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OpenTTD 13.4 Released (openttd.org)
106 points by jandeboevrie on July 31, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 22 comments



Is it fun to work on such a project?


I once did some minor patches on the OpenTTD code base, but didn't go far, as I didn't like the code style. (This is no objective critizism, I have an idea where they came from, but just not the style I at that time wanted to deal with for a fun/side project)

I assume the maintainers take pride in it, creating a game which is liked by many is rewarding. Especially if you like the game yourself.

Depending on your day job it can be quite relaxing to deal with other problems.

But if you don't like the genre and don't like the codebase and don't like the people in the community and don't like ... it's probably no fun :) in the end only you can judge for yourself.

One thing is certain: It won't earn you lots of money and it's unlikely to be the reference for a new job. (And therefore takes a work aspect out of it, which to me is good)


I had plenty of fun to make an AI for it. My first software project that was used by others. As bonus, it actually worked quite well (called AIAI - Automatic Idiot AI).

Though as a programmer newbie I got confused by race conditions introduced by fact that game may be saved at any time, potentially leaving things in the middle of construction.

I still have plans to get back to it at some point.

-----------

AIs and many other mods were created independently, support for modding was beautiful.


So, 5 fixes in total... And this should be in HN why?


I agree. This is essentially trivia - and I’m saying that as someone who’s played opened for years.

Now posts about complex signaling and a station layouts? That’s interesting.

A minor point release with zero new features, only a few minor bug fixes? Not interesting.


Some HN users habitually repost software release announcements to HN, whether there is anything notable about them or not. And other people upvote it.

Personally I think such posts should be off-topic for HN, unless they come with a bit of commentary or at least something for us to read.


I feel software release announcements function as a way to "advertise" some relevant software on HN. Why should that be forbidden but Show HN be allowed?


Because it isn't news. OpenTTD is 2 decade old project that is mostly recreating a 30 year old game.

If this was 13.0, that'd be one thing, but the top change in this is "Fix: Setting tree lines drawn incorrectly for RTL languages (#11070)"

The page you linked to is also minimally informative to anyone who doesn't already know what OpenTTD is.

Who is this post supposed to benefit?


Look at the text on the linked page, it doesn't really advertise or show anything.

Open TTD is fantastic and I'm happy to see it linked on HN. It would be better to link to a page that says something interesting about the project.


Because they didn't revrite it completely after 1 year.


Time for a fork written in rust, right?


pfft, val is the new hotness


Because people vote it up?

And because OpenTTD often gets a positive recognition here.


Just to help people who never knew of it to discover it. The same like when people post links to Wikipedia articles about some curiosities every some months. OpenTTD is a masterpiece free game and can make some people happy.


Because people like this game and release announcements is how things get advertised on the front page.


The amount of fixes itself does not say anything about the importance or complexity of a release.


If you actually read the change log it’s very very minor stuff.


Still better than "bug fixes and performance improvements".


Easy karma.


[flagged]


> I upvoted just because you didn't like it.

Hmm, this sounds almost "edgy"? But then again OpenTTD is a lovely game and well worth the look for anyone who's one of today's lucky 10'000: https://xkcd.com/1053/

It has low hardware requirements, runs on many platforms, has multiplayer that "just works" and a rich scene of user created content, like alternate graphics/sound/music packs and plenty of maps, some of which are inspired by real world locations! It, alongside Jagged Alliance 2, is one of my go-to games if I ever want to play something on really low end hardware (think netbook), or just look at some nice pixel graphics.

For anyone with better hardware, I think that Transport Fever is a lovely 3D game, probably well worth it on a sale: https://store.steampowered.com/app/446800/Transport_Fever/ and the 2nd game in the series has perhaps the best UI in any game like this, period (OpenTTD one kind of sucks): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1066780/Transport_Fever_2...

Some might also enjoy the 3D but grid driven approach of Mashinky, although that is in early access (no planes yet, but development seems active): https://store.steampowered.com/app/598960/Mashinky/

And also there's a city builder game with industries and transportation called Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, where you build the city instead of letting it grow organically like in other games (placing infrastructure in the middle of an existing city was annoying in OpenTTD): https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...

Hopefully that adds to the discussion a little bit, thankfully it doesn't seem like this genre is lacking in games! But when you don't want to invest any money into it, OpenTTD is well worth a play, or to just serve as a nice entry point into the genre. There's also a Wiki with tutorials and such: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Tutorial/


I found Transport Fever 2 very disappointing. It dumbed down the economic model: businesses turn out cargoes even if you don’t carry them to market. It reduced supply chain challenges: the first game has interesting twists, like businesses whose output was halved if you didn’t carry less-desirable byproducts away. The second game simply eliminated this.

It also didn’t make any huge improvements otherwise and was really more like a 1.5. I recommend the first game over the second.


OpenTDD will always be my go to example for a product of love and good out of open source. People who love the game kept it alive and improved out of pure enjoyment.

Related. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine_recreation...




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