
Railroad Tycoon - smacktoward
http://www.filfre.net/2017/03/railroad-tycoon/
======
a_d
RT2 is one of the coolest "business simulations" of all time - the goal was to
make profits. The simplification was the "business" was achieved by setting
the game near the dawn of the industrial age - when there was more of a
relation between work vs output. The goal was to connect cities/companies so
economic activity could take place. The big obstacles were set at random (i.e.
train breakdowns) that added the element of fun. The game took the player
through "macro" settings like recession and booms.

My deep appreciation of the game also comes from the fact that the settings
were largely historically accurate. The big industrial centers (Albany, Denver
(for lumber)) were accurately depicted. An extremely engaging way to learn a
lot of early U.S. history, regarding how cities came into existence (answer:
based on commodities trade). Also fascinating to learn about tech evolution
(engines!)

Customary hyperbole: One of the best "business simulations" ever made! :)

~~~
buzzybee
RT3 did the series one better IMHO, since its economic model was more
comprehensive and calculated the costs of everything based on alternative
transport methods - building a line through the mountains could reap big
rewards, and buying up the businesses you were going to expand towards even
more so.

~~~
robbiep
I found RT3 a bit of a miss... there was too much 'blank space' and I thought
2 really outdid it in terms of the economic model

~~~
Declanomous
I've never played RT2, but my understanding was that RT3 was rather difficult
because they added the ability for goods to move independent of the railroad.
So a lot of goods that you would have been able to make money on in the past
moved down rivers, and away from rail lines, rather than sitting around
waiting to be collected.

That being said, I had a lot of fun playing RT3.

------
nodesocket
Somewhat of a competitor, but any Sim Tower fans here? I was obsessed with
everything Sim* but especially loved Sim Tower. Maxis was an amazing gaming
company and actually my first entry into Macs. My friends dad had a Macintosh
II, then classic, then LC, and I would spend hours playing games on them.

~~~
ObligatoryRef
I loved SimTower, although there were times it felt more like Elevator
Simulator.

(Also, tip for those starting a new game: 2x3 grid of fast food in the
basement at the start of the game. You're welcome.)

~~~
Nition
I read somewhere that it was originally an elevator simulator that they built
the game around.

------
DonHopkins
Railroad Tycoon and SimCity had a huge influence on Factorio, the vast scope
of which I can't begin to describe, but its trailer does it justice. [1]

About the game: Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories.

You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building
infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your
imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious
structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it
from the creatures who don't really like you.

[1] [https://www.factorio.com/](https://www.factorio.com/)

"This game is like crack for programmers." -kentonv [2]

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Factorio_

Is there a good* technological civilization bootstrapping handbook? (For a
real person stranded on some random Earth-like planet.)

*intentionally ambiguous

~~~
problems
Closest thing I can think of is this mostly silly poster:
[http://rebuildingcivilization.com/sites/default/files/travel...](http://rebuildingcivilization.com/sites/default/files/travel_back_in_time.jpg)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Meh. How does knowing atomic theory while neglecting basic ore --> refined
product chemistries useful?

------
Spooky23
Railroad Tycoon was amazing because as a kid I had access to higher quality,
more timely metrics of my simulated company than many real life companies do.

~~~
hamandcheese
To be fair, real life companies also aren't wholly contained in one computers
RAM :)

~~~
jlg23
That's only true if user [meta] data is a key asset or if one had one too many
SAP-koolaids. In reality, most real life companies can be wholly contained in
any $20 printer's memory.

~~~
edejong
Real life companies deal with ambiguous contracts, negotiations, networking,
quality control, delayed payments, brand perception, employee satisfaction,
trust, law and many other facets which are not easily simulated.

------
adanto6840
(Disclaimer: Developer on the project)

We recently release SimAirport via Steam's Early Access program. The game was
initially riddled with bugs, probably released about 2+ weeks or so too early,
but after >= daily patching over the last 2 weeks it's finally yielding pretty
solid gameplay.

If you enjoyed the old Bullfrog games, the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, or
Prison Architect in modern times (huge inspiration), then you'd probably
SimAirport too.

We're in Early Access, so go easy on us! You'll still hit bugs for sure, but
we [hopefully] don't have any major game stoppers at this point. There's no
tutorial, some so experience with similar games is helpful, but we've got a
lot of players with 20, 30, and way upwards of 40 hours in just the short <2
weeks since we initially released.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/598330](http://store.steampowered.com/app/598330)

~~~
SeanDav
£19 for a probably bug-ridden, no documentation or tutorials game, where I am
largely acting as a bug-finder for the game seems excessively expensive.

~~~
kolinko
I, personally, don't mind paying to support indie devs who try to get their
title off the ground.

