Future of OpenTTD - some history and thoughts

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ST2
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Future of OpenTTD - some history and thoughts

Post by ST2 »

I just want to share my experience, and maybe will help OPenTTD ^^

I'm not as many years around as other people, OpenTTD speaking, so I'll talk about what I was on:
- After playing TTDx on the 1995's on a crappy 486dx - I discovered TTDPatch in 2007!
- Some fun games and, while Yahoo'ing (yeah that was my source, not google at the time). appeared a similar OpenTTD result and I installed it;
- Some SP games...lots of learning - noticed that had a MP option and joined some games (note: I'm a shy person: watch, learn, play...)
- I remember the time, not so many online servers as nowadays, ~10+ years ago existed some servers, but only 3/4 OpenTTD communities.
- Still remember making a couple games on the online servers- playing the game you like and talk to players on it, that was new to me, it was where I found Kurt's Servers ^^
- meanwhile Kurt servers ended. The last game was announced as it, and was a CV (Company Value) game - if was different, feel free to correct me ^^. Settings were hard, but goal was not that high (lets compare it a CV 50 mill, like server #K3), and I remember that game started on the early evening... night (I gone to sleep... wakeup), goal at 50% at morning, day gone 60, 50, 40, 80 70%, and was about it when I get home from work. Known fact is: no one wanted to end the game!!! I woke up next day and game was still on ^^! It was last Kurts's game. If I missed some details, and you were there... you'll know Kurt ended the game but goal wasn't reached!

The reason I focus so much and will always remember those moments... was the time I really started loving OpenTTD ^^

After all the experiences I had, I had no regrets - because always gave my best... on my side!! And OpenTTD would grow more if the the biggest communities would be asked what players want!
and, to don't finish with the misery: some /r/reddit admins are considered

Sadly, OpenTTD devs never entered the most populated servers or regular Community populated servers, to ask what players wanted. Just saying... /r/openttd can have the most popular server1, 1 day, BTPro can have popular server on the other... n-ice sometimes gets the top!
But, openttdcoop, a community I respect, has an average 1 player per day!!! Is that the thing considered for developing?

Just wondering about openttdcoop "player", he really mus feel lonely :D
And wishing CM to come back and bring back that player from openttdcoop ^^
Eddi
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Re: Future of OpenTTD - some history and thoughts

Post by Eddi »

i think you got that backwards. the way for these online communities to influence OpenTTD development is not the devs coming to them for ideas, it's about them coming to the devs with patches, and ultimately, becoming devs themselves.

that is how openttdcoop became so over-represented amongst the devs. the coop players were few, but very dedicated. and provided lots of improvements, and some of them became devs.

ultimately, this is a hobby project, and a dev is most likely to work on something he himself is interested in. so the most likely way for some improvement to be implemented is not trying to convince a dev to do it, but trying to convince a person interested in it to become a dev.

sure, there are going to be some road blocks along the way. because there are more things to consider than just new features. like, not breaking old features, ensuring future maintainability, not changing the "core values" of the game too much, the existing devs tend to be very conservative on those issues, which occasionally have put off some would-be-developer. but without that, the game would probably have become an unmaintainable mess and abandoned years ago.

also, even though these "online communities" seem to be like the center of the world for you, that is still only a small fraction of the player base, so it would not be very good to consider them the ultimate source on "what the players want". there are so many more completely different playing styles, and a good dev will have more than his own playing style in mind when changing something.
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