
An open source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 - j_s
https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2
======
bbx
For all RCT2 fans here: check out RCT Classic on iOS [1] and Android [2]. It's
_fantastic_.

I thought the size of the device would be an issue, but I've been playing on
an iPhone SE with surprisingly great ease! The tap zones are small but very
well defined, so you almost never mis-tap. And the game is I believe bug-free
because it has never crashed!

The only real tricky part is designing underground paths and building rides
with an excitement rating above 6.0! But that's always been tricky…

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-
classic...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-
classic/id1113736426?mt=8)

[2]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobile.rctc&hl=en_GB)

~~~
beefsack
Whenever I see IAP on paid apps I'm almost instantly turned off.

Do you know what sort of nature they are? Is the game complete without them?
Do they nag about the IAP in game?

~~~
mikepurvis
Looks like expansion packs. From the Google Play page: "PLEASE NOTE:
Additional content for RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is available via In-App
Purchase, specifically the three expansion packs: Wacky Worlds, Time Twister
and Toolkit. The expansion packs are the ONLY content that require an In-App
Purchase and In-App Purchases are not used anywhere else in the game."

~~~
jwdunne
Actually, the toolkit as an IAP really pissed me off. That's the best way to
design coasters.

------
swang
Haha. I like this bug fix fixing an issue with people always vomiting.

[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/6434/files](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/6434/files)

~~~
wontoncc
I have encountered this bug the other day. Literally unplayable but fun
watching the guests vomiting all over the park.

~~~
stefco_
This might be excessively prurient, but I would love to see some gameplay
video or screenshots of what an unplayably vomit-filled park looks like.

~~~
sleepychu
> This might be excessively prurient

Wait what? What do you want those screenshots for?![0]

[0] -
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prurient&atb=v71-6__&ia=definition](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prurient&atb=v71-6__&ia=definition)

~~~
stefco_
Ha! Conflated "prurient" with "vulgar", though I'm guessing that mistake was
(hopefully?) obvious from context.

Thanks for the correction, made me chuckle :)

------
mathnode
For more open source game engines or re-implimentations check out:
[http://osgameclones.com](http://osgameclones.com)

~~~
corobo
If you're just there to browse working games do a ctrl+f for

<space>Playable

<space>Playable<space>Active

if you're after active playable repos

~~~
tete
There is a filter at the top and you can click on the tag.

However it seems that the tags are not all there. For example Freeciv is in
there ant not tagged as playable. So don't rely on it.

~~~
corobo
Hah that's my bad, I didn't even look for a search/filter function once I
noticed everything was on one page

------
maddyboo
I'm always amazed when I'm reminded that RCT2 was originally written in
assembly.

How would that much assembly code be organized? I've never seen a large
assembly project, but I would imagine something as complex as RCT2 would
easily clock in over 100k lines of assembly. That just sounds light a
nightmare to me!

~~~
ameliaquining
How much of the game was actually in assembly? I always heard that it was
mostly stuff like the guest AI that was in assembly (which is why you could
have hundreds of them running at once), and the graphical stuff was in a
higher-level language.

~~~
TylerE
ALL of it. Even the DirectX stuff was hand-written assembly. It's the same
core engine going back to the Transport Tycoon days.

~~~
duncanspumpkin
There is actually no DirectX at all in RCT2 source code. The game has its own
software renderer that outputs direct to the screen buffer.

------
Animats
_OpenRCT2 requires original files of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 to play._

It's the engine without the assets. Kind of like Open Rails, which is an open
source engine for Microsoft Train Simulator content. That's been out for a
while, and now others are writing content for it.

~~~
KGIII
I believe there is a Doom variant with the same requirements. It requires the
image and sound files.

I am not a gamer so I can't opine on the quality.

~~~
claudiulodro
GZDoom! It's amazing. By far my favorite game. You just need the original Doom
.wad files.

[https://zdoom.org/downloads](https://zdoom.org/downloads)

------
jonbaer
0AD still remains one of the best open source games, Blender files and all ...
[https://play0ad.com](https://play0ad.com)

------
glorkk
I recently stumbled upon
[https://github.com/citybound/citybound](https://github.com/citybound/citybound)
which draws inspiration from SimCity and RTC among others. The project is
still in very early stages, but I thought it was very interesting.

