Transport Tycoon Forums

Over the years we have had lots of people suggesting that we change the introduction/title game. Usually these suggestions came just around the major release, so we did not have enough time to actually get a proper one. Another major drawback we have with a new title savegame is that it breaks our ability to easily spot problems with loading old savegames; the current title game goes through quite a lot of the savegame conversion code and as such tests that quite well. So we really would like to keep the current title game for our development versions (i.e. trunk).

However, nine months ago someone came with the idea of having a different title game for the releases, so we can show what new features we have and how some things roughly work. I know that there are a few candidates already for the title game, but in this thread I hope to gather more candidates.

As timeline for this I'd say that you have till 00:00 UTC February 14th, 2010 (2010-02-14) (as in 2010-02-14 01:00 CEST) to come with savegames.
After submissions a two stage election/vote will be held. The first vote, from 14-02-2010 till 21-02-2010 (23:59 UTC), will allow people to grade all title games. The second vote, from 22-02-2010 till 01-03-2010 (23:59 UTC), will allow people to vote from a short list of three title games; the ones with the most votes from the first round.

Finally some rules/guidelines/points scoring will be based upon:

• Map/file size: 256x256 or smaller, maximum of ~150 KiB. You don't need a very big savegame to show a lot, actually most screens can't even show such maps in full. Actually, 128x128 is more than sufficient for 1920x1200, but 64x64 is just a tad small.
• Show as much different things as possible, and try to show how they should be used. For example show the difference between presignals and path signals, standard road stops and drive through road stops. Show steam trains and maglevs, dualheads etc.
• Do not use any NewGRFs; NewGRFs can't be loaded in the intro game because that might crash OpenTTD when they are not found among with some coding reasons.
• Breakdowns will automatically be disabled, so try the game with breakdowns disabled.
• Cheating for money or making a money losing example isn't a big problem. Cheating to change the landscape is.
• Do not use AIs; they might be missing for clients. What you can do is make a multi-company game by means of multiplayer.
• Try to make it visually appealing, also for very big screens. However, put most interesting stuff that doesn't use much space in upper left part of the viewport. It should be appealing with both OpenGFX and the original graphics; this excludes toyland.
• Try to keep the number of simultanious sound effects down. E.g. try to reduce the number of level crossings, but for example keep one or two to show the difference between block and path signals on level crossings.
• And ofcourse the savegame MUST be compatible with clean trunk, so no savegames made by cargodist, IS2, daylength or other patched versions are allowed.

When adding a title game candidate to this thread (you may post as many as you like), please add a screenshot too.

Results can be found near the end of the thread.

A few questions:

The new title game must therefore work with both the original and OpenGFX sets - I assume as these are both base sets, they are truly interchangeable - a steam train with coal carriages loaded with one, will result in a steam train with coal carriages loaded in the other?

Trams - Am I correct in thinking the tracks are in base graphics, but no vehicles are?

Correct, the only difference is the graphics.

Correct.

How can one show trams while no newGRF is allowed? Or is it just showing off the tracks?

Answer is, you can't. Trams weren't in TTO, so they can only be shown with a NewGRF.

Neither were one way signals or canals, yet both work in OpenTTD without additives.

Trams themselves can't be used in the title game, although you might be able to lay tram tracks with a bit of trickery on roads and you could tell an RV to 'just' follow that tram route.

Make people to upload sceenshot of the title page also. Will be much easier to decide which one ....

EDIT: And maybe up to maximally 2 entries per person?

Why? This is not a competition for a prize, the purpose of this is to make as good title screen as possible.

Sure, and everyone likes a bit different things. With more entries -> bigger collection of savegames and bigger chance of finding "best" savegame? Just a suggestion more to discuss than proposal. One entry is enough but two, that can bring more differences/versatile .... doesnt it?

I meant "Why limit the number of submissions to two"

I made an executive decision! You may post as many different candidate title games as you like. Limiting it is not necessary. We're not limiting people to make only one train set either, do we?

More candidates usually mean that the final candidate is going to be better.

Also I would encourage 'release early', that way we can already give comments to your candidate after which you can revise it. We will, however, only use the last refinement for the final 'election'.

Trams also weren't in TTD





Which is exactly what I was planning on doing - find the most tram like RV and get it following tram tracks. But don't tell anyone!

Is there any chance of a resurrection of the "hop between signs on the title screen" patch for this? It would, imo, make the title screen much more interesting...

Resurrection of the patch.. no problem. The question is if the devs would actually want it. If not, I'd rather not update it, as to not deter people from making "normal" title screens.

another idea would be different save game per clima, it switches the save when you toggle the clima buttons...

is there any chance the devs will even consider adding this to 1.0.0 .

I thought that was implied in the previous 3 posts, or did I miss the message completely?

I think he was talking about the patch and not the savegame.

But thats the whole point here. If devs wont include it into 1.0.0, there is NO point from making such a title pages (savegames)(sign hop/savegame change).

To clear up the confusion:
I was asking whether a patch to change the way the title screen works to jump point to point, no dev has shown any interest so the answer is (for now) no.
Without this patch you just have to make a normal save game, and position the view when you save the game to the one you want to have for the title screen.
And yes, the point of this "contest" is that a save that the devs like will be included as the new background screen.