Really early versions of TTO

[Gurluas2000]

Thank you for the feedback, I corrected the article. :3

[Gurluas2000]

2025 is here. Yet another anniversary year, this time for TTD.

I wonder if the demo can be cracked this year.
Sadly finding people familiar with hacking assembly is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

[Gurluas2000]

Finally progress. Found someone who could help.

The date has been cracked and work is ongoing on the other demo limitations.
The biggest one seems to be that events don't currently happen. It's 1946 and no new vehicles have appeared, nor has any industry closed nor has a new one been founded. The latter is important as Oil Wells don't exist in this build, so Oil rigs are the only way to get oil.

Luckily thanks to the build database found here: https://www.tt-ms.de/downloads/

I was able to confirm that it is a demo limitation and not an unimplemented feature. We're so close :3

I have included the current executable with the date limitation removed here labelled as "trans2". New developments will come in a future post once further progress is made
This project started when I was 12 years old, and I am 34 now. But I've never given up...And we're finally close to the end!

[Roman]

Wow, nice! So what did you do to avoid/remove the time limit?

[Gurluas2000]

Wow, nice! So what did you do to avoid/remove the time limit?

There were multiple layers of checks that needed to be disabled. If any of those checks failed, the game would shut down.


Here's the technical details:

Code: Select all

0x1376D (000BE50D) - nop out 66 81 3D D0 00 00 00 1F 11 0F 87 DD F9 FF FF
0x221EA (000CCF86) - nop out 66 81 3D D0 00 00 00 1F 11 0F 87 64 0F FF FF
0x2D631 (000D83D2) - nop out 66 81 3D D0 00 00 00 1F 11 0F 87 1F 5B FE FF
0x320F4 (000DCE8C) - nop out 66 81 3D D0 00 00 00 1F 11 77 F5
0x3B1BA (000E5F50) - nop out 66 81 BE 91 FA FF FF 1F 11 77 E1

first is byte offset in the file, second is memory address at runtime
and nop out means just replacing by 0x90 each byte mentioned there.


Hope this helps

[Gurluas2000]

I have some news:

First of all, work continues to unlock more features for the early demo. It seems the events have either been broken or entirely removed, same with menus for non-train stuff.
So we had to do some workarounds. Vehicles do not appear to expire either in demo mode. In my playthrough I have made it to 1961 and the Drummond has yet to expire. Also companies are relentless and keep spawning.
There's 15 competitor in that game now.

First is Trans3. This exe will replace train station construction with airport construction.
BE WARNED! This will mess with the AI and have them building airports instead of train stations. So simply load in, pause immediately, find the spot, unpause, build the airport, pause, and switch to Trans2.

Next up is Trans4. This exe will change the start date to November 1974.
This will unlock a good chunk of vehicles, while the event for new vehicles to appear during gameplay does not work for now, new vehicles can be explored by changing the start date.
Some interesting discoveries have been made this way, forexample: The later Bus and Trucks do exist, but they look identical and have the same name. However their stats are not the same, the later Bus forexample runs at 112 km/h (70 MPH),
while the early Bus only runs at 56 km/h. I tried setting the start date to a later year, but a major issue immediately became apparent. Train cars would expire, even in 1974 some might have expired and you need to start a new game until all the essentials are there. Oil Rigs and Banks while in the strings, do not spawn. So Oil and Bullion are completely unused, at least in the demo mode.
Missing trains from Trans4 due to the early date include things like: T.G.V, BR IC125, and the Eurostar. There is no sign of the monorail as a vehicle, nor are graphics for it present, and this 100% confirms it.

Also the AI continues to use small airports even in the later years, the small airport does not appear to expire, nor do planes like the Concorde crash in small airports.

And finally... I looked to the next build 1.05.118.
This build is significantly further along than our early version, but nonetheless has many differences.
While it likewise has the same demo limitations, it also has a title screen. Said title screen simply appears to be a save game from a dev build with all vehicles unlocked in 1930.
And it is not running in demo mode (In demo mode you are not the first company, while you are the first company in the full mode)

This means some events like subsidies will fire early on. You have access to all vehicles, and the demo does not block monorail construction, so you can play around with the monorail.
Unlike the earlier build, the HQ is there. So with the date fix you can have some fun in that later demo (Tycoon2.exe has the date fix). This demo also has access to the difficulty settings which were blocked in later demos, and are entirely absent in 1.03.107. This allows you to select how many competitors there are and such. Be warned though, the large airports appear to remain locked as the demo starts in 1930, even in the dev savegame with all vehicles unlocked it remains locked, so the AI's planes will constantly be crashing.

