Be Excellent To Each Other

UPDATED: Now I have saves for a UK, USA and Netherlands set of vehicles. Scroll down to get them.

No, there wasn't one of these before. There was on Wo£2PCM but it's five years old. The game has come a long way since then.

Get it here! There's also links to the manual and wiki at the top of the page. You need to get both the game and the three files on the download page: OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX. Follow the readmes.
I'm currently working on trying to make country-themed mod packs (as there's a ton of mods out there) to save folks the trouble of having to go through the in-game downloader's list of stuff that's missing, but I'd need somewhere to host it. In the meantime, I've come up with a solution which might also work for people with fresh installs, please see the bottom of the post!

Anyway, for those who don't know, Transport Tycoon was a game by Chris Sawyer, who ported Frontier: Elite 2 around and later went on to make the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. He plopped out a sequel of sorts to TT in 2003 called Locomotion but it was unfinished bollocks.

The basic idea is that you're presented with a vast region of land with lakes, mountains, and surrounded by sea. Dotted across this land are towns and industries. Your job is to build a transport network to connect them. Some industries produce raw goods, others consume them, still others refine them into goods which are then accepted by towns. Towns also produce passengers and mail which you can transport to other towns.

To accomplish this, you have buses, trucks, trains, ships and aircraft at your disposal. The focus is on railways. This isn't the simplistic railway construction of Railroad Tycoon or Railroads! It's not the most complex pathing and scheduling of A-Train. This is a flexible set of tools to let you build a realistic (or unrealistic) railway the way you want. You need to place signals to control your trains and ensure they won't collide. You can build anything from a simple single line to a single line with passing loops all the way up to a grand four track wide mainline with fast and slow tracks to allow express trains to rush their passengers home without being delayed by freight and commuter trains.

Unlike a lot of other games featuring transportation, in Transport Tycoon the vehicles are real entities carrying the real cargo, not just eye candy. You don't get paid until your bus arrives into the station. If it gets caught in traffic, you'll be late. If it gets smashed by a train on a level crossing, it's gone. As your network expands, you'll find yourself needing to use the building tools to build an efficient network. Trains held up waiting to cross over the mainline to a factory? Build an underpass. Valuable coal trucks at risk crossing a busy railway? Replace the level crossing with a bridge. You can even build railheads, where trucks (or ships! or anything else) from multiple industries drop off their cargo, where it's loaded onto a train to be taken to its final destination far faster and in much larger quantities.

That was all in the original game. OpenTTD is an open source reproduction that's been going for over a decade and has added lots of features that simply weren't present or possible in the original game's engine. New features include:
-provision for electrified railways
-provision for narrow gauge railways
-streetcars/trams
-far bigger maps, up to 2048x2048.
-path-based signalling, so trains can be within the same signalling 'block' provided their paths don't conflict
-many more airport designs to cope efficiently with lots of air traffic
-waypoints, to allow you to direct trains to specific locations that aren't a station
-hundreds of new vehicles
-multiple-headed trains: add more locomotives to help pull a heavy load
-bribing the town councils to improve their rating of you (before, piss them off enough and they'd refuse you building permission for a long time)
-a huge number of new industries and cargos
-ability to start the game before or after 1930
-one way streets
-ability to build big, wide stations (original's limit for rail stations was 4 tracks, 5 squares long)
-bus stops and truck stations where vehicles drive in one end and out the other
-lots and lots of new construction options including better bridges, embankments and more

Here are some screenshots of other people's games:

Note the electrification on the railways and the trams on the street behind the station.


Note the divided highway (with interchange) and the flying crossovers leading away from the main line.

Too big to be posted here, a snowy scene at a coal mine in Canada

Did I mention it supports multiplayer? Competitive and co-operative?

