Fancy Yourself a Tycoon? OpenTTD 1.4.0 On Its Way 106
phmadore writes "Version 1.4.0 (.TAR.GZ)of the most intellectually challenging OSS game out there (IMO), OpenTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe), is near at hand. Of course, most servers are still running 1.3.3 (the last stable, major version change, from November/December-ish). N-Ice.org typically waits until a stable release has been around for a minute to implement the changes into its online client (which is as yet unavailable as a binary for Linux; it varies only slightly from the official release and non-Windows users are able to interface with it no problem), but there are exciting developments coming down the pipe for OpenTTD. 'The new SSE blitters were also further improved. Not immediately noticeable but useful in the future, are the new string codes to display amounts of cargo in NewGRFs. For our Korean users, the separators in numbers were fixed.'
Here is some information on the history of OTTD."
It's OK, but... (Score:5, Informative)
For me OpenTTD has lost a lot of the fun of the original TTD. The graphics and music are all replaced and I just prefer the original graphics and music. The signaling is now way more complex and while I'm sure that makes the train tracks much closer to real life, it makes it a lot harder to get into the game than the original by Chris Sawyer. I also think that unfortunately the development team have an extremely stubborn attitude to porting nice new features over to the main codebase. Last I checked, the copy/paste functionality wasn't ported in because "it's cheating". Sorry, no it isn't; it means you don't have to keep creating the same boring complex junctions over and over again.
Re:It's OK, but... (Score:5, Informative)
For me OpenTTD has lost a lot of the fun of the original TTD. The graphics and music are all replaced and I just prefer the original graphics and music.
They're not "replaced", they're just not the same. If you own the original TTD, you can use its data files with OpenTTD. If not, you don't have the right to use those graphics anyway.
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I prefer Simutrans. Passengers having specific destinations is essential to a transport game. It's what makes it interesting and challenging.
One of OpenTTD 1.4.0 new features is CargoDist (Score:5, Informative)
*The* big new feature of OpenTTD 1.4.0 is CargoDist [openttd.org], i.e. exactly that - passengers and cargo having specific destinations.
If only the summary wouldn't be just a jumbled tangle of text... :-(
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I totally understand passengers having specific destinations, but cargo? Does the lumber care what sawmill it goes to? I guess it does make sense if you're pretending to be Amazon delivering specific packages to specific customers, but for bulk cargo as I seem to remember TTD being mostly about it doesn't seem to make much sense.
Re:One of OpenTTD 1.4.0 new features is CargoDist (Score:4, Informative)
It makes total sense for me, if you realize that your job is to be just a transport company, not a redistribution company.
Up to now (and of course you can still stay in that mode in the new version), you would just take the lumber from a forest and deliver to whatever sawmill. But in reality, you should deliver it to whatever sawmill the forest has contract with! I.e., sawmills will make contracts with forests and use you just as a transport company - then your job is to get the cargo from the correct forest to the correct sawmill.
(An important playability factor is that only reachable destinations are considered. So if you just created a dedicated line between two industries, you will not be asked to transport the cargo elsewhere.)
(N.B. I didn't try the cargodist mode yet so I'm not 100% sure if it works the way I'd suppose it works. I'd also expect it to allow you to enable it just for passenger+mail, as these are really special cases compared to other cargo.)
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Second, I totally think this is going to bring a new fairness to multiplayer games. At present, one of the most annoying and quick strategies to dominate a game is to just build a train line from one end of the map to the other. With CargoDist, they're going to have to have a need for going across
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This is a simulation and, as in RL, cargo as such does not care but those who sent it and those who paid for it do care. So if sawmill A paid forrest X for 400 tons lumber then the sawmill very much wants to get those 400 tons of lumber.
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This is a simulation and, as in RL, cargo as such does not care but those who sent it and those who paid for it do care. So if sawmill A paid forrest X for 400 tons lumber then the sawmill very much wants to get those 400 tons of lumber.
And then there can also be points based on efficiency and timeliness of delivery and so forth. It will be awesome.
