Dumb hypothetical: OpenTTD RTS

[pickpacket]

All right, this is an incredibly stupid idea that will (and probably shouldn't) ever be reality, but humour me: a GameScript that turns OpenTTD into a real time strategy game, or as close to it as possible.

I don't even know what I mean by this, quite frankly. I envision some sort of attack and defence actions that can be performed, I guess. Moving units (or the equivalent of)? What could be accomplished in this direction with a GameScript? What would you like it to mean?

[odisseus]

This has been discussed many times in the past (example).

In short: no, a game script won't suffice. This will require rewriting much of the game's source code.

[pickpacket]

Thanks, I'll have a look at that and see if I can find others

To be clear I really don't want to simulate any sort of real war industry. Seems grim. I'd rather see how dumb and silly it would be to attempt to make it RTS-like with only the current functionality.

[Redirect Left]

When you say "RTS" (for Real Time Strategy) what do you mean?
I am currently working on a browsergame that gives a persistent world of multiple companies (each player is a different company) trying to transport across the world, with the ability to attempt to sabotage other companies, or specifically transfer cargos other than passengers.
It uses actual stations & airports across the world (read as: countries that have a publically available bank of station locations & world co-ordinates to plot onto a map). Whilst it does not directly imitate war situations, it does use real-world events as its basis for creating inworld disasters or situations that will put to waste your nice shiny operations and anger delayed passengers and ruin ratings. I could add a generic war related good, maybe "Munitions" or something that you can only transport to countries at war perhaps?
In my setup, the 'strategy' comes from the realtime management of your company, you don't necessarily -need- to be aggressive with other companies, you could try to run basic passenger or steel routes without competition, or you could try to do the same or very similar routes to someone else and see if you can steal everything (you would need a higher performance rating for passengers to use your route rather than the other)

Originally this was a rework of OpenTTD code many moons ago, but for personal reasons I moved away from reusing anything OTTD code related & switched to web based.

[pickpacket]

I left the term Real Time Strategy vague because I have no idea how much of a combat-like situation you can achieve. When I think "RTS" my thoughts go to Age of Empires 1 & 2, and StarCraft 1 + Brood War. Those are the RTS games I've played the most; it makes sense that they're my references.

In a way there are already some actions you can take in the game that are offensive or defensive: purchasing land or exclusive transport rights, financing road reconstruction, sniping cargo, intentionally crashing road vehicles for competitors, blocking waterways, flooding tracks/industries/stations, etc. Not combat actions, but possibly quite hostile regardless. RTS games are characterised by the economy of expendable military units. Collect and manage means of productions and maintenance, produce military units, use them to attack or defend structures.

I'm about 99.9% sure that this cycle can't be simulated by a gamescript. But how close can we get, and in what kind of silly way would that manifest?

We already have the collection of resources. While most RTS games have different types of resources and, say, a siege engine would need units of wood, stone, and iron to produce and maybe food and wood to maintain OpenTTD converts all resources to a single resource: money. In that sense we already have the first part of the cycle.

RTS games also have some sort of research to improve units and structures. OpenTTD already has that, sort of. At different times new industries or modes of transport are unlocked, and while we don't have to spend resources to research them we do have to invest to "upgrade our units" so to speak. I'd say that's roughly equivalent.

There's also the matter of territorial control and actual battle. Maybe that's all we're missing?

[Drury]

There's also the matter of territorial control and actual battle. Maybe that's all we're missing?

Yep. All the unnecessary side details are accounted for and all that's missing is the actual meat and potatoes of your typical RTS game that takes the most time and resources to develop

I think it'd make more sense to go down the Offworld Trading Company route and make a fully economy-based RTS with little to no combat. OpenTTD almost used to be like that when you could still buy stock in other companies, which is also the main form of "combat" in OTC (albeit a bit more involved). But that also got axed for being a PITA to maintain, which doesn't bode well at all...

[pickpacket]

Nothing about this idea makes sense I'm just curious about what the current codebase + GS + NewGRF can do to bring it closer to an RTS experience. Not because I want to have a transport tycoon RTS, but because I like dumb ideas.