~~~
SeanDav
Agreed, I have bought probably a dozen games in beta, but usually in the £5-15
range and more than likely, further in the release cycle. Usually the more raw
the game, the cheaper the price - I would have expected a game like this that
has been subject to recent, major bugs to be closer to the £5-10 level.

I will be keeping an eye on this one in any case.

------
suresk
Interesting story - love reading more of the stories behind some of the games
I loved growing up, especially the people behind them.

Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation
side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you
wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.

In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great
platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been
disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into
buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I
wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like
this, but I guess not enough other people would.

~~~
vasili111
Have you tried OpenTTD?

[https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

~~~
lucaspiller
Transport Tycoon (that this was based on) was also published by MicroPose. I
don't know if Meier had any influence on the game though. Pretty interesting
how much graphics improved in 3 years.

~~~
samlittlewood
IIRC - Chris had been promoting the project that became TT for a while. He
main work at the time was as a truly awesome 68k to PC porter. I remember a
colleague telling me something along the lines of 'Chris should stick to doing
ports, that is what he is good at. If he shows you some wierd thing with
numbers and simulation, just ignore it'

Um.

------
1123581321
Soren Johnson's Designer Notes podcast[1] mentioned in the article is
excellent and I've learned quite a lot from the long interviews, especially
Bruce Shelley's, Louis Castle's and Amy Hennig's. Currently he's releasing his
interview with Sid Meier, which looks like it'll end up being 5-6 hours in
length and is great so far. I really enjoy when in-depth discussions of niche
topics give me ideas about other things and that's happened many times while
listening to this show.

Those interested in the market/economic simulations in Railroad Tycoon might
enjoy playing Soren's game, Offworld Trading Company[2]. I'll just mention
that entire games rarely take more than 30 minutes, they are almost always
interesting ones, and it is fun without triggering compulsive play (for me.)

[1]
[https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes)

[2] [http://www.offworldgame.com](http://www.offworldgame.com)

------
keyle
My favourite Sid's game of all time is still the original Colonization. So
much depth, replayability, and overall fun. To me it's always been superior to
Civ because it's a clear road to independence.

~~~
smacktoward
Credit where it's due: while the original _Colonization_ (which I agree was
brilliant) was sold under the "Sid Meier's" label, its lead designer was
actually a colleague of Meier who would go on to become a celebrated designer
in his own right, Brian Reynolds
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reynolds_(game_designe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reynolds_\(game_designer\))).

~~~
sp3000
Brian Reynolds doesn't seem to quite get the credit for the impact he had on
the PC gaming scene. He was the lead designer of Civ 2 (in my opinion, the
best one), created Alpha Centauri, and later made Rise of Nations. I wish he
stuck to deep, strategic computer games instead of working for Zynga after he
left Big Huge Games (Mark Pincus was such a big fan of Rise of Nations he
hired Reynolds as Chief Game Designer).

~~~
TheGRS
Really love the guy's work, he has a lot of credits. What really saddens me is
that Rise of Nations had such a bad follow-up that they never continued the
series. RTS games always seem to have a tough time it seems, but I'm really
loving that turn-based strategy games have made a huge comeback in recent
years.

------
dmazin
By the way, filfre is probably the highest quality VG and possibly computer
history writer I've read. His archives are gold. He mostly focuses on
interactive storytelling, but that was most of gaming in the early days of
computing, so his histories amount to histories of computing.

~~~
Curnee
Could you recommend some specific articles of theirs worth reading?

~~~
dmazin
Yes!

Though it's not his domain and is a one-off like Railroad Tycoon, I love the
article on Sim City: [http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-
wrights-ci...](http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights-city-
in-a-box/)

The history of the TRS-80, whose place in PC history I did not appreciate
before reading: [http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-
trash-80-part-1/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-1/)

There are many more interesting articles he lists on his own best-of list:
[http://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/](http://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/)

------
clock_tower
If you're looking to learn the basics of the stock market, play Railroad
Tycoon 2 -- I can't speak for the original (didn't play it), but the sequel at
least can teach you quite a bit.

~~~
slg
The stock market aspects of the Railroad Tycoon franchise were what set it
apart from all the other "Tycoon" games to follow. It allowed you to play the
game on a variety of different levels. You could just focus on building a
railroad network. You could focus on building a successful business. Or my
person favorite, you could focus on building a personal fortune without any
regard for the other two objectives. I spent many an hour as a kid trying to
build a fortune be strategically destroying my virtual businesses.

