
OpenTTD 1.10 - app4soft
https://www.openttd.org/news/2020/04/01/openttd-1-10-0.html
======
kragniz
In case anyone's thinking of running some multiplayer games in the coming
weeks and wants some more advanced economy metrics, I recently started writing
a set of patches to add a prometheus /metrics endpoint to the OpenTTD server
to use with a grafana dashboard:

[https://github.com/grand-central-garbage/openttd-
prometheus](https://github.com/grand-central-garbage/openttd-prometheus)
(warning: grim c++ code)

~~~
GauntletWizard
In a similar vein, I played a factorio game with
[https://github.com/afex/graftorio](https://github.com/afex/graftorio) \- It
was useful, but also un-useful as I ended up spending more time making pretty
graphs than they could possibly have saved me in noticing resource
bottlenecks.

~~~
kragniz
I think it's more interesting on an openttd server, because you're competing
against other players, so the graphs inform you about their actions and how
well you're keeping up with their economy.

~~~
deadbunny
Could that be classed as cheating or is this info already in the game?

Note: Not passing judgement if it is, just curious.

~~~
kragniz
It's added as part of the dedicated server, and available for all players on
the server. This kind of data is also available in game, but not as detailed.

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jabl
IMHO the annoying thing with (Open)TTD is the economics model.

In the beginning it can be a bit though, but once you get over the initial
hump you're more or less swimming in money for the rest of the game.

Secondly, it's annoying how small trains become uncompetitive later on in the
game. Yes, you'll have much smaller number of these megaroutes bringing in the
megabucks, but you have plenty of formerly cash flow positive routes that
simply can no longer cover their running costs. Yeah, maybe that mirrors
reality with rail transit, but dammit, I want to play with trains not run
trucks and buses.

~~~
hyperman1
A long time ago, I found a trick/bug/cheat in the original transport tycoon
deluxe: When a new opponent appears, buy a 75% majority share. Assume their
identity as a majority shareholder, loan the maximum you can and buy anything
you want, e.g. a ton of ships. Then sell the shares. The game calculates the
value of the shares on the opponents assets but forgets to substract the loan.

Net result is your shares went up enormously so you made a huge profit, the
opponent can't do anything except go broke as it has no more cash and spends a
ton on the upkeep of the ships. And you have a lot of ships drifting around
aimlessly providing some nice background views.

As a kid I loved this evil plan, but assumed it would never fly in the real
corporate world. Now I'm not so sure anymore.

~~~
Nr7
There was another bug in the original Transport Tycoon (not Deluxe) that gave
an even easier way to make massive amounts of money. If you built a tunnel
through the whole continent the price integer rolled over and instead of
paying a ton of money for the you actually received billions of dollars.

~~~
hyperman1
Oh yeah, the game was amazing in what it did with limited resources, but once
you started pushing it, plenty of interesting bugs surfaced.

Another fun one was trains drive 1 pixel of the rails before turning around.
So if an opponent has a huge profit making railway station, you place one rail
of your own at the end and stop a train just before it turns around. Next time
his trains come around, he crashes into yours and boom goes the money maker.

And then there was the fact that a train cant collide with itself. If it is
long enough you can push it through itself at a crossing.

There were others, but that's all I remember.

~~~
Zardoz84
I remember that I like bully the AI when is slowly building a railway or road.
I think that I like to do, was putting a depot with a cheap train and a
railway crossing his road. So I stop the train on the road and it become
blocked. or make the train to collide the bus/truck...

~~~
jabl
What I used to do with the AI is when it starts running a bus route you can
lead the buses into your own road, then cut it off. Then the buses will just
drive around in a circle forever, constantly breaking down because they never
get to the depot.

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mszcz
Oh, no. No. No. I vaguely recall the countless hours I've sunk playing this...
Please, don't drag me into this again... Why?!

EDIT: Just to be clear, the game is awesome and the comment is made in jest ;)

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
If you like this, you'll love Transport Fever 2.

Apologies in advance.

~~~
innocenat
I find OpenTTD just way more complex, especially with mods and patches.

I play TF/TF2 mainly for the look.

Edit: in term of the transport network, not in term of economy.

~~~
Delk
Are there mods or something similar for OpenTTD that makes passengers to have
a specific destination rather than just going (and paying for) wherever the
first vehicle takes them?

In TF that makes e.g. two-way feeder lines and lines with multiple stops work
reasonably, whereas I seem to remember those didn't quite work in Transport
Tycoon. It wouldn't, for example, make sense to have an interim stop at a
smaller town between two large ones because all of the passengers now somehow
decide the small town is where they were going to, pay only for that, and now
you'd only have a handful of passengers from the small town on the entire
train.

It's been a long time since I played OpenTTD, though, so things may have
changed. I think that alone is a game changer for me in TF.

What I miss most in TF is any kind of competition apart from private vehicles,
and having any economic modeling outside of your own operation with fixed
prices and basic town growth (which does work reasonably well). In that sense
it feels very much like a sandbox built for you to play in rather than a
dynamic world.

edit: clarification

~~~
garaetjjte
You might want to enable cargodist:
[https://wiki.openttd.org/Passenger_and_cargo_distribution](https://wiki.openttd.org/Passenger_and_cargo_distribution)

~~~
Delk
Ok, thanks. I'll try to remember that if I get around to trying OpenTTD again
at some point.

------
dang
Related and not as recent:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725375)

Recent and not as related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538715)

------
cheese4242
By random chance I installed OpenTTD a few days ago out of quarantine boredom
so I am thrilled to see a HN post about it.

I was building up a local rail and road transportation network then on a whim
I built a few airports and setup some plane routes between them. The revenue
from planes started outpacing my existing ground networks quickly. I then
built two large airports on opposite ends of the map and purchased a large jet
to fly between them. Before long I had more money than I knew what to do with.
A long distance air route between two large cities with a fast, high capacity
jet just prints money.

So I'm wondering, how do I get some more challenge out of this game? What are
some more fun things I can do? At this point I am making money faster than I
can spend it.

