TRANSPORT TYCOON FORUMS NEWSLETTER: SEPTEMBER 2005
Welcome to the September 2005 issue of the Transport Tycoon Forums Newsletter! It's a few days late again, I'm afraid, as I've been away, but it's here now.
First of all, if you were previously a subscriber to the e-mail-based newsletter, you will have sign up again, as unfortunately with the recent server problems (more details later), the mailing list files - which had failed to be correctly backed up - were lost. If you would indeed like to receive a copy of the newsletter by e-mail each month, visit http://tt-forums.net/mailman/listinfo/n ... forums.net or send an e-mail to news-request@tt-forums.net with the subject "subscribe" - an ideal way of keeping up-to-date with the latest news and important announcements on the forum. Traffic is low, and your e-mail address is kept private.
On to business now, and as usual, statistics first... August was less busy than July (although some of this may be due to the loss of a couple of days posts), with 10,899 posts made, some 351 a day on average. 389 users registered this month, which is higher than the past couple of months. Indeed, our 8,000th user signed up in August! On to the other statistics, although they are incomplete due to the hard disk crash. From the 7th onwards, we had 7.5 million hits (considering the total was 7.7 million in July, and a week's worth of hits were lost, I imagine the total would have been somewhat higher than the July total in all). Some 53GB of bandwidth was used, in some 58,499 individual visits. The 22nd was the most popular day, with 367,152 hits recorded. In the country charts, things are fairly similar to the usual pattern: .com domains account for 20% of all hits, followed by .nl, .net, unknown domains, .uk, .de, .au, .cz, .pl, .fi, .hu, .be, .no, .ca, .dk, .it, .ru, .se, .fr, .ch, .at, .br, .il, .nz, .et, .edu, .ar, .pl, .yu and finally .es! I hope you know your domain extensions.
Of course, IE is the most popular browser, but Firefox is still high up in the ranks, as is the ever-present OS/2-based Mozilla! This newsletter is an export of the Indepedent Republic of Wales.On to the Off-Topic forum now, and our favourite forum comedian _r_ was in Florida last month, and so wasn't hear for much of the merriment that took place. Instead, I'll have to write something, but don't expect it to be too witty, I'm afraid! Hm, so what DID happen in OT this month? Let me have a little look... there were some discussions about all sorts, ranging from Star Trek to Formula 1. Hyronymus turned 28, and the forum held a small birthday party for him, all the best to him! _r_'s screenshot thread had a few more, well, screenshots posted to it, and then Geo.c Ghost went and had his 16th birthday - happy birthday to him, too! More random discussions about randomness, and then a bit of religion, with an interesting thread about the Ark of the Covenant. Some random spamming, Model Railways, another religious thread, some daydreams, a few more photos of our members, a thread about car accidents, some exam results (I got into St Andrews university, by the way!), a nightdreaming thread, a topic about thunder, and that's about that for this month in OT! The classic threads like Whatcha Listening 2 @ Da Moment carried on, of course, although with a bit less of _r_'s musical influence. Purno still had his usual range of Spice Girls, Aqua and other equally cringeworthy music, I listened to Star Wars, and astath had his delightful uber-killer-heavy-death-metal with such lovely names as "Vomitorial Corpulence". Off-Topic: it's a hoot!
Locomotion now, and Illegal_Alien has kindly stepped in to fill you in on all the goings-ons there. The Locomotion Modification section is almost running on top speed, with many new trains being created trains. Andel, Major Duck and Illegal_Alien are working hard on the BR Set, the first release of which is planned for this coming month. This set will contain trains from: Virgin, One, Southern Rail and more, and will contain different liveries, DMUs, EMUs and will be one of the biggest packs around for Locomotion. It will also be released with a handy installer. Some of the trains can already be found, having been released by Major Duck. Note that there is a bug with trains appearing "off the track", but this will be fixed soon!
Other sets are also being worked on: the Belgium Railway Set version 2 is currently moving slowly, but it isn't dead, so check the topic regulary for updates. The DB Trainset of Illegal_Alien is currently on a full hold, but will continue soon. In the meanwhile you can use the German trains created by Muschi: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=13002.
Also this month: a standalone hotkeys for building track pack, beta 2, was released, originally by marc___1 and now released in a standalone pack by another_lomo_player. For more information look at: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=20069. Illegal_Alien has also started with a Dutch Metro Pack, which contains the RET metros (Rotterdam). He also released the Vossloh G2000 which can be found in this topic: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14952.
You may also be interested to know that the Interforum Competition is now well underway, and the 3rd map of 4 is being played - see: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=19933.
Finally, a list of currently running projects:
- BR Set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=20039
- Belgium Railwayset
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14946
- RET Metro Pack
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=20436
List of Modifications:
- http://www.tt-forums.net/viewforum.php?f=40
If you would like to chat in real-time about the game, feel free to join #locomotion on QuakeNet via IRC, or use the Chat button on the forum (type /join #locomotion to join the Locomotion channel).