I think I've found a temporary solution to getting the game all nicely modded up and working. Download all three of the files attached below (it's saved games with country themed stuff), extract them into your OpenTTD 'save' directory (somewhere in your My Documents folder) and try to load it in-game. The game will complain that several files are missing and you will be presented with a menu to download them all. It should then work (if someone could test this and tell me if it does indeed then load without errors, that would be great). You might then want to go back to the main menu, and into NewGRF settings. They should all be in the 'active' list... if not, add them all to it, and then save it as a preset so you can easily load it all again later. Please ensure Long Vehicles v4 and EGVRTS v2.0 are at the bottom of the list to ensure they load properly.

UK STUFF SAVE:


USA STUFF SAVE:


NL STUFF SAVE:


PASTE THE FOLLOWING TEXT INTO YOUR OPENTTD.CFG AT THE END:


You should now be able to go into the NewGRF settings and choose which preset you want to use before starting a new game to get the appropriate vehicles!

What I expect will be frequently asked questions:
Q: Why is it complaining that I can't do this or that while the game is paused?
A: You can turn building while paused on or off in the menus. Advanced Settings -> Construction -> When paused allow...

Q: I'm playing in 1960 or something and I am still being offered horse-drawn carts?
A: Some people like certain vehicles, and they would otherwise become obsolete and unbuildable. Advanced Settings -> Vehicles -> Vehicles never expire (it's on by default because of this). I strongly recommend you turn this setting OFF as otherwise your buildable vehicles list can be absolutely huge!

Q: How do I build trams/electrified railways?
A: Hold the mouse button over the roads/railways button and choose the one you want from the drop down options.

Q: Why can't I build trams/electric trains?
A: You need to build the specific tram/electric train depot, the normal one for diesel buses/trucks/trains won't let you (no electrification for the vehicles to get in and out of the depot, see)

Q: I don't understand these signals!
A: Read the manual. To start with, try just using the most basic type of signal (at the far left). You can worry about presignals and other funky stuff later.

Q: Oh. And clicking to build the signal multiple times results in it changing orientation between each of the directions and then both directions!
A: Yes.

Q: My vehicle grinds to a halt halfway to its destination, what gives?
A: Make sure the road or railway to get there really is complete. You might be missing a single section of track or even overhead wires/third rail that you didn't spot when you were building.

Q: My trams won't come out of the depot!
A: Make sure tracks run all the way into the depot! It helps to build the tracks on the road first and then the depot, as the game then automatically makes the connections for you.

Q: What's a good starting year?
A: The original game started in 1930. You can start back in the 18th century, the mid-19th century to have access to decent trains or the start of the 20th century if you like. Hell, start in 2012 but you'll find the vehicles rapidly replaced by the bizarre fantasy stuff from Chris Sawyer's fevered imagination.

Q: Where are the opponents/I hate the opponents!
A: You can turn them off in the game difficulty settings. I prefer to play without them, as their AI is terrible and they just get in the way.

Q: Where do I change all these options anyway?
A: There's a lot of menus! Game options lets you change your currency and the side of the road vehicles drive on. Have a poke around in them before you start the game.

Q: Any other tips?
A: Sure!
-make sure you build signals at the end of your train platforms, to ensure that one platform being occupied doesn't preclude other trains from using the other platforms.
-start small and find a profitable route to find further expansion. Coal to a power plant is a very good one. A city bus or tram route is also a good one.
-plan ahead, and buy land in cities you intend to focus on. They'll have population booms later and if you have a big station surrounded by city it'll have thousands of passengers showing up. Don't forget to include buying land to build the tracks leading out too!
-combine stations so they share their passengers, cargo and catchment area. They have to be touching (though there are ways around this...)
-all but the least used railways should be double tracked. Use one way signals to ensure that trains go down the correct tracks, and this will run very smoothly. Put a crossover just before each station so they can turn around and get into each platform.
-stations don't start accepting cargo from nearby towns or industries until your vehicle capable of carrying it shows up. If you don't want to pick up mail from a certain station, for example, don't send a train with a mail car there.
-a lot of vehicles can be refitted to carry different types of cargo. Look at the vehicle while it's in a depot and there's a little icon of two crates that you can click on to refit them if it's possible.

