[HN Gopher] OpenTTD 1.10
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OpenTTD 1.10
Author : app4soft
Score : 231 points
Date : 2020-04-03 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openttd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openttd.org)
| kragniz wrote:
| 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
| (warning: grim c++ code)
| deadbunny wrote:
| This is fantastic. Now I need this for Rimworld...
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| In a similar vein, I played a factorio game with
| 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.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Argh. Just what I don't need. _More_ things to make me want
| to play Factorio. The factory must grow....
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I wanted to be productive this weekend. Shit
| kragniz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Could that be classed as cheating or is this info already
| in the game?
|
| Note: Not passing judgement if it is, just curious.
| kragniz wrote:
| 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.
| m4rtink wrote:
| AFAIK many OpenTTD online games are cooperative with many
| players building a very complex transport networks, usually
| with some objective. Like all with steam locomotives, bus
| network with transshipping, etc.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| I think you have won TTD :)
| rantwasp wrote:
| hold on. you need to feed these metrics into a slack bot that
| tells you how much you suck in order to win
| dividuum wrote:
| That sounds pretty fun. I suggest you add some screenshots of
| what a dashboard might look like. (If I missed them, I'm sorry
| for the noise)
| WilliamEdward wrote:
| One of the best game soundtracks in the world
| dang wrote:
| Related and not as recent:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725375
|
| Recent and not as related:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538715
| transitivebs wrote:
| The nostalgia is real.
|
| Here's a link to their OSS GitHub repo for quick reference:
| https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD
| haolez wrote:
| I love OpenTDD! The improvements over the original Transport
| Tycoon's AI is insane.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Have you tried Simutrans?
|
| 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.
| Lammy wrote:
| The graphics (GRFs) are configurable! If you're using the
| original TTD GRFs it will look tiny and pixelated, but you can
| get large smooth modern-looking graphics too. Search for a
| "32bpp" GRF set :)
|
| https://wiki.openttd.org/Playing_with_32_bpp_graphics
| exitheone wrote:
| OTTD hat UI scaling and font scaling for HiDPI displays. Just
| need to enable it in the settings.
| duluca wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm talking about the UI, not the sprites. The buttons and
| fonts are TIIIINY.
| snazz wrote:
| Another commenter says that there's a HiDPI option in the
| settings now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22773440
| jabl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rantwasp wrote:
| oh yes. from dirt poor to having billions of dollars. just
| like the American economy :|
| kubatyszko wrote:
| Indeed, I had friends who used it (I never did), from what
| I recall (this was over 20 years ago), the tunnel could not
| be removed and in some cases would get in the way of some
| construction later.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| 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.
| objektif wrote:
| Thats called Private Equity.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| Had to check I didn't post this in my sleep.
|
| From memory you didn't even need to force them to borrow
| money, they always did. As soon as they launched with the
| $200,000 value buy 75%. They would within minutes borrow a
| million and then you sell your shares turning $175,000 into
| $750,000.
|
| The buying ships etc was definitely evil :)
| untog wrote:
| I struggle with both Civilization and Transport Tycoon in this
| way: the initial stages are so much more engaging than the
| management phase that comes afterwards. At least in
| Civilization I usually end up going to war with someone.
|
| (but to be clear, Transport Tycoon/OpenTTD is an awesome,
| addictive game all the same)
| jle17 wrote:
| Stellaris (a space grand strategy game) has "fallen empires"
| which are powerful civilizations that you should absolutely
| not challenge early and "crisis" which are galaxy-wide
| threats that happen late-game to maintain engagement as you
| progress (it does have a ton of micro-management though).
| realradicalwash wrote:
| civ 5 can be different with the right settings: when I played
| on deity, half of the time it has been a struggle until a few
| rounds before victory (conquest).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It mirrors real life, if you believe Piketty. The more money
| you have, the higher RoR you get on average.
| pathseeker wrote:
| First, RoR doesn't have anything to do with engagement or
| even difficulty of the game. Second, Picketty's argument is
| not even close to "RoR increases with money", it's that
| return on capital outpaces economic growth, that's it.
|
| If that were to be manifested in a game, there would be no
| "management phase" at all. You would just buy stocks and
| collect returns from them faster than other players could
| get money from actual business ventures.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Already-Rich Tycoon
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Maybe I meant ROI. He analyzed the average returns people
| get on their capital by how much capital they have.
