses (the monorail tracks actually means high speed track not really monorail), when the buses are crossing while the monorail came dashing, which actually I have caught that lots of times so all my bus routes have change to bridges (sometimes monorail tracks if the road is impossible).

After a computer reformat, I wanted to download it again but then something keep telling me to download something more nice which is Simutrans, Simutrans is a nice game with nice features and with some realism. So Hooray To Simutrans.

*A tribute to Simutrans*