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Fancy Yourself a Tycoon? OpenTTD 1.4.0 On Its Way
phmadore writes "Version 1.4.0 (.TAR.GZ)of the most intellectually challenging OSS game out there (IMO), OpenTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe), is near at hand. Of course, most servers are still running 1.3.3 (the last stable, major version change, from November/December-ish). N-Ice.org typically waits until a stable release has been around for a minute to implement the changes into its online client (which is as yet unavailable as a binary for Linux; it varies only slightly from the official release and non-Windows users are able to interface with it no problem), but there are exciting developments coming down the pipe for OpenTTD. 'The new SSE blitters were also further improved. Not immediately noticeable but useful in the future, are the new string codes to display amounts of cargo in NewGRFs. For our Korean users, the separators in numbers were fixed.'
Here is some information on the history of OTTD."
For me OpenTTD has lost a lot of the fun of the original TTD. The graphics and music are all replaced and I just prefer the original graphics and music. The signaling is now way more complex and while I'm sure that makes the train tracks much closer to real life, it makes it a lot harder to get into the game than the original by Chris Sawyer. I also think that unfortunately the development team have an extremely stubborn attitude to porting nice new features over to the main codebase. Last I checked, the copy/paste functionality wasn't ported in because "it's cheating". Sorry, no it isn't; it means you don't have to keep creating the same boring complex junctions over and over again.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I am really interested what Chris Sawyers opinion is on these improvements on his original brainchild. Would give a great tech documentary on (open)TTD.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
Is that OSS or free of charge?
Is OSS gaming supposed to remain at 1999 levels?
Are you talking about a game whose launch was so horrible that the CEO was fired by the board of directors?
The graphics are cool in SC 2013, but as the pinnacle of modern sandbox games it is not. Perhaps the game you were thinking of is Minecraft?
Graphics development is a lot of time and work. Paid positions doing it obviously produce better results.
*The* big new feature of OpenTTD 1.4.0 is CargoDist, i.e. exactly that - passengers and cargo having specific destinations.
If only the summary wouldn't be just a jumbled tangle of text... :-(
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
My apologies.
n-ice.org server #9 is fun. The goal is reasonable, 35 million. The game starts in the 30s, so it's harder for anyone to get a crazy advantage on you. Just saying, if anyone wanted to try it online for the first time, there's 4 on this server at present.
What is going on in the summary for this article? What is OTTD? Want to tell the rest of us? Why does it immediately start talking about "most servers", as if I should know what those are? What the fuck is an SSE blitter? NewGRFs? Gosh, I'm so glad to know that Korean number separators were fixed. I can sleep well tonight knowing that.
No, don't waste your time explaining. I spent too much time on this already. The whole thing is written like it's by insiders for insiders. But then again insiders already know about this and don't need an announcement on Slashdot.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Seems someone says this about every single post that comes up.
You play the role of a billionaire trying to monetize your own linux distro. You must plan for and defend against attacks by open source zealots and patent trolls.
And someone points out that someone says that in every article. Which makes your comment just as worthless
When the next story is "Irfanview new version available", then you can tolerate it and I'll be gone.
If graphics development is so much more time-consuming and much less amenable to a free software or open source approach than code development, then why aren't more major-label video games distributed with the code under a free software license and everything but the code under all rights reserved?
Dude, I wish OSS gaming would reach 1999 levels. It is more at 1988 levels.
I fail to see what it is about being Open Source has to do with anything. I think you just want to piss on open source, which is fine, but in this context it means nothing.
This is a free port of a game originally made in 1999. It was built as a clone of that game. Do you expect just because time has passed that the game should be reimagined?
The devs do this in their free time as a hobby. Being open source or not has no bearing on the points you are trying to make. Just because the game is old doesn't mean a dev shouldn't be able to release an update.
As for accepting inferior products, go and check out Greenlight and how well some retro indie games are doing
You have a warped taste for what is adequate. Perhaps you should go play some more CoD:Ghosts.
It will cost more to separate parts of the game under different licenses. Lawyers would be involved to ensure everything is clear.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Yup - right up there with Linux Distro with Quarterly Releases Does Another Quarterly Release! But, we seem to have no end of those...
Companies pooling their resources to create a shared free engine from which they can all benefit is free-market coopetition.