~~~
ChickeNES
If only it wasn't under a restrictive license....

~~~
Liru
How is the AGPL restrictive in this case?

~~~
vortico
Seconded. I can't think of any practical reason AGPL would be more restrictive
than GPL to the player of a video games.

------
loufe
Man what a great project, I've been only lightly following it for the last
year or so, but it gets me excited. I think I could see myself choosing this
as a first open source project to commit to.

Thinking now, I would love to see Dolphin style progress reports every now and
then from the project. I'm sure they'd catch a lot of buzz.

~~~
WhitneyLand
what are Dolphin status reports, and what about them is effective?

~~~
j_s
You can verify for yourself if you have time; the reports themselves are an
excellent resource both for their content itself and as an example to learn
from:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dolphin-
emu%20comments>0&sort=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dolphin-
emu%20comments>0&sort=byDate)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15381844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15381844)

>kanwisher: _Always interesting to read the release notes on this product.
They go into such technical detail, its a joy to read_

>overcast: _This comment is becoming the HN equivalent of "First!" on Dolphin
Progress Reports._

[https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/10/02/dolphin-progress-
rep...](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/10/02/dolphin-progress-report-
september-2017/)

------
satuim
An amazing project, My only criticism is the scaling, playing in 1080p makes
the UI really small, it does have scaling in the options but 1.5 uses
antialiasing and kinda ruins the pixel graphics.

Otherwise the best way to play this. I'm pretty sure you can also import
certain elements from RCT1 if you have it.

------
Sintendo
I continue to wonder whether this can be legal at all. It's pretty clear
they've been looking at the disassembled code, so it's not clean-room reverse-
engineered.

------
cmpb
Anyone interested in this may also be interested to know that there is a
pretty thriving subreddit for RollerCoaster Tycoon:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rct/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rct/)

------
PLenz
As a lover of the original I wish this project has the same success OpenTTD
has had.

------
squeaky-clean
I've never played this but have been aware of it for a while. Judging from the
Readme it sounds fairly complete? Like I could play out a full scenario in
this without missing features or crashing?

~~~
lucb1e
I also head of it for a while before I gave it a spin. I finally got around to
it about 6 months ago.

The game works really well. I don't remember noticing that anything was still
missing in singleplayer. Multiplayer... there was something, but I don't
remember what. Desyncs for sure, but I think those were always solveable by
just reconnecting. I'm not sure what, but there was a reason why my girlfriend
and I didn't play it. We played RCT2 a bunch, with one person watching and the
other playing, and OpenRCT2 with multiplayer seemed epic, but there was
something annoying in multiplayer, I just don't remember what.

By now, it might have improved again. I remember the development going really
fast before. And in singleplayer, I don't think there were any bugs that
prevented me from playing.

Give it a spin if you were (or still are) into the original Rollercoaster
Tycoon!

~~~
squeaky-clean
Thanks for the info, I definitely will. RCT and RCT2 are among my favorite
games ever made. I still load them up at least once every 6 months. Leafy Lake
/ Lucky Lake will always have a place in my heart.

~~~
lucb1e
That's one of my favorite levels too! Whenever I'm unsure which one to load
up, that's almost inevitably going to be it :)

------
antimatter
I wish someone did something similar for Populous: The Beginning.

------
hippich
I wonder if there is some universal way to increase DPI for SDL-based apps. I
am on linux and I can't read anything =(

~~~
sclangdon
SDL2 has SDL_WINDOW_ALLOW_HIGHDPI, which creates the window in high-DPI mode.

~~~
janisozaur
I have added poor man's scaling in
[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2280](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2280)
you can also look into the investigation lead in
[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2328](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2328)

~~~
VMG
Isn't there a way to preprocess the sprites and create 2x and 4x scaled
versions?

~~~
janisozaur
No, not yet, because of the way data is stored. When we move on to our own
save format it will be possible, I'm sure.

------
LusoTycoon
there's also a pretty nice Knights and Merchants remake
[http://www.kamremake.com/](http://www.kamremake.com/)
[https://github.com/Kromster80/kam_remake](https://github.com/Kromster80/kam_remake)

~~~
toomanybeersies
I remember playing multiplayer KAM a few years back. I don't know how they
wrote the netcode, but the game ended up terribly out of sync pretty fast.