~~~
marti
I heartily recommend trying out some CityBuilder servers. You claim a small
town and provide it different types of cargo as it grows. It really tests your
TTD skills, as you need to provide constant streams of cargo every month to
keep the town growing.

There are probably several CityBuilder servers, but I mostly played on the
BTPro[1] ones. Everyone starts at the same time and the goal is usually
timeboxed to 3 hours, after which the server resets with a new map.

I haven't played the game for a few years, but these goal servers kept me
hooked for months.

[1] [https://openttd.btpro.nl/](https://openttd.btpro.nl/)

------
princevegeta89
This is such an amazing game. I found the original Transport Tycoon when I was
12 years old, and man I was blown away as a kid. I used to spend loads of time
on it exploring and growing cities, man I always used to get so attached and
involved in it. Never really got into multiplayer or advanced things like
mergers/railroad signals and other optimizations.

Fast forward to 2015, I checked out OpenTTD and it was a complete refresh. And
with multiplayer, I learned a lot of new things. It's too much fun dealing
with optimizations and competing with top players on the many different
servers. There will be a lot to learn given how closely it aligns with real
life transportation systems.

------
kissgyorgy
This is a really complex game, don't let the "old school" graphic fool you!

~~~
fennecfoxen
As far as I can tell, it's still the most complex railroad game out there. You
just end up with so many more trains than in any of the others.

------
headcanon
This is an excellent game if you're interested in building complex train
networks, which isn't so dissimilar to programming FWIW.

~~~
jonhess
That’s what I like about this game too. It quickly turns into a concurrency /
lock contention optimization problem if you build a very connected network.

------
WilliamEdward
One of the best game soundtracks in the world

~~~
Slartie
Oh yeah, I was phantom-hearing every single note of that jazz in my mind just
now while reading these comments.

------
iforgotpassword
When I actively played this with a couple friends and colleagues a few years
back we eventually wanted a slow version of this, where you could log in to
the game a few times a day and build a little or fix problems and then leave
it running again. So that it would be less of a real time game and that
sessions can last days to weeks, without you risking to go bankrupt because
you didn't immediately see that your network deadlocked.

As it is now, the one who spends the most time right after the game starts
wins by a huge margin.

Slowing down the tick rate works but looks silly. Making everything cost less
and yield less, as well as increasing the ticks per day works until a certain
point where things get too cheap for integers, eg buses not making any money
any more.

I think a 15x slowdown was feasible, but not yet enough for our taste.

------
xwdv
Any people here want to play multiplayer?

------
amadeuspzs
Ooof never before have I instantly lost 3 hours from one HN link. Awesome
blast from the past!

------
JohnTHaller
It's available as a portable app as well:
[https://portableapps.com/apps/games/openttd_portable](https://portableapps.com/apps/games/openttd_portable)

------
transitivebs
The nostalgia is real.

Here's a link to their OSS GitHub repo for quick reference:
[https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD](https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD)

------
TylerE
Now if only there was a decent UI mod of playing on modern 1440+ screens.
(Yes, I know there are mods that double the UI size but they make everything
super-pixelated)

~~~
ubercow13
There are various sprite sets for OpenTTD that provide much higher resolution
sprites for everything so that you can zoom further in and everything is still
rendered using unscaled sprites. You could probably use one of these on a high
DPI screen and use a higher zoom level by default.

~~~
TylerE
I'm talking about the UI, not the sprites. The buttons and fonts are TIIIINY.

~~~
snazz
Another commenter says that there’s a HiDPI option in the settings now:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22773440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22773440)

------
maxcbc
Great stuff. OpenTTD has been my go-to time-sink since I was 14-15. Great for
lockdown.

------
haolez
I love OpenTDD! The improvements over the original Transport Tycoon's AI is
insane.

------
contingencies
Has anyone tried the new games in this genre? Any significant improvements?

~~~
lapnitnelav
Mashinky is (way) more casual than OpenTTD but it's a really nice game made by
a solo dev.

The vibe is similar though and you can even take a break and ride your trains.
I strongly recommend giving it a try.

[https://mashinky.com/](https://mashinky.com/)

------
duluca
What would it take to get the executable signed? Windows 10 is giving me hell
for trying to run the installer. I reported it as safe, but I guess every
release would be subject to the same limitations.

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cchance
Super off topic, but why does this site look like its from the 90s?

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jonathankoren
I tried this game before, because I wanted Transport Tycoon, but with smarter
train logic, but I found this unplayable. I tried this new version, but the
problem persists.

The graphics don’t scale to modern resolutions, and so I literally can not
read the screen or see what’s happening. I have to sit six inches away from
the screen to read anything. I’ve tried wiki instructions before, but they
didn’t work. I ended up having missized windows and text.

Such a shame.

~~~
lambertsimnel
Have you tried Simutrans?

[https://www.simutrans.com/en/](https://www.simutrans.com/en/)

It's a while since I played it, but it's similar to Transport Tycoon and seems
to have variants ("paksets") with different levels of graphical detail.

