OpenTTD for young children

[hyperman]

Hello everybody,

I got a 3 year old son who loves trains. He can do basic computer stuff like roughly move the mouse and click on stuff, but not much more. As these Corona times cause him to have some downtime at home, I'd like him to do something instead of watching TV. So we played openttd for half an hour, and he really pop-eying loved it, commanding me to put trains and stuff all around. I would like him to things himself instead of commanding his dad.

The idea for now:
* He gets my laptop with the debian oldstable openttd , 1.8.0
* We do sessions of about 15 minutes max - there is life beyond the screen. I guess he'll figure out saving and loading really soon the way things are going, so there will be some interesting stuff to do in that time.
* I enable the infinite money cheat

but there are some problems:
* He can't right click with any precision.
* He can read and type numbers but not text, and he does not speak or understand English.
* He wants more sounds - I'm going to look around the site after this post.
* He plays zoomed in, and the graphics are getting grainy.
* He wants rail-road crossings to have barriers, not just lights.
* I used to play ttd in my time, but that's 20 years ago. I don't know in what ways openttd differs.

Has anybody experience with openttd and really young children?

[planetmaker]

Just download the current OpenTTD from the website: https://openttd.org/download-stable and unpack it in your local home dir - no installation required and you have the current version.

Set the language to whatever you need. There is more than just English available. It should even select the language from the settings of your system by default.

Level crossings with barriers are implemented - IIRC - in the SwedishRails track set.

If you want less pixelated graphics, you cannot use the option with SwedishRails (or virtually any NewGRF at all, the very vast majority is the same pixel scale as the default graphics). But you can change the base set to zBase (available via ingame content download). You CAN have a look at the landscape set pota-ghat. But that's just landscape and nothing else in high-density graphics and it misses polishing. You might want to risk a look at the NewGRFs from the Czech total replacement set. What I saw there looks quite stunning, too.

[GarryG]

Great that you teaching your child to play.

Kids one reason I been making heaps of eye candy objects as had reports from some players their kids loved just building things.

The XUSSR Railway Set might be a good option as the trains are bigger so might be more to your young fellas liking. I believe their is another rail set also with the bigger trains but not remember what sets they are.

Cheers

[piratescooby]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwMVBcoOQpw , fire up Yeti and Nuts trainset , railway barriers I like the graphics from these guys ,https://www.facebook.com/groups/1663154 ... p_activity .

[piratescooby]

Forgot about this ,https://www.facebook.com/notes/skupina- ... 169371834/

[muttlol]

I play with my 3-year old too sometimes when he's bored. He doesn't mind just watching me, and he loves the game!

[muttlol]

BTW, if you are looking for some extra music, I uploaded a ton of folk songs a couple of years ago.

[muttlol]

I may be a bit dumb, but how do I enable 32bpp for NUTS? I am using zBase, YETI and NUTS, and zBase and YETI are 32bpp, while NUTS is just 8bpp. It doesn't look good

[piratescooby]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yVDB-FW7GI , will explain .

[GarryG]

Put your thinking caps on ..

What sets is their kids will like?

and

What else can be made for this game kids will like and (us big kids too).

[andythenorth]

For really young kids there are other train games on tablet that my kids loved, like Train Empire https://apps.apple.com/us/app/train-empire/id569641118 or Pocket Trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Trains

One of my kids has been playing OpenTTD since he was about 7, mostly just with FIRS and other grfs I made. I leave him to it most of the time, he got the basics of connecting industries in pairs immediately, but still learning how to build more complex routes.

[hyperman]

Well, thanks for all these responses! You're all quick to respond and gave me some valuable ways forward. You rock, guys & girls! Now busy downloading and playing around -- let's call it research, shall we

[hyperman]

An update: zBase+Yeti is gorgeous. I hate to say it as an ex ttd addict, but maybe you guys should think about switching the default sets.

I added swedish rails to this mix. Now if anybody on this forum has some minimal sense of graphical consistency, they might poke their eyes out after looking at the result but hey, the boss wants barriers, the boss gets barriers.

I'll try to contact the zBase author and ask for a barrier.

[piratescooby]

Franington Transport, 16th Jul 2500.png

(2.45 MiB) Not downloaded yet

I Like these barriers , you can find in the online downloader CZTR road grf , the rails is also from the group of CZTR grf's .

[Blaxlandridge3]

I don't play openttd, but what about that Pikkarail "Pineapple Trains" pack? That would provide higher - quality graphics.

Unless you're trying to keep with the old nostalgic graphics.