~~~
mikeash
It's a great illustration of why insider trading can be so damaging. There
were so many ways to be extremely destructive overall, but which you could
turn into huge amounts of money for yourself by trading your own stock
appropriately.

~~~
shostack
Can you give an example? Would you do something like, short your stock and
then tank your business?

~~~
mikeash
Exactly like that. And you could usually arrange it so the tanking was
temporary, so you could then cover your short, buy a bunch of extra stock, and
then bring the business back to life. For example, you could stop all your
trains for a while, let the lack of revenue cause massive losses, then once
your stock price was sufficiently low, restart the trains and resume business.

------
forgotpwtomain
I'm astounded by the amount of content on this site:
[http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/](http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/)

~~~
ralphael
If your into retro gaming or even just gaming history its well worth investing
time in it. He's done an amazing job and I find myself looking at the blog
notes for magazines and articles to do further reading on.

------
dddw
it's great, and lovingly being recreated:
[http://www.openttd.org/](http://www.openttd.org/)

~~~
jcranmer
Having played both Railroad Tycoon II and OpenTTD, I must say that I prefer
RT2 immensely more. (I've not played the original, so I can't comment on its
quality).

Some of the advantages of RT2:

\- Less tedious micromanagement without need for signals (although it does
mean there's no way to build a 4-track mainline in RT2 that works like you can
in OpenTTD).

\- The stock market and competitive play is more fun. I never found the AI of
OpenTTD fun, except when I was bored and wanted to watch their cars get plowed
by my trains.

\- The economic aspects of RT2 were more enjoyable. You can buy industries,
for example. It's also laid out more clearly how the economy works (you can
turn off these features to make the game easier, but it's much less fun).
There's also lots more type of cargo (ship iron and coal to a steel mill to
make steel, rubber to a tire factory for tires, the steel and the tires to an
auto plant to make cars which go to the cities).

\- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.

~~~
Macha
\- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.

^ You can install GRF sets for OpenTTD that have even more locomotives than
railroad tycoon. NARS or UKRS2 have extremely expansive sets of trains
compared to the small selections of bland name trains the base game comes
with. Also NUTS has a set optimised for gameplay over realism, if you want to
go the other direction.

------
Spakman
Did anyone else play A-Train (looks like it was actually A-train III)? I loved
it but have never found anyone else who has even heard of it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train)

~~~
bubblicious
Just logged in to comment on this game which brings back so many memories:
transporting materials and passengers, crafting a complex network of railroad
while also purchasing long term investments like apartments etc. And it
required you to be patient, but when that first road appears it's like magic!!
:)

Loved that game, probably didn't understand everything as a teen playing this,
but i loved it so much. Interestingly I never met anyone else who played that
game! :)

Cheers!

~~~
Spakman
Ah, that first road! I had forgotten all about that feeling :-)! I can still
vividly remember the tick-tick-ti-ti-ti-tick-tiiick noise of the trains.

I was probably a bit too young to understand all the complexities but have
such happy memories of it too. Happy that you had the same experience :-)!

------
flippmoke
If there was ever a game that encouraged me to become a developer during my
youth it was definitely Railroad Tycoon. I remember being so curious how
everything might have worked within the game with out knowing a thing about
programming and it was definitely an inspiration to me in so many aspects.
Games were my avenue for learning DOS and later my learning to write Software.
I can't imagine what my life would have been like with out so many great early
game developers.

------
hartror
We build planning and scheduling software for railroads and I continually
think back to playing this game as a kid. The concerns are unsurprisingly
similar but the level of detail you go to in managing a real railroad is
obviously far greater.

For example we delivered a piece of software to manage where to park trains
during storms so they don't blow over.

[http://biarrirail.com/](http://biarrirail.com/) btw.