[jfs]

You could maybe do something like territorial control with players having to deliver cargo to destinations, and the player to deliver the most cargo "captures" that zone, which somehow restricts/punishes other players. The thing I can't quite come up with is how someone who was defeated in a territory would get forced out and kept out, but still also have some way to counterattack.
One possibility might involve the GS demolishing the infrastructure of losing players in the territory they lost. The restriction is that it would also need to delete vehicles, which isn't possible for a GS right now.

Another big thing that's missing is some way to restrict players from building in certain zones. Without adding new mechanics to the game, I can't come up with anything better than ground lowered to sea level and have those tiles purchased as owned land.

[ChillCore]

just as a friendly reminder ..

OpenTTD will never have war related sheit ...

so RTS ... not happening ... as per mission statement ... be a nice game focused on transporting s*** .. not conquering territory ... .. sure there is buying exlusive right but no more than that


be the better, more profittable, company sure .. but yeah ... don't like this queastion at all

[Redirect Left]

Nothing about this idea makes sense I'm just curious about what the current codebase + GS + NewGRF can do to bring it closer to an RTS experience. Not because I want to have a transport tycoon RTS, but because I like dumb ideas.

Gamescripts are pretty encompassing, but not quite to the degree to essentially change the 'genre' of OpenTTD. You can use the OpenTTD code to make other things, you can even rewire it to let off a nuke every time a train crashes if you'd like. It's open source. Probably don't actually do that, but if you're in a position where that is a possibility, no one will or can stop you regardless. Efforts to do a rewrite of the largeness of proposals here would be... tedious is probably the word.

However, as of -now-, my understanding of GRFs & Gamescripts is it cannot change the whole genre to the degree needed. You could change OpenTTD into a game about transporting frogs across a long set of roads, as a new take on the game frogger (i say 'new take' I've not checked if it exists yet) What you have still is a game about transporting an item, to a given destination, all you did was remove the other cargo (or simply leave them existing but no way to acquire them), and replace it with big cute froggos.
You can use GRFs to change the entire graphical look of the game (it wouldn't surprise me if the landscapes are internally actually just akin to big GRF packs of graphics for temperate, toyland etc, although I have no proof of that)

The gamescript wiki page has not been updated since 2024, and before then it was 2020. Is that because no one bothered to update it, or there was no future developments of the GS base? I've no idea, nor do i have enough interest to dig into the code to find that out. Either is realistically possible. So it is possible the information on this post is entirely wrong, and I am using an outdated basis, fair warning.

[pickpacket]

The gamescript wiki page has not been updated since 2024, and before then it was 2020. Is that because no one bothered to update it, or there was no future developments of the GS base? I've no idea, nor do i have enough interest to dig into the code to find that out. Either is realistically possible. So it is possible the information on this post is entirely wrong, and I am using an outdated basis, fair warning.

Not much has changed about how GS fundamentally works, but the API (i.e. what the GS can do, which information it gets from the game, etc) has been updated quite a bit. The documentation for that is at https://docs.openttd.org/ and is auto-generated for each build. Some of the latest developments are that GS and AI get to know when a company or a company president is renamed, for example.

[Redirect Left]

The documentation for that is at https://docs.openttd.org/ and is auto-generated for each build. Some of the latest developments are that GS and AI get to know when a company or a company president is renamed, for example.

Ah. The marvels of placing things in two different locations, instead of in the self-titled "manual".

[Drury]

I thought about this more and I just realized something.

It might actually be easier to take an RTS game and turn it into OpenTTD, or at least a cursed, limited version.

And what do you know, EA just released the source code of some early Command and Conquer games. One of them even has working trains and someone went and made a map where the resources are distributed by them.

[Redirect Left]

And what do you know, EA just released the source code of some early Command and Conquer games. One of them even has working trains and someone went and made a map where the resources are distributed by them.

Peoples creativity will never cease to amaze. Also EA doing something good? Even more surprising.

Sadly, I think to do what is described in post #1 it would be simpler to just start from scratch, and then at least you will know what code does what. Instead of having to pick through everything blind if something doesn't work, which trust me is incredibly tedious each time it happens.