|
| I don't know the exact numbers, but I believe it was
| something like:
|
| Normal people: 4.5%
|
| Wealthy people: 7.5%
|
| High net-worth individuals: 9%
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Consensus economics would have you believe that, unlike in
| any video game, businesses experience diminishing marginal
| returns on investment.
| _jal wrote:
| ...A fact which has only tenuous relevance to a small
| part of Piketty's argument.
|
| There are critiques of the work that make some reasonable
| points, but this is not how they start.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| This is a reasonable forum in which to discuss how well
| video games' economics align with the real world.
|
| I regret that it is a poor forum to discuss pop economics
| with a political agenda. If you would like resources
| which discuss and critique the various flaws of Piketty's
| work, I can refer you to the scholarly publications and
| the conferences associated with the American Economic
| Association, the Economic History Association, the
| Economic History Society, the Cliometrics Society, and
| like academic organizations, as starting points.
|
| In the meantime, I will continue to use this forum to
| discuss the realism of video games.
| adwww wrote:
| Start a small railway running a tiny profit, go and have
| dinner, return to heaps of money to take over the world!
| exitheone wrote:
| It's actually incredibly easy to print money early on. Take a
| loan, build 2 airports reasonable far away from each other in
| the larger initial cities. setup 2-3 planes between them. Wait
| 15 minutes -> money printer.
|
| Money earned is based on distance and speed. Planes are
| incredibly lucrative in the early game.
| rantwasp wrote:
| yeah no. trains. lots of trains. past a certain point, only
| trains.
| jagger27 wrote:
| There's a bit of a gamble that your planes will crash though.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Planes crash from time to time but they bring back their
| costs in 5-6 flights, so your money making printer is only
| limited by the number of available passengers, not by plane
| reliability.
| realradicalwash wrote:
| you can tweak the settings to higher maintenance and higher
| interest rates. but yes, even then, it becomes too easy after a
| while. would be nice if the settings allowed it to make it even
| harder (extra high maintenance costs, 6% interest rates, etc)
| AaronM wrote:
| There are some good economic mods like FIRS3. Really adds
| challenge to the economic model.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| I agree that this makes the moving-cargo game a lot less fun.
|
| I therefore take a different approach to the game to find fun.
| I use the 2cc trainset, turn on car speed limits, turn on Cargo
| Distribution, spread out the map so it's a little less dense
| than normal, find a nice town-growth script that I can tune
| such that towns only grow when you move _lots_ of passengers
| and mail -- then I focus on passengers and mail _only_ , and
| try to connect everyone into one unified network.
|
| It thus becomes a network-capacity management game rather than
| an economics game. You need metros and suburban rail to collect
| people to your high-capacity mainline rail corridors and long-
| distance high-speed routes.
| headcanon wrote:
| This is an excellent game if you're interested in building
| complex train networks, which isn't so dissimilar to programming
| FWIW.
| jonhess wrote:
| 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.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| This is a really complex game, don't let the "old school" graphic
| fool you!
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| 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.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| 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.
| contingencies wrote:
| Has anyone tried the new games in this genre? Any significant
| improvements?
| amadeuspzs wrote:
| Ooof never before have I instantly lost 3 hours from one HN link.
| Awesome blast from the past!
| xwdv wrote:
| Any people here want to play multiplayer?
| mszcz wrote:
| 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 ;)
| xenonite wrote:
| Same problem here. But luckily, on Macs it requires macOS
| 10.12, hence I can't run it anymore with 10.11 :-)
| mszcz wrote:
| Lucky bastard!
| xenonite wrote:
| Actually if one downloads the ZIP instead of the DMG file,
| it seems to start flawlessly on macOS 10.11.
|
| I cheered to soon...
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| If you like this, you'll love Transport Fever 2.
|
| Apologies in advance.
| mszcz wrote:
| That looks nice but I think I prefer the "rigidity" (and
| nostalgia) of isometric (?) games.
| cheschire wrote:
| I very much enjoy TF2, and the mod community in steam is
| making it better everyday.
| innocenat wrote:
| 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.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| For me it's the opposite: anything that's not isometric and
| looks like rollercoaster tycoon or openttd looks bad/weird
| vitro wrote:
| What about Mashinky? Sorry :)
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