Onto the Transport Tycoon forums, and Jim Powers is at it again, with a new scenario, "Interesting India" under development. Jim also posted some interesting artwork created from the TTD landscape itself, so be sure to check that out! The Pictures of your Games thread was also active this month, with Raichase returning with a few excellent screenshots, plus many other exciting shots from the rest of our users. Well worth checking out.
TTDPatch now, and during August, alphas 56, 57 and 58 have been released, featuring many exciting new features, including new cargos, one-way roads and new sounds! All three of these are quite major innovations for the game, and credit must be due to Csaba and Oskar for working on these innovative and amazing features. Csaba's old enhanced multiplayer patch has been updated too and finally included in the main alphas, and this now allows more than 2 players in LAN games (note that TTDPatch isn't really Internet-friendly, you'll have to use
OpenTTD for that!).
And now, the Graphics forum, reported upon by Born Acorn. This month, many interesting things have happened. Among the releases of the month were The Glass Station by Lakie and Born Acorn, as well as a Tilting Pendolino by jamesvassie and patchman. Project Generic Stations saw much progress, with 2 releases in a month! Also a new grain storage and loading facility by Born Acorn looks promising, too!
Dinges' new TTD Graphics web site was finally opened after having been recoded - check it out at http://ttdgraphics.cjb.net/. Purno's Drawing Tutorials were brought back up again too, after the server crash, and the North American Industries project was started, which will be perfect for use with the US and Canadian sets. The British Narrow Gauge set saw progress, with the tracking table moving from bornacorn.com to a site managed by cornelius. Also this month, the teaser of the Canadian Set by DanMack and resident coder OzTransLtd was released, and a nice CN Turbotrain was released too. In other news, WhiteHand is recoding the AusSet from scratch, so it's good to see some progress on this front. George's New Cargos have also seen progress, as has Michael Blunck's new cargo set. Finally, Oskar has been working hard on GRFCrawler, with a sleek new design and categories now available!
As usual, there are several sets in progress requiring help.
- Japan Project
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=5358
http://www.as-st.com/ttd/japan/index.html
- Norwegian Trainset
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=9628
http://nts.thorrune.net/
- Planeset (needs help to finish)
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=4362
http://www.as-st.com/ttd/planes/index.html
- Serbian rail set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=12078
http://www.geocities.com/wilesttdpage/index.html
- Project Generic Stations
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=13575
http://www.as-st.com/ttd/stations/index.html
- UK narrow gauge set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=6123
http://users.tt-forums.net/narrowgauge/
- Dutch train set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=5033
http://users2.tt-forums.net/dutchset/
- Finnish train set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=8234
http://users2.tt-forums.net/finnish/
- French train set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14756
http://users.tt-forums.net/frenchset/
- Spanish train set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14884
http://www.as-st.com/ttd/renfetech/
- Deutsche Bahn set
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=7715
Apologies if any other sets have been missed out: check out the Graphics forum and see them for yourself! Or, if there's a particular graphic you're looking for, check out GRFCrawler (http://grfcrawler.tt-forums.net/)!
In the OpenTTD forums, things have been fairly quiet, but Born Acorn is still here to tell us about events. There has still been no official release since 0.4.0.1, and one isn't planned for the immediate future. People are however getting anxious for one... things may just be a bit quiet because many of the developers are enjoying their holidays, however! A brief notice also to all people playing OpenTTD: please post your working GRF files here: http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/GRF_list, including details on where you got them, etc. A few patches have been produced this month, including a 32bbp patch from boekabart that includes a filtered zoom and gradients on the GUI, which really do make the game look a lot more modern. Also, peter1138 continued work behind the scenes on his new stations patch, allowing a multiplayer test game with Born Acorn, Lakie and peter1138. It fully supports Project: Generic Stations and the Glass Station by Lakie and Born Acorn. Finally, remember that OpenTTD is a work in progress and the newest features are in the nightlies at http://nightly.openttd.org/, but beware - bugs may exist in these versions, so use at your own risk!
Things have picked up a bit on the Transport Empire front. Steve has been busy working on the new web site, http://www.transportempire.com, and a number of extra threads have sprung up for discussion of key features again. Also, the Design Document by uzurpator was unveiled, which will be the design specification for the game. If you think you can help out with Transport Empire in any way, please do visit the TE forums and post a message there, or drop in on one of the IRC meetings.
In the Simutrans world, version 86.06 and 86.07 have been released, as well as an interesting SimuTTD pack, that gives Simutrans the TTD graphics set, with quite an amazing result! Pay a visit to the Simutrans forum for information on that!
And finally... oh, wait, that's it. The next newsletter will be written while I'm at university, and indeed I'm not too sure how much time I'll have to spend on the forums, but never fear, you won't be neglected! Remember, if you want to receive the next newsletter by e-mail, you must subscribe to the mailing list again (see the top of this message). And once again, don't forget to donate, and many thanks to all those users who have! Something very exciting should be happening this month as a result of your continuous donations, but more will be needed! Donations are gratefully accepted, by PayPal, MoneyBookers or other means (contact me privately). Alternatively, consider buying something from my Amazon UK link (http://www.owenrudge.net/amazon/). Your support is appreciated.
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I was worried about it, waiting 6 days 
really it does.