It's a shame the remake has decided to go 3d and lose the original art style.
The original really has timeless graphics.

------
kartD
Nice, does this get rid of the shitty AI for the janitor? I can't tell you how
annoying it is to watch them do everything except clean the damn puke and
trash of the path.

~~~
jandrese
You can turn off mowing the lawn which will keep them on barf duty unless you
have a giant flower garden in their work zone. It's pretty much necessary if
you have a coaster with a moderate or higher puke value in the park.

Also don't forget that you can put bathrooms near the exit of an upchuck
inducing ride to keep the paths a little cleaner.

------
sitepodmatt
chris sawyer a hero on carmack's level. (sawyer is behind transport tycoon and
rollercoaster tycoon)

------
cr0sh
What I'd like to see is an open-source version of Disney's Coaster
game/simulation.

Or for that matter, any kind of roller coaster simulator. There's an excellent
Windows roller coaster simulator out there ("No Limits"), but nothing like it
exists on other platforms.

------
Avshalom
Well time to go dig out my CD case.

~~~
tylerjd
If you can't find it or it is too scratched, they also sell the full edition
of RCT2 on GoG for cheap
[https://www.gog.com/game/rollercoaster_tycoon_2](https://www.gog.com/game/rollercoaster_tycoon_2)

------
rusbus
"RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was originally written by Chris Sawyer in x86 assembly
and is the sequel to RollerCoaster Tycoon."

Back when things used to be more hardcore.

------
jtl999
/me wishes there was an equivalent open source project for Chris Sawyer's game
Locomotion.

Spent so many hours playing it when I was younger. RCT too :)

------
joering2
Anyone know what Chris Sawyer is up to these days?

~~~
jle17
He gave a pretty interesting interview early 2016, apparently he was focused
on the rerelease of RCT on mobile and enjoying life :
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-03-a-big-
interview...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-03-a-big-interview-
with-chris-sawyer-the-creator-of-rollercoaster-tycoon).

Seems like a humble person with a good life ethos. I like his philosophy with
the RCT license of letting others have a go at it since he already made what
he wanted.

I wish he would come back to make another game. RCT is so consistently fun so
well put together it always impresses me so many years later. That guy is a
hero of game design.

------
nebabyte
Anyone know what engine civ 6 uses? guessing it's some in-house one but am
curious if it has an internal name or something.

------
j7ake
I only have OS X does this mean I can buy the rtc2 (which is windows ) and
still be able to play it on OS X?

~~~
satuim
If you buy it from GOG you should be able to get the Windows exe, you can then
try and install it with WINE. That should give you the game files to import
into OpenRCT2.

~~~
janisozaur
There's innoextract for gog executables

------
kevinburke
I gave a talk about this project recently:
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUBYTcVjp7I

~~~
gnyman
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed it. Especially the later parts. Looking at your
GH it looks like it lost some steam? Did you continue on it and if so did it
produce anything "surprising"? As in, this should not really be a good coaster
but it has great score :-)

------
milkers
Which part is open source if I still need to buy the original game first?

~~~
sclangdon
I haven't look at this game in particular, but usually you need to buy the
original game to get the assests (art, models, audio, etc).

Even official open-source releases like the Quake series still require you to
buy the original game in order to run them.

------
Jdam
Please add a donate button, I would so do it! Loved the original game.

------
unixhero
Ooooh that's such a fun game.

------
kyberias
C compiled with a C++ compiler.

~~~
janisozaur
Hi, OpenRCT2 dev here.

We're gradually moving towards C++, compiling our current C sources as C++ is
the first step. Quite surprisingly too, we discovered how shitty a C compiler
MSVC is, because just changing the C code of ride drawing to C++ made a huge
performance impact there.

Reportedly, GCC also benefited from the switch, but the effect was less
pronounced there.