I've decided to simply pack up both builds so you can play around with them.
The second build contains the first savegame which is the converted title screen.

Hopefully we can work on unlocking more vehicles in 1.03.107, and also find a way to restore lost functionality such as vehicle discoveries.

Special thanks to Almamu for helping with this project.

[Roman]

Awesome stuff, well done!

[Gurluas2000]

I have an interesting update. I have been playing more on the 1.05.118 and damn... Inflation in this build is TERRIBLE!
by 1990 most routes will be in the negative if they aren't some long range cargo transfer. A monorail has a running cost of over 500k per year.
This progressively got worse.

By the 2010s, all the AI companies were losing money on all their routes, and only a few of mine barely broke even.
In any case I did my best to endure, trying to reach 2030 to see what happened. (The end date for TTO is 2030), unfortunately it seems the game's end has not been implemented yet, so the game just keeps going and inflation keeps progressing too. The AI also tends to leave a lot of junk behind... Although I remember the AI rarely doing this in the final game, but here sometimes it seems to have more often and in a worse way, forexample it sometimes deletes stations only and left the whole rail line behind.

I have included a save game so you can explore this dystopian setting.

Next up...Going back to digging deeper into 1.03.

[Roman]

Sounds pretty realistic to me

But yeah, 1.03.107 might have the greatest potential to reveal something unexpected.

[Roman]

I've let the 1.05.118 version run until it breaks. The last day is the 5th June 2099, then the date resets to 1st January 1920 and the games crashes during that day (not immediately, curiously).

Until then, inflation ruins all AI competitors, but they don't go bankrupt even after decades of negative bank balance. Those that have high operational costs eventually hit the negative 32bit signed integer limit at ca. -2.1B £ and underflow to +2.1B £

You can also go in the red yourself without going bankrupt.

tycoon2_001.png (55.78 KiB) Viewed 3115 times

tycoon2_002.png (46.69 KiB) Viewed 3115 times

[Gurluas2000]

I've let the 1.05.118 version run until it breaks. The last day is the 5th June 2099, then the date resets to 1st January 1920 and the games crashes during that day (not immediately, curiously).

Until then, inflation ruins all AI competitors, but they don't go bankrupt even after decades of negative bank balance. Those that have high operational costs eventually hit the negative 32bit signed integer limit at ca. -2.1B £ and underflow to +2.1B £

You can also go in the red yourself without going bankrupt.

tycoon2_001.pngtycoon2_002.png

Wow amazing finds! That pretty much covers everything in that build. Well done! ;D
Inflation seems present in 1.03 but seems to be far less severe. Luckily with the 1976 start it begins at the lowest possible value.

Also town expansion seems far slower than I recall in TTO in 1.05. From 2032 to 2099 Rashalgalia barely expanded at all.
I recall TTO had significantly faster and larger town expansion than TTD.

[orudge]

I find it quite remarkable that we're still making these new discoveries after nearly 30 years! I might have to dig out a VM or DOSBox and test some of these out.

[Gurluas2000]

I find it quite remarkable that we're still making these new discoveries after nearly 30 years! I might have to dig out a VM or DOSBox and test some of these out.

You don't need a VM, Dosbox can run all of these builds flawlessly :3
Let me know if you discover anything!

[Sonicsteel]

Hello folks,

I recently found this forum and have the original 3.5" floppy disk with the Transport Tycoon World Editor on it, which I believe also comes with the Mars map.

I noticed that this isnt included in the recent release of TTD and doesnt appear to be a thing in OpenTTD either. Would this be of interest to anyone or do you already have it?

[orudge]

Nice one! The World Editor edition of TTO is well-known, though not something I ever owned myself. I think there have been some implementations of the Mars graphics for OpenTTD.