Is there any patch for generating a "slower" gameplay?

[jimutt]

Hi,

I have got some plans for putting together a multiplayer session with some custom "scenario" ideas. Though I have to admit I don't really like the way openTTD works right now. Sure, it's very good if you're a couple of mates who want to play for a couple of hours. But let's say you want to have a consistent world reaching over several weeks, constantly running. Then it isn't really possible. Because if one of the persons had the time to play almost 24/7 he would win extreamely easily.

So, what I am looking for is a mod which will decrease the rate you get money by A LOT. I do not necessarily need to make the actual days longer. Really the most important thing is to earn money slower.

If you know of any existing patch which will suit my needs please tell me. Else I'll maybe have to dig into the game myself. I do work some with web development as I'm running my own company and I also develop a bit in Java and C#. So I guess it would maybe not be that hard to get the hang of the openTTD system.

[FooBar]

Have a look for "daylength patch". It is IIRC also included in Chill's Patchpack. You can find both in the OpenTTD Development section.

[FLHerne]

That can almost certainly be done by NewGRF. There are already some available to increase base costs (terraforming, tunnelling, etc - can't remember if it affects running/infrastructure costs). Industry GRFs can specify the payment rate for each cargotype, those would probably be far easier to edit than the source, even if there isn't one with a parameter already. Some trainsets have higher running costs, too.

[FooBar]

Oh, I misread. Yes, a grf that modifies base costs is the way to go.

[Zuu]

Unless you play all over the 24 hours, you could configure the server to be unpaused only at certain times of the day. That might be healthy for all of you to have a bed-time enforced by the server. A more standard option is to set the min player count to 1 or 2. That way, the server is paused when there is not enough players on the server.

If you want both, your script that pause/unpause based on time of day must either implement the min-player thingy or react if the built in min-player thing in OpenTTD kicks in and does something you don't want to allow. Eg. if OpenTTD unpause 2am because there is enough players, and you want to enforce 2 am as paused time, then you have to pause the game again.


Edit: Something not everyone might be aware of, but a Game Script can actually be used to pause/unpause the game and Game Scripts have access to some sort of system time that progress even if the game is paused. Additionally I should add that Game Scripts run even if a game is paused. However, a game script cannot see the amount of players at the game currently. The autopilot context (eg. a script that hook up to standard input/output of OpenTTD) is then probably better if you want to have access to in-game chat and client information. The Admin port may also be able to do this.

[Eddi]

note that the game script can communicate with an outside script via the admin port, so both can be combined for all kind of weird s*** you could imagine

[jimutt]

Thank you all for your replies!

Hmm... The game script solution sounds very interesting... As I use to host my own web server 24/7 since earlier I have quite many possibilites.
I will definately take a look at this as well as the grf's.

Seems like there are endless possibilities with openTTD

[jimutt]

I just made myself a GRF which doubles all costs (haven't really tried if it is possible to play with it but it works well) and I have to say that I really didn't think it would be that easy.
Think I'll have to take a look at some more modding for openTTD. Thanks again for your advice guys.