Custom Goals

[Neuralize]

(This topic has been renamed from Multiplayer Goals, to custom goals, as I feel that definable goals would be great for both single player and multiplayer)

First, a disclaimer, I am new to the world of OpenTTD, and TTD in general. I'm really into boardgames though, and not snakes and ladders, but games like Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, Ticket to Ride. Board games that are simple enough but have a lot of strategy and can be played different ways. If anything, TTD very much like these games in that aspect, it's a fairly simple concept, but due to the underlying complexity of the game there is a lot of strategy and it can be played different ways.

Multiplayer is where OpenTTD really appears to shine, I've played a few single player games, and when playing against the new AI this can be fun as well, but the game is missing a fundamental aspect of most competitive games and that is the ability to define a goal or to have a winner, now I've gone through some posts here were people suggest that all the players agree on a goal, but I think that those people might slightly be missing the point; a game is usually played to have a winner. If anything a game should be geared more towards winners and losers than just being a sandbox. I could get so many more people interesting in OpenTTD if there was a way to set an end date and define winning conditions, a lot of people fail to find the point in a game which there is no official winner. I was wondering if anyone is working on a patch to define goals, or if there is a hidden way already to define goals?

[planetmaker]

I was wondering if anyone is working on a patch to define goals, or if there is a hidden way already to define goals?

Well, ever since TTO there's the company rating which are compared and judged ingame at the year 2050. But there's no such thing as defining via game parameters another goal. OTOH it's not hard to set yourself other goals like "first to have grown a city of 1 million", first to have serviced a factory with 20k output, first to carry 1 million passangers a month, name-your-goal and play by that. It doesn't really need a hard-wired goal for that, it works the same for that, if you play board games and introduce house rules

Other than this, I know of no patches which hard-wire any changes to the game's goal; but for me it's the fun of building - and on competition servers to have the best looking, most effective network - and most company income.

Regards,
pm

[Conditional Zenith]

Competitive game? What is this OpenTTDCoop about then? Sounds like they are doing it wrong and shouldn't be allowed to play the game.
</sarcasm>

Seriously, there are other games (SimCity series, the Sims) which don't have defined goals, and that is the charm for a lot of people. Anyway, before goals are defined, a lot of loopholes need to be tightened in the game. Playing OTTD ruthlessly competitively results in a mess of people blocking other people, exclusive transport rights, people just buying/laying tracks over huge swathes of land, people deliberately running over road vehicles, etc.

IMO, OTTD multiplayer only really works cause people follow unwritten rules, and trying to make it too competitive makes it too tempting to break those rules (or maybe flooding the map when you realise you can't win).

[planetmaker]

Competitive game? What is this OpenTTDCoop about then? Sounds like they are doing it wrong and shouldn't be allowed to play the game.
</sarcasm>
IMO, OTTD multiplayer only really works cause people follow unwritten rules, and trying to make it too competitive makes it too tempting to break those rules (or maybe flooding the map when you realise you can't win).

The good thing about OpenTTD is that it allows all kinds of play, from purely cooperative over co-opetition to purely competitive. So it suits all kinds of taste and everyone can pick what s/he likes. The opposite to our #openttdcoop surely is something like Kurt's competition servers - which we once joined and easily won with a team of three coopers - but then it might be argued we were three and the others probably only one in their company.

[Conditional Zenith]

And on Kurt's servers, they have rules which have to be enforced by human moderators (rules 3 and 6 doesn't apply generally), or through unofficial patches for 2 and 4 (which don't close the loopholes, but rather kick people who exploit them). And I gather their games are fairly short, so buying exclusive transport rights doesn't come into play, but in longer running games exclusive transport rights in all the towns can be used to "choke" smaller companies.

Basically, what I'm saying is that there isn't much point having goals coded into the game until these loopholes are closed through automated means. And still there are costs which people may think need balancing (most people consider that terraforming is too cheap, both in gameplay and realism terms).

[Torrasque]

I remember Peter1138 and Korenn trying to redo the Challenge Spinoff . But I don't know if they are still working on it.

It was a really good idea, I hope it's not canceled.

There is some good idea there too : http://wiki.openttd.org/wiki/index.php/ ... _Challenge

[Neuralize]

All I want is the ability for an end date to be set and a winner declared. The game seems balanced and fair enough for competitive play among good friends at the moment. I don't play online with random yahoos.

[Zuu]

All I want is the ability for an end date to be set and a winner declared. The game seems balanced and fair enough for competitive play among good friends at the moment. I don't play online with random yahoos.

Maybe take a look into either modifying the autopilot or ap+ or writing your own scripts that warps around the dedicated console. Then you can make the game pause automatically when the end date is reached for example. Or if you like to run say 2 real hours then make it do that. For goals there is some data that can be gathered from the game to automatically make a result list that differ from the one based on the company performance rating. But if that is too much work or not supporting the statistics you like to have, then just set up some house rules. Since the game gets paused you have plenty of time to debate on who won etc.

[Neuralize]

Well, how about definable goals in general, and not just in multiplayer games? (I'm asking this question to everyone.)

The reason I feel this feature is badly needed because goals provide closure as a well as a sense of accomplishment to a game. I don't have a lot of time to play openttd, but I do enjoy it a lot. Now, it would be nice if I could somehow define a game to last an hour and then after that hour has passed, the game would declare a winner based on whoever has the highest company value, or other definable worth, and post some sort of permanent message on the map that would state the winner what the goal was, and how they won, that would be really cool!

Now before in this thread it was suggested that I could just pause the game and look at the graphs, but there is a problem with that, there is no deadline, and when exactly I pause is not set it stone. I am in complete control and therefore the winner of a game can be argued almost infinitely. If I'm just pausing the game on my own and declaring myself the winner there isn't much fun in that. It actually seems kind of silly because I could pause the game at any time that I'm winning. There is no urgency, drama or competition, because there is no deadline.

[dihedral]

that is why you have admins and players

[RMJ]

The whole goal of original transpport tycoon was to make as much money before 2050 i believe.

But now adays, most people i know, use it as a trains simulator, you know like some people have those big toy trains sets at home.

Personally i think big pride and fun in building a big huge network with say 1500 trains, and under way you gotta expand and solve all kinds of problems, as lines jam and so on.

[555gln22]

That said, having goals defineable would make it really interesting to make scenarios.

[Moriarty]

The whole goal of original transpport tycoon was to make as much money before 2050 i believe.

Not quite. It was to get the highest "rating" possible out of 1000. This is still in OTTD incidentally.

[nicfer]

I think that the player is the one that defines the goal. From being the richest to connect all the cities/industries. You could even make your own metropolis by forbidding the cities to build roads and build them yourselves, like what I did in my save game (still incomplete).

[sootynz]

Kurts goal oriented multi-player servers are very good. Try them, you'll like them, and some of the players are extremely good competitors.
My only request is that I wish Kurt would set up another couple of servers.

[sootynz]

Aaaarrrgghhhh - having just checked out Kurts's website.


"Every Beginning Has An End" are the wise words of the oracle in the movie Matrix. Recognizing the bitter truth in this quote makes me melancholic. Because of this feeling, I have thought many times about how to tell you, what I need to report you now. I have found out, that there is no good way to tell you my hardest decision up to this moment, but there is the right way: The truth.
The plain truth is, that I will stop to maintain kurt.game-server.cc with the release of openttd 0.7.0.