TITLE: OpenTTD, or why Transport Tycoon Deluxe shall never die AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 2/09/2005 11:12:00 ip. ----- BODY:

OpenTTD's Homepage Well, many of you might have noticed the sudden craze in remaking old classics, Freeciv probably being the most well know. Or I just can't remember anything else for this occasion. In any case, I have decided to inspect closer one of my all-time favourites, Transport Tycoon's remake OpenTTD. First of all, let me scare the potential readers away, not that I have any but still. Transport Tycoon is a real-time isometric business game. Strategy game, maybe you could even call it some sort of "real-time strategy". It's from 1995, but it still has the most awesome VGA/SVGA graphics. They serve their purpose well, and give it unique look. It's unofficial sequel, Locomotion, tried to achieve something similar, but everybody probably has their own opinion how well they succeeded. And yeah, a cowboy hat wearing freak from Texas can't beat your manager having pilot glasses. Returning back to TTD, the game, as I said is a business game. Not a simulator, but you're still making money in this game. The money is gained by transporting various goods or passanger. (hence the transport in the name) You have to make routes, stations and trains and give them waypoints. This is the core of the game, the real honey of the game. The building is extremely intuitive after you get hang of it, and thanks to the volunteers who made TTDPatch (already included in OpenTTD), you have more freedom than ever before. You can make extremely complex railroad/maglev/monorail/etc stations, you can slap road over the tracks and add a nice small airport to the site of it if you wish. Of course, if this WAS the game, it would get really boring. Thank goodness there is more. The cities will interact with you, with your transporting and you can interact with them. They will grow, they will shrink depending they have suitable transport services to attract more people or a passageway to the next city. They will hate you to the guts if you destroy their forests by your manic building, they will love you if you manage to attract more people. You can also influence cities by advertising, by building statues, by funding new buildings or even by bribing the local authorities. Still not convinced? I wouldn't be atleast. Not yet. There are of course competititors (on the old TTD, there were only CPU's and very unstable multiplayer. Thanks to OpenTTD multiplayer is WAY more stable and user-friendly. If you're pondering why should you get OpenTTD, this is definetly one. Internet lobby for gawds sakes!) that try to be the next Transport Godfather. You can try to outrival them, or if you have enough cash, buy them out and merge their services with yours. The AI isn't the sharpest thing on the planet, as it does many silly things and sometimes so complex railroad tracks that no one could tell why the heck it couldn't just go straight line. Damn showoff. Combine everything above, add lots of little funny things and a 4 different types of worlds to wrestle on, include the greatest MIDI soundtrack in existence, and you have Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It's the source of many debates, if this is the greatest Tycoon game, compared to such hits as Rollercoaster Tycoon's and Railroad Tycoon's. Pilot glasses, for gawds sakes. So, let's take a look at OpenTTD. I did already mention that OpenTTD has more stabler multiplayer than Transport Tycoon Deluxe (First introduced in Deluxe, as far as I know). TTD's multiplayer only worked (note, worked. I hear it still suffered from lot of problems) in LAN, even though it should in theory work over Internet. TTDPatch tried to cure the situation, but oh boy if you had something else besides connection you were screwed. No more! Thanks to OpenTTD, everything works smoothly. OpenTTD also has introduced new features to the multiplayer, most noticably being Lobby and companies that you can protect with passwords. But that's not all folks, OpenTTD has more features. Another major feature is totally integrated TTDPatch. No more messing with .txt files to get that silly flag set up, no more third- okay OpenTTD IS a third-party program. I'm not sure if TTDPatch is still developed independently, but I'd suppose so. OpenTTD, as it's open-source, is being developed constantly so it shouldn't be a problem. So, all those goodies from TTDPatch is already included in OpenTTD, and you don't even have to download TTDPatch separately! How handy is that? I'd be lying if that was it. OpenTTD has new features of it's own too, but these I'll let you to find out. As always, there is the grayer edge to everything shiny. First of all, OpenTTD needs some files from the original (meaning you have to get the original, or the files in some other way. don't email me about them). Mainly the graphics, sounds and optionally the music. Secondly, I hear it runs REALLY REALLY bad in some Linux's, even if you have +3000 AMD64 with all the goodies. But there are some fixes around that, and since OpenTTD is only (latest stable) 0.3.6 as of now, we can expect those problems to be solved. There are some other issues too, but those are mentioned on the sourceforge page of the project. As of an afterword, I really like OpenTTD. Not only made the game fully XP/NT compatible, Linux/Unix/Beos/etc compatible, multiplayer compatible, it actually works properly. Man, if I'd get that for most of the (new and old) games I have tried in my gaming years, I'd be happy. TTD is one of my favourite games, and I have always longed to play it in multiplayer. Now I have the chance, but I only have to find the players. *sets up his trap* Also. The exams have ended. I'm happy. She tries to be unkind, but she knows nothing of our world... "BOOGIE!"

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