Top work, Perkies! I'll give it a download.

Please let me know how well it works! It used to be that you could just zip everything up and it would work great but now they have their built in downloader and adding .grfs manually doesn't seem to work.

Great stuff!

I have so much love for 'Transport Tycoon' and OTTD etc. Very much my desert island game.

I shall give this a go. I played TT to death years ago ( and was very annoyed when I discovered that no new stuff appeared after about 2010.

Come on, someone please tell me if my saved game thing downloads everything properly for you. Thanks!

I've downloaded this and will give it a go on my ZOMG LINUX LAPTOP today.

Right, after some version faff ( I had an older version installed ) the save game prompted me to download a bunch of stuff and then started. Hooray! My new transport company, Trains and Lorries and Shit, is ready to roll! The Manager is a handsome young chap, to be sure.

Peter O'hanrahanrahan

Does it matter where you build your HQ? I don't remember that being the case in TT, but it's been a while. If not, I'm tempted to build it in the splendidly named "Meatminster"

I think you can move it later. mine was always on an island.

How easy/difficult is it for a total noob to get into this game? I've always loved the Railroad Tycoon series, but Railroads! left me desperately wanting something a little 'deeper' to get my teeth stuck into, and this has always seemed like just the thing.

Very easy. I'd say it is less deep than tycoon3.

At the simplest level it's very easy. Just play the basic game, lay some track, put down two stations, buy some trains. EASY. FUN. ENGAGING!

My advice for starting is to do it with road vehicles. Get used to setting orders and building the roads and stations. Then move on to the trains.

@Squirt: Did it save all my lovely GRFs in a preset (probably called Custom) for every subsequent game you've started?

Installed & running in 2 minutes - thanks!
Played my first game, and went bankrupt in 5 years! yay!
Buggered up my crappy bus service (Beeningham to Leeburg) & didn't notice the road didn't join up (found the X key to let me see through trees this morning!)
Connected the coal mine to the power station for small profit, but tried adding a branch to the steel mill and buggered up the signalling somehow - the new train gets stuck waiting for a free path when the other train is miles away. man I suck at this!
I wasn't transporting stuff very far anyway, so not making much money Not losing money tho. Just.

Us signals in pairs. Two lines into one requires a signal at each of the branches of the "Y" if I remember correctly.

In the default game it takes ages to make any money with buses. The time it takes for a bus to pay itself back is longer than a train, from what I remember. Especially as all you need to do is make longer track for the train, which it whizzes down. The distance=money thing is the worst thing about OpenTTD.

If you're in for just the sandbox buildy aspect, CTRL-ALT-C for the cheat menu. I mostly can't be arsed with the money aspect and get my jollies from building stupidly complex supply lines around the map.

YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING... YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

Now all I need is someone to explain train junctions to me properly, plus the signal types they've introduced in this now. For some reason it's knowledge that never stays in my head. Same with photography stuff. I read it, go "ohhhhhh, right" then five minutes later it's gone.

I raise you...

I'm very clearly going to have to give this a go then, aren't I? It does sound right up my street, it must be said.

Are you not running extra GRFs, Poiks? I doubt I could live without my trams now. Completely negates Locomotion's existence now.

Yeah, this distance thing is confusing me...
e.g. I have coal mines near power stations & factories, but I make more money if I get the coal from miles away?

I went bankrupt after about 15 years, I tried to expand too much, had stuff going to a factory a couple of coal mines and a bus service, but after about 3 years of making 20k+ it started going downhill. Next time I'll hold back, make some longer runs and hope for the best!

Cam orn den. Tell me what I'm doing wrong and why the track layouts in the OP screenies is betters.

What I always tend to build is this:

Both-way lights stop collisions on the platforms, switchy switches allow any incoming train to go to any platform that's free. Nice when it's a low-medium load station. However when it gets large I get problems.

Here it's a seven platform long sprawl and the switches cause more holdups than anything, as only one train at a time can pass through either incoming or outgoing. Annoying. Is there any way I can make this more efficient?

So.. I have a train, it is inside a depot.
I wanted to add 2 more wagons, so i bought 2 wagons at that depot.
If I try to add the wagons to my train (drag n drop), i just get an error saying the train needs to be stopped in a depot!
What am I doing wrong?

Odd. Is there a red dot under the train? If so and it still won't let you, you may have to delete the engine and recreate it.

I took it out & back in & it worked.. Hmmm

Right, next question...
How do towns work in terms of goods?
I have set up some lorries to nearby farms & a factory, so I am producing lovely 'Tins of Animal'. Do I just make a lorry station in the nearest town & ship them there? Or is there some magic location in the town that I can set as a destination for a lorry?
Similarly, how does mail work? I can't see any sort of post office to use as a start/end destination?

Okay, let's see if I can answer these:

@Dimrill: You are fine except you should have one way signals coming and on the tracks coming and going into the station (BEFORE the crossovers) like this:



You are far, far, far more efficient with a double track railway if you ensure each track is one way only. Yes, I am running extra GRFs. TONS of them. There's an army of trams of electric, horse and steam varieties there.

Signals are explained here, especially note the path signals section for your problem. Signals in TT have always worked on the absolute block principle. The basic idea is that the space between any two signals is a 'block' and only one train is allowed in a block at any given time. This is fine for long straight tracks but as soon as crossovers and junctions enter the equation then you have the problem you've observed where the series of crossovers outside a station can only be used by one train at a time. With the path signals, you could have, say, two trains entering your big steel mill station from the bottom right corner at the same time, or two entering and one leaving. I'll try and build a nice station later when I have a bit of time so you can see what I mean.

@MrDom: Yes, it's bizarre that you get more for the distance but you can also set up a very short service with a high frequency... a crappy little locomotive pushing a few coal cars between a power station and mine that are close together will provide a steady flow of cash. To be effective with trucks you need a lot of them... enough that there is always one waiting at the truck station to finish loading. Always always use 'wait for full load' with industries as partially loaded vehicles running around is a waste of time.

As for cargo (goods or mail) being accepted by towns, the town has to be big enough. When you build a station you'll note it has a catchment area, and within that area you need enough buildings to make that station accept goods or mail if they're delivered. You can see what a station accepts by clicking on it.

@nickachu: Pick a good starting location with an obvious route between two industries fairly close together. Likewise see if there's a couple of towns nearby that you could link with a small railway passenger/mail service.

Yeap I don't get the signals. All my trains "get lost".

Do the goods silos do anything? i presume they are from a mod, but can I use them to make the station stock up stuff so the trains are not waiting around, or are they just decoration?

Just decoration at this stage. I was disapointed when I found you can't make your road vehicles drive around the "roads" you can lay down in the train stations.

Remember when placing the signals that they can face in different directions. Keep clicking to build the signal on an existing signal to change the orientation of it between one way (in either direction) and bi-directional.

Each of the signals does different things, so until you understand what you're doing stick with the ones on the left of the menu (the semaphore/colour light look is just for looks only) as they just work as the absolute block signals I described earlier.

Once path signals came out there was basically no point to the old ones. So I'd give the OPPOSITE advice, go for the ones on the right

Newbies to OpenTTD: Always use path signals and turn on the option that shows you when a train 'grabs' a path. You'll see exactly how they work then and it should help you build stations, etc.

Where's that option? I only see unhelpful initialisms for routing.

Each to their own... at the risk of 'you kids don't know how good you've got it', the path based stuff might make things a bit too easy right away whereas the old absolute block-style signals forced you to be creative in your railway design.

Something else I'd mention is the waypoints... this will place an old-style lever frame signal box down on the track, which you can set as a destination in your trains' orders. In this way you can ensure that slow trains take a specific track and keep the fast lines clear for the express trains. It's also helpful if your trains keep getting lost.

Also note the 'go non-stop' option in the orders. For freight trains any intermediate stations should be non-stop... or in other words, it should only be booked to actually stop where it picks up or drops off its cargo.

I can't see how pathed routing would help my playstyle. I like my trains to be flexible in their track selection. That line busy? Why use the one next to it my good ma.. train. I'm also having troubles envisaging how/why one way tracks would help me either, as the trains often leave on the same track they came in on. It's just mean placing more ugly tracks stopping my towns expanding.

They'll help for the reason I described at crossovers: I don't know about you, but on long stretches between stations I put one so a train that's lost can turn back around. At busy stations where you have that whole stack of crossovers it means you can have multiple trains entering the same side of the station at once.

As for one way signals, it just means that you ensure that you manage your rail traffic more efficiently! If you only have two tracks linking two places, the first train that goes takes one track, the next one to go takes the other... that means now that NOTHING can come in the other direction.

I'll start a game of my own and upload the save once it's developed a bit so you can see what I'm up to with all this.

I've added two more savegames for US and Dutch equipment respectively to the first post. Download both of them and try to load them up to get the game to download the missing assets. If you then paste the spoilered text below the links into your Openttd.cfg file, you should end up with three new presets in your NewGRF settings menu so you can easily change between the three. Please tell me if this does/doesn't work.

Don't forget to change your currency and the side of the road your vehicles drive on!

Any idea how the money works in this game? How do I work out how much money transporting passenger to near towns will make me? or does it make sense to aim for further away towns? Or make the roads longer?

I remember playing a game very much like this but where each good had a pre-set destination. You couldn't just ship coal halfway across the map - there was coal from Mine A for Power Station B.

Sid Meirieirisrs' Railroad Tycoon?

I wish there was an OpenRCT. I love Rollercoaster Tycoon with the DragonPatch installed, but I always reach the staff limit and get sad. That's the major reason OpenTTD is excellent, the removal of the train limit.

Actually, it may have been slightly odd freeware game Simutrans.

You are correct. That is the one, rather big plus it holds over OpenTTD. It doesn't make as much sense for the industries, but it makes passenger networks a whole new ball game. Passengers turn up with a specific destination in mind, so you need to ensure you have enough vehicles going to the most popular ones to cope with the demand. It also means that passenger income comes secondary to industrial, as you need a huge network before you'll be seeing significant passenger numbers to justify big fancy express trains.

That's about it for Simutrans, though. The interface is terrible (I have the iPhone version too and it's borderline unplayable), the vehicle AI (especially for trains) is bad, the graphics and sound are poor and it just feels very rough, even after over a decade of development.

I've managed to get a company off the ground quite well in OpenTTD, I found a nice big cluster of industries on my map with a coal mine and steel mill close together as well as a oil well next door to a refinery. To be really effective you need to have at least two trains going to things like farms or mines to ensure that there's always a train there ready to load cargo to keep your rating up, and unfortunately the maximum starting loan ($600,000) makes that a little bit trick when you also take into account the cost of building your railway.

If you are starting further back than the early 20th century you might find yourself frustrated by a lack of ships. Go into the NewGRFs menu, check online content and grab Sailing Ships and FISH 0.9.2 to give yourself some ships available earlier.

For some reason, a lot of content (including a Canadian train and station set among other things) isn't available on the download thing, so I'm having to register for another forum to get them. Fucking ridiculous.

I'm starting a new game in 1848. My previous game (started in 1895) started fairly well but I soon found myself stymied by the ever-increasing cost of new engines and as I reached 1920 I noted my network had barely expanded in a decade.

I have loonnnnnng periods of time not expanding. I just like to watch the little trains go round. WHEEE!