~~~
mikerathbun
I hope you are using Ruby on Rails for your backend.

~~~
hartror
Unfortunately not!

------
llcoolv
A really sweet one is Transport Fever. It is however more like of an
electronic model railway and less of a game - there is no competition,
scenarios (pretty much a tutorial actually) are very straight forward and it
is difficult to go under. However, the beautiful part is modelling the
transport network and the detail of it, however I was mostly fascinated by the
city growth and development.

------
fsiefken
A great board game with a train theme is Steam, it's available for iOS and
Android and next week for OSX, Windows and Linux as well. The good thing is
that you can play it as a boardgame as we, competing with others face to face
as to who can lay the tracks and transport goods most efficiently.
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/595930/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/595930/)

~~~
falsedan
Is it longer or shorter then a quick game of _1830_?

~~~
fsiefken
Shorter, as it doesn't include a stock market, but 1830 (msdos) is a good one
as well (you probably know the java 18xx). For other train board games with a
pc adaptation, see Eurorails (crayon type) and Wabash Canonball (aka Chicago
Express). There's also American Rails (which imo is better) which I'd wish
there was an AI implementation for.
[http://www.railgamefans.com/ebp/](http://www.railgamefans.com/ebp/)
[https://www.engadget.com/2010/10/07/app-review-wabash-
cannon...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/10/07/app-review-wabash-cannonball-
rolls-in-with-a-near-perfect-score/)

------
robohamburger
If you find this interesting, the interview with him at idlethumbs is really
good: [https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-
meier-...](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1)
(looks like its one of the sources for this post). I think the portion related
to railroad tycoon is in the second part but its worth listening to all of it.

------
bbarn
All this love of microprose games and no mention of Silent Service? This was
the first "choose your own path" kind of game I ever really got into.

------
sevensor
Oh, Railroad Tycoon! The first game that really hooked me. I still remember
the feeling of utter betrayal when I first tried cutthroat competition and
lost a station in a rate war. Then the absolute glee of stealing a valuable
station from another line on my next play through. I could go on for hours,
but instead I'm going to fire up DosBox now.

------
cbanek
Absolutely love this game. I found a dosbox image that runs on mac, and still
guiltily play it on occasion. :)

------
flashmob
Building railways is kind of like visual programming.

The Railway orientated programming comes to mind
[http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-
part2/](http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/)

------
scribu
For anyone interested in a minimalist track laying game, I've had a lot of fun
with Mini Metro. It's available on both iOS and Android.

The goal is to transport as many passengers as possible, so it has a little
competitiveness in it.

------
steven_pack
I don't what version I had, but this game was my introduction to Jazz.

~~~
qw
Are you sure you are not thinking about Transport Tycoon?

~~~
steven_pack
Erm - why yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. :|

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW5MP4DFcYg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW5MP4DFcYg)

~~~
acdha
Amusingly, I was going to comment that RT2 worked as my personal introduction
to the blues – I remember my dad walking by and commenting on just how good
the soundtrack was.

------
fransporter
Someone please please please make a modern refresh of transport tycoon. I
still love that game but would love to see it brought up to date in the style
of cities in motion and with more depth added.

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
OpenTTD is basically Transport Tycoon, with added support for plugins/mods
etc. Its actively maintained with a good community following.

Not quite a modern refresh, but theres enough new stuff to keep you going if
you haven't played it yet.

------
loydb
My early 20s were heavily Microprose. Silent Service, Red Storm Rising,
various flight sims, and Railroad Tycoon consumed huge blocks of time. This
article was a great look back.

------
Unbeliever69
I don't know if it is just the MIDI, but the intro tune reminds me of the
intro music to M.U.L.E., one of my favorite games of all time!

------
based2
Très Grande Vitesse

------
frik
Additionally to RT2, I have found memories of _Industry Giant 2_. Does anyone
remember this 2002 game?

What are Bruce Shelley (RT, Age of Empire), Rick Goodman (Age of Empire,
Empire Earth), Chris Sawyer (Transport Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc) and
Geoff Crammond (Sentinel, Grand Prix 1-4) doing lately?

~~~
rincebrain
Bruce Shelley was working for BonusXP on The Incorruptibles until it released
in December 2015 [1]

Rick Goodman's last game was in 2006 (though apparently he was prototyping one
in 2012 [5]), and the only thing I can obviously find is that he was on the
board of (and co-founded?) 8D World, a virtual world for Chinese children to
learn English, but their site doesn't load. [2][4]

Chris Sawyer appears to have been working to port RCT to mobile (came out
December 2016) [3]

Geoff Crammond hasn't apparently been associated with a game since 2010. [6]

[1] -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3w9vkr/i_am_bruce_she...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3w9vkr/i_am_bruce_shelley_game_designer_ive_worked_on/)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Goodman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Goodman)

[3] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Sawyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Sawyer)

[4] -
[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=45091725&privcapId=45045850)

[5] - [http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is-
ric...](http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is-rick-goodman-
doing-today.78856/)

[6] - [http://www.virtualr.net/catching-geoff-crammond-
interview](http://www.virtualr.net/catching-geoff-crammond-interview)