Let me google it for you
Graphics-wise it's a matter of taste. As for gameplay complexity, it's actually the other way around, with proprietary games becoming more and more dumbed down. For instance, the original X-Com vs the 2012 version.
Having played both, I very much enjoyed the new version. The old version had some really annoying unit inventory management and building multiple bases that constantly needed defending lead to very many "preserve the status quo by saving the base" missions. Once in the Enemy Inside expansion was enough, the AI is just not good enough that defending is fun - they just throw massive waves at you to make it difficult. The only real downside I find is that despite all the fuss about SHIVs and MECs, upgrades helps one crew member while regular upgrades improves four-six and with tactical rigging a soldier in titan armor + chitin plating + scope is almost as armored as a MEC and a far better shooter. But getting way off-topic...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The decision long ago to not support a default ai means you are at the mercy of the community. This means that each ai available (you have to download them sight-unseen if you want to play single player) ranges in quality from crap to passable. Each one was lovely crafted until their creator got bored, so you can imagine that many of them don't support later added features like load/save, which are essential to long-running games.
The ais are also typically balanced to blow you out of the water in temperate medium difficulty but then fall when you go north/south and up the difficulty. For years NoCAB has been the ONLY ai to even come close in exotic locals, and development on that beauty has been dead since 2009.
Every year I download and try out.the latest ai versions and am disappointed. Then I play a round with NoCAB for old times sake and forget about it for another year.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
This isn't even an announcement that a new version has come out... it is a pre-announcement that a new version is expected to come out at some point in the future.
If you don't understand the words "Wrong Venue", then I can't help you more than that.
Slashdot isn't a place to announce every piece of software that pseudo-releases a pseudo-new version. Certainly not some niche re-make of an old, niche game. And certainly not without some real "news" to it. If this new version was a complete 3D remake, had caused controversy, forked the code, split the team, and we have links to all that... it would JUST about qualify for it.
And, as it happens, I moved on from OpenTTD because the code-base stagnated. This version doesn't add much new either. I'm quite happy with my pre-1.3 version before the focus became minor tweaks in the handling of NewGRF's (hacked versions of the game graphics/data of the old DOS game that eventually standardised to become a plug-in architecture to extend the game).
There's fans of TTD and there's some seriously disturbed people who build Turing-capable machines using logic circuits build using trains arriving at stations. I'm the former, not the latter.
And my name is on OpenTTD's bugspray, a quick relevant Google finds a very old Wiki page for me on there, and a link to some of my early patches / saves / bug reports. That's just the first two links.
1.4 is non-news.
1.4 being not-released is non-news.
A new-news un-release of a non-news release of a niche game that I enjoy, is not "news for nerds".
Dude, I wish OSS gaming would reach 1999 levels. It is more at 1988 levels.
Shouldn't the word "1999" be italics in your post instead of the word "reach"? Just sayin'.
Artists should support free speech even when its their speech that is being commented upon.
I don't know what Sawyer makes of OpenTTD and I see no pointer to a source for the parent's recollection. As I understand it, OpenTTD is currently licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2. I'll also take OpenTTD's developers word for it that their work is a newly-written program (the fruit of a 2003 reverse engineering effort by Ludvig Strigeus, according to Wikipedia), not an illicit derivative of code from Sawyer.
Given those assumptions, OpenTTD is not a version of the program Sawyer wrote. OpenTTD is a separate program that does the same job with no shared code between them. Sawyer's TTD can be said to inspire OpenTTD but I don't see how inspiration qualifies as a derivative work. Creating a work-alike in no way alters the other program(s) that do the same thing. So it's not clear to me what an "artistic view" of the original program really means. I hope this language is not an attempt at giving or claiming unwarranted control over workalike programs.
I certainly hope the parent's recollection is inaccurate and more artists welcome comments on their work, as well as respecting the user's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the program.
Digital Citizen
Fullscreen mode doesn't work in latest OSX Mavericks 10.9 because ottd developers cannot be bothered to use non-deprecated APIs. They had had 3 years to make this migration. This is especially broken on rMBP.
The population of coders who might be able to help before the next major stable release who'd be interested to see where it is headed since 1.4 is set to be a big change with CargoDist?
Nope. He's replacing the word "remain" from the quoted post.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I used to play a lot of TTD and OTTD, but it is way too easy to gain money. There is almost no challenge to be had and once you master signaling the profit margins are ridiculous that you will find hard to be actually out of money to build new stuff.
Ah, yes!