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SimuTrans [simutrans.com] has had this for quite a while already. A great reinterpretation of Transport Tycoon.
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Download all the old MIDIs and enjoy the sweet, sweet grooves:
http://www.transporttycoon.net/music?recording=1 [transporttycoon.net]
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Never played OpenTTD or TTD yet but this reminds me of the pains of playing doom 1 and 2 in linux. I can't get music, except with the braindead "freepats" midi, which is low quality, entirely Free and Open.. and isn't even complete enough to play doom music, no drums or almost no drums and some other instruments are lacking.
So the only workaround I have for now is to run the original games in Dosbox, where I get 320x200 and some slowdowns, but at least the midi goes to a synthesizer with a huge soundfont.
I'
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The whole reason I stopped playing is because of a lack of copy and paste. There was an addon for it a while ago but it's not there anymore that I can see. I don't want to create the same station over and over again, and how on earth is it cheating to not want to?
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Is OSS gaming supposed to remain at 1999 levels?
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Why isn't at least the code free? (Score:2)
More costs (Score:2)
Coopetition (Score:2)
Re:Dude. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, I wish OSS gaming would reach 1999 levels. It is more at 1988 levels.
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Dude, I wish OSS gaming would reach 1999 levels. It is more at 1988 levels.
Shouldn't the word "1999" be italics in your post instead of the word "reach"? Just sayin'.
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Nope. He's replacing the word "remain" from the quoted post.
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Graphics-wise it's a matter of taste. As for gameplay complexity, it's actually the other way around, with proprietary games becoming more and more dumbed down. For instance, the original X-Com vs the 2012 version.
Having played both, I very much enjoyed the new version. The old version had some really annoying unit inventory management and building multiple bases that constantly needed defending lead to very many "preserve the status quo by saving the base" missions. Once in the Enemy Inside expansion was enough, the AI is just not good enough that defending is fun - they just throw massive waves at you to make it difficult. The only real downside I find is that despite all the fuss about SHIVs and MECs, upgrades hel
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I fail to see what it is about being Open Source has to do with anything. I think you just want to piss on open source, which is fine, but in this context it means nothing.
This is a free port of a game originally made in 1999. It was built as a clone of that game. Do you expect just because time has passed that the game should be reimagined?
The devs do this in their free time as a hobby. Being open source or not has no bearing on the points you are trying to make. Just because the game is old doesn't mean a
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You just suck. In general.
Nothing you have said yes has any correlation to a short coming of OSS.
You also contradict yourself. "Open source-ness is simply not a quality factor" .. there we go! It has no meaning of quality whatsoever. It is a software engineering description that doesn't mean a thing. You have warped it into some sort of argument that does not exist.
Congrats, you entirely miss the point of this hobby project. Care to embarrass yourself further?
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Are you talking about a game whose launch was so horrible that the CEO was fired by the board of directors?
The graphics are cool in SC 2013, but as the pinnacle of modern sandbox games it is not. Perhaps the game you were thinking of is Minecraft?
What would Chris Sawyer think? (Score:5, Interesting)
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IIRC, it pisses him off. I think he has an artistic view of the original game, and he views the modified version as a (negative) alteration of his creative vision. I think he said it messed up the simplicity of the original, but I might be putting words in his mouth. :)
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Artists should support free speech (Score:2)
Artists should support free speech even when its their speech that is being commented upon.
I don't know what Sawyer makes of OpenTTD and I see no pointer to a source for the parent's recollection. As I understand it, OpenTTD is currently licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2. I'll also take OpenTTD's developers word for it that their work is a newly-written program (the fruit of a 2003 reverse engineering effort by Ludvig Strigeus, according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]), not an illicit derivative of code
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If you poke around in the OpenTTD forums you will see where one or two of the developers apparently reached out to Sawyer through his publicist and were told that he was not happy with their project. It's not from a public source like an interview or anything like that.
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Artists should support free speech even when its their speech that is being commented upon.
That's not really how art or artists work... Good art is nearly always the product of a strict hierarchical or one-man's-vision approach to a creation. And OpenTTD is a bit more than just 'inspiration' isn't it... the interface and graphics and copied *exactly*, with extra features. It might be entirely legal, but we're not jumping off from inspiration to new game, we're copying the first game and extending it.
Also, it's not a matter of free-speech, he's not tried to shut the project down, he just doesn't l
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"Good art" strikes me both a non-sequitur here and remarkably subjective. I certainly would never disqualify folk art from being "good" because folk art is highly derivative of others work.
Copying things exactly in this context is a side-effect of using a medium (computer graphics) in which visual items can be duplicated precisely. If one is uncomfortable with that fact, one should consider choosing another medium. This also doesn't help identify the meaning of what I asked about earlier. I also fail to see
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Steamer World (Score:1)
What the hell is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is going on in the summary for this article? What is OTTD? Want to tell the rest of us? Why does it immediately start talking about "most servers", as if I should know what those are? What the fuck is an SSE blitter? NewGRFs? Gosh, I'm so glad to know that Korean number separators were fixed. I can sleep well tonight knowing that.
No, don't waste your time explaining. I spent too much time on this already. The whole thing is written like it's by insiders for insiders. But then again insiders already know about this and don't need an announcement on Slashdot.
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It's better than a 30 year old video showing of the first Macintosh.
I've seen that before.
Also it used to be news for nerds. So I guess it's not that weird.
There once was a train game called Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Since I've had an Amiga I know that a blitter is used to move (or modify) part of the memory. Since I'm old and nerdy enough I know that SSE is additional instructions for x86 processors. Hence I would assume it have some improvements in copying or modifying memory fast. But I don't know for sure
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Re: Trash (Score:1)
And someone points out that someone says that in every article. Which makes your comment just as worthless
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When the next story is "Irfanview new version available", then you can tolerate it and I'll be gone.
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Yup - right up there with Linux Distro with Quarterly Releases Does Another Quarterly Release! But, we seem to have no end of those...
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If you don't understand the words "Wrong Venue", then I can't help you more than that.
Slashdot isn't a place to announce every piece of software that pseudo-releases a pseudo-new version. Certainly not some niche re-make of an old, niche game. And certainly not without some real "news" to it. If this new version was a complete 3D remake, had caused controversy, forked the code, split the team, and we have links to all that... it would JUST about qualify for it.
And, as it happens, I moved on from OpenTTD
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This isn't even an announcement that a new version has come out... it is a pre-announcement that a new version is expected to come out at some point in the future.
How about Open Source Tycoon? (Score:1)
You play the role of a billionaire trying to monetize your own linux distro. You must plan for and defend against attacks by open source zealots and patent trolls.
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the noai really kills the game (Score:2)
The decision long ago to not support a default ai means you are at the mercy of the community. This means that each ai available (you have to download them sight-unseen if you want to play single player) ranges in quality from crap to passable. Each one was lovely crafted until their creator got bored, so you can imagine that many of them don't support later added features like load/save, which are essential to long-running games.
The ais are also typically balanced to blow you out of the water in temperate
Fullscreen doesn't work in latest OSX (Score:1)
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@mraeormg I use it in Ubuntu and I've never had a need for full-screen mode. But anyway, have you submitted a bug report?
Re:Fullscreen doesn't work in latest OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
They've also had an announcement on the front page of their website for at least a year asking for help with the Mac port. If they don't own Macs and aren't familiar with the platform, and can't test, I don't know how you think they can magically fix these things.
This is open source, not charity.
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If you look on http://www.openttd.org/en/abou... [openttd.org] you'll see the list of supported platforms:
* *BSD, especially FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
* Linux
* Solaris
* Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7
Notice what's missing from that list? You should be glad it works at all!
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That assumes that the devs have the time and interest to learn the ins and outs of a whole new platform. For software developers, free time is often a more precious commodity than cash. But yes, it would certainly be more productive than whining on a random internet forum.
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Is it hard now? (Score:1)
I used to play a lot of TTD and OTTD, but it is way too easy to gain money. There is almost no challenge to be had and once you master signaling the profit margins are ridiculous that you will find hard to be actually out of money to build new stuff.