Proposal: Modern Visual UX/UI Skin Overhaul for the OpenTTD Wiki

[Bob Carter]

Hey everyone!

I am a huge fan of OpenTTD. While our current Wiki is a masterclass and an incredible goldmine of information, the visual layout can feel dated and intimidating, especially for newer players trying to read guides or look up statistics on mobile phones.

Before I put any real hours of heavy lifting into a project, I wanted to ask the dev team and the community a quick question: Would there be open interest in a visual frontend modernization/skin overhaul for the Wiki?

To be 100% clear, all existing text, extensive data structures, tables, and MediaWiki content would stay the same underneath. This would purely be a frontend upgrade, focusing on modern typography, dark mode scaling, and much cleaner mobile responsiveness.

If the team is open to looking at ideas, I’d love to put together a quick, single-page "Before & After" visual layout concept to show you what a sleek, modern interface could look like.

Would love to hear the community and developer thoughts on this! Thanks for all the hard work you put into this game.

[jfs]

The wiki as it is has a clean and functional interface, that follows the visual identity of the project. It's also not MediaWiki.

[Bob Carter]

The wiki as it is has a clean and functional interface, that follows the visual identity of the project. It's also not MediaWiki.

Thanks for the response, jfs. Just to clarify, I wasn't assuming the backend engine or trying to force a change to the core content.

My question was strictly about the frontend presentation, specifically whether the community is open to upgrading the user experience with modern UI/UX elements, like a built-in night mode toggle, updated typography, and cleaner mobile-responsive layouts.

Is a visual frontend refresh of those specific elements something the development team would consider looking at concepts for, or is the current layout locked in as the permanent identity for the project?

[Auge]

Hello

… a built-in night mode toggle …

Those toggles are IMHO often a toy to show that one has such a toggle but nothing more than this. To say it clear, I support the idea of a dark mode, even though it won’t be easy to implement in case of openttd.org because of the websites graphical and colour scheme. But, dark and light modes should respect the users system settings rather than relying on a changeover switch.

If one set their system to be in a dark mode, the website should be dark to, if not then not. If systems mode switching is based on the time of the day than the website should do this too.

… updated typography …

What is "updated typography" for you?

… cleaner mobile-responsive layouts.

This is the only point where I can immediately agree. There is room for enhancements, even especially the wiki has a generally not so bad mobile support.

Tschö, Auge

[peter1138]

The basic layout itself does what it can to be "mobile responsive" already, but because the content is user-supplied the actual layout of the pages isn't something that can be easily made "mobile responsive" in one fell swoop.

The existing layout/framework is shared across multiple sites, a refresh would have to take all of that into account as well.

And of course a lot of "modern UI" sites all end up looking the same and indistinguishable. Especially when created with AI-slop tools, which is not something we'd want to do.

[blackeagle]

One of my sons is at college, working on exactly this sort of stuff. I don;t know that he would specifically want to update the OpenTTD Wiki, but its just the sort of thing his college associates are doing,

Lets be fair here, it doesn't look modern. Many links are broken, the presentation, the whole look, the navigation, it all looks turn of the century stuff. Whilst this is probably in keeping with a game that has its origins in the 1990's it could be modernised and brought up to date by someone with an interest in doing so.

This is a remarkable game, built by remarkable people, but too often I see "We can't because ...." instead of trying to work around that.

[Auge]

Hello

Lets be fair here, it doesn't look modern.

It's the website of a game which is based on a game from the 1990'ies. Does it have to look modern (whatever that means)?

Many links are broken …

That is a real problem but it is solvable.

… the presentation, the whole look, the navigation, it all looks turn of the century stuff.

Does it (beside actually broken links) work? If yes, that's the most important thing.

It is clear that, once errors are found and (if necessary) reported, they must be rectified. There is also scope for improvement in some areas. In my opinion, however, these should focus on the usability and the general structure of the sites, rather than on modernising the look simply for the sake of modernisation.

Tschö, Auge

[peter1138]

Any broken links are part of the Wiki content itself, not the layout. Anyone can help fix them when they find them. A redesign won't (and shouldn't) fix them.

[GoldMine]

I like the wiki as it is, but that's because I like old fashioned websites, it loads faster than modern looking websites.

What I'd appreciate more is more content instead, more people who would contribute with articles.

[odisseus]

Many links are broken

Last time I had raised this concern, the developer's answer was that having an updated site engine is more important than having working links. I was at a loss for words, but this is how things are.

Any broken links are part of the Wiki content itself, not the layout. Anyone can help fix them when they find them. A redesign won't (and shouldn't) fix them.

What about all the other sites that link to the Wiki? How can I help to "fix" all of them?

it all looks turn of the century stuff.

Arguably that would be fitting for a game which maintains the original style from the '90s. Anyway, the main requirements of a Wiki site are being readable and searchable, not looking pretty.

[2TallTyler]

An accusatory tone is not going to win you anything in a conversation with any volunteer developer who is not reliant on a paycheck.

Complaining to a corporation gets an entry in a customer reactions spreadsheet that gets aggregated and used by managers to decide what developers should prioritize. Complaining to a volunteer developer gets their immediate reaction to how you phrased your concerns, as we see in your previous thread trashing the work of the developer (TrueBrain) who had just finished the new wiki.

A volunteer project with no formal leadership structure is inherently messy and human. If you want something changed, your options are to fix it yourself or make friends with someone who can. Trying to pressure people will tend to make them less willing to work on the project you want prioritized.

Just an observation, not a formal statement by "the devs," as I cannot speak for anybody but myself.

[blackeagle]

Don't think anyone was being accusatory. You have here a person that has volunteered to update the wiki and make it more "modern" (whatever that means!) and update some stuff. Now, surely, that is to be commended isn't it? The game evolves, why shouldn't the wiki. As a developer on a different Open Source project, I know how tedious it can be to write documentation about what you've just coded. But without that, without the wiki, people just aren't going to know about feature B or hotkey C or whatever fancy thing you've written.

Project I am a team member of has a permanent wiki guy, but it's still expected that team members contribute to it (most don't sadly). Coding is fun, documentation isn't. If someone wants to update a wiki then I'm all for it because then I can write code, not docs !!

I think there is a lot of "this is my/our project" and "I/we are not keen on changing stuff". At least, on the project I am a part of, this comes across quite a lot sadly. I mean, there is always a direction that a project is going in, a set of goals to achieve going forwards and where we would like a project to end up in the future. But there are generally people that are heavily invested in the current codebase that are somewhat resistant to change for whatever reason and I think this applies to a lot of projects.

I just think that anything that moves the game, or the documentation of the game, forwards can only be a good thing and whilst I understand a certain reluctance at times to accept that, (for whatever reason) if things don't move forwards, they invariably stagnate and then die. And that's not something I would want for OpenTTD or it's wiki.

Don't think anyone was trying to pressure anyone, someone merely asked "How would you feel if I did this? Is there enough interest for me to put my time into it?" which is perfectly fair. From my point of view (and I have no skin in this game at all), I'd welcome it.

[2TallTyler]

I wasn't referring to OP or any offers to update the wiki.

Writing documentation and manuals is thankless work, I welcome anyone who wants to work on it. I'm open to a "before and after" concept proposal if OP wants to go for it, and PRs are always open.

[jfs]

I'll repeat, I don't see any specific needs to change anything, the current layout and design is perfectly fine and functional.

If you have any specific ideas that you think will improve things in some way, your best approach is to actually to make implement those changes in a fork, and present the work in a pull request, including your argument why you think this specific change improves things. You don't need to ask permