Transport Tycoon Forums

This forum deserver a FAQ. Since I didn't want to have to own updates, I have created it as a wiki page and provided a link. Please feel free to add and edit. We should be able to point people here who have some of the common questions.

http://wiki.openttd.org/NoAI_Forum_FAQ

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New link added 2023-03-27:
https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Community/A ... orum%20FAQ

Nice AI FAQ, Dustin.
I read through and fixed some minor typos, e.g. OpenTDD->OpenTTD and Idead->Ideas.

Good work Dustin! I have fixed the links so that they are using the wiki syntax which is different than the syntax on the forums. I made all questions equally spaced. But it seams that when I edit a sub-section the spacing gets back to only a single line in the wiki code causing the sections to be displayed very close to each other giving much worse readability as well as making it much harder to quickly scan the page. A wiki guru might have a solution to that?

Edit: Perhaps we should make this thread sticky? Or make a new one which has a first post more strictly targeted toward users of the FAQ page. And leave this thread for discussions regarding the FAQ page.

Nice work Dustin.

Zuu wrote:Edit: Perhaps we should make this thread sticky? Or make a new one which has a first post more strictly targeted toward users of the FAQ page. And leave this thread for discussions regarding the FAQ page.

I've made this one sticky for now. I agree that maybe the first post should be changed a bit, but I'll leave that for Dustin (or anyone else posting suggestions for him). Of course discussion the faq is fine here too.

Edit: I'll check later, but I think both http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=42159 and http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=37956 need no longer be stickied as their content is (or should be integrated in) this faq.

Nice FAQ

Yexo wrote:Edit: I'll check later, but I think both http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=42159 and http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=37956 need no longer be stickied as their content is (or should be integrated in) this faq.

Eventually that should be possible since the knowledge in those two threads could be integrated into the FAQ. Then it might be worth though to split the FAQ into a user part and a AI development part.

(Q) How can I get the old AI back?

(A) You can't in OpenTTD. There are a lot of AI's that work in different ways. You should shop around and see if there is one you like.

Not true...exactly. You could use an AI like Simple AI.

petert wrote:

(Q) How can I get the old AI back?

(A) You can't in OpenTTD. There are a lot of AI's that work in different ways. You should shop around and see if there is one you like.

Not true...exactly. You could use an AI like Simple AI.

The fact that SimpleAI uses the library pathfinder directly disqualify it as getting the old AI back. If you want to make a serious attempt to re-make the old AI as closely as possible I think you should more or less just translate the C++ code of the old AI into Squirrel (the language that NoAI AIs are written in). And leave out the parts where it cheats. Some parts you probably have to work around a bit because the NoAI interface differs from the internal structure of OpenTTD. It will probably not stay alive long, but it will be as closely to the old AI that you can get with NoAI.

Ok, now I understand. Why was OpenTTD allowed the AI to cheat before?

Because that is how TTD worked. Also if you would simply remove cheating from the old AI which happened in a number of ways, not just free tereform, then the AI would have serious problems to not go bankrupt.

petert wrote:Ok, now I understand. Why was OpenTTD allowed the AI to cheat before?

Because cheating was the only way its stupid algorithms could lead to some result. It wouldn't even build a track from A to B if it couldn't cheat.

Nice work, Dustin!
I've noticed a little error:

(Q) The pathfinder libraries are slow. Can I make them faster?
(A) Yes. Fanioz has a method.

Here Fanioz answered the question "How to add a penalty for level crossings in the library pathfinder?", not the one mentioned above. And IMHO that is not a typical Frequently Asked Question. I'll remove it if nobody has an objection.

I think adding custom penalties to the pathfinder should stay there. But then I would vote for having a separation of user-questions and AI development questions, so that such questions can be in the development section without making the user part harder to navigate.

This is an information which would have its place in the library documentation or at least in FAQ dedicated to this library. However, the AI FAQ could contain more specific FAQ. This would give some hierarchy like :

• NoAI FAQ
  • NoAI for players FAQ
  • NoAI for developpers FAQ
    • Pathfinder library FAQ

Yexo wrote:Nice work Dustin.

Zuu wrote:Edit: Perhaps we should make this thread sticky? Or make a new one which has a first post more strictly targeted toward users of the FAQ page. And leave this thread for discussions regarding the FAQ page.

I've made this one sticky for now. I agree that maybe the first post should be changed a bit, but I'll leave that for Dustin (or anyone else posting suggestions for him). Of course discussion the faq is fine here too.

Edit: I'll check later, but I think both http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=42159 and http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=37956 need no longer be stickied as their content is (or should be integrated in) this faq.

Thanks for the sticky.

What do people think should be in the first post? I don't want to put content there that will get dated, because I don't want to let anyone down if I don't keep the post up-to-the-minute or wander off.

-Dustin

Brumi wrote:Nice work, Dustin!
I've noticed a little error:

(Q) The pathfinder libraries are slow. Can I make them faster?
(A) Yes. Fanioz has a method.

Here Fanioz answered the question "How to add a penalty for level crossings in the library pathfinder?", not the one mentioned above. And IMHO that is not a typical Frequently Asked Question. I'll remove it if nobody has an objection.

I object to removing it. I have seen the question a couple times on the boards and it lead to some heated messages. The FAQ is my attempt to make the frequency of the "go search" responses less common on the AI board.

I like your suggestion to split the FAQ into sections. The wiki markup to do that is pretty easy. You want to go ahead with that?

By the way: What does the "No" of "NoAI" stand for? (sorry if that is a stupid question, but i didnt found an answer in the wiki)

smallfly wrote:By the way: What does the "No" of "NoAI" stand for? (sorry if that is a stupid question, but i didnt found an answer in the wiki)

It stands for "No".

The NoAI branch started out by removing the old AI, hence "No AI".

Yexo wrote:

smallfly wrote:By the way: What does the "No" of "NoAI" stand for? (sorry if that is a stupid question, but i didnt found an answer in the wiki)

It stands for "No".

The NoAI branch started out by removing the old AI, hence "No AI".

Thanks

But why did you right the explanation so small that i have to zoom in in my browser to read the text?! (see screenshot)

[Off topic]You could have copied the line and pasted it somewhere else to read it[/Off topic]

Because it doesn't answer you questions, it's only a complement for the curious people. The important part of the message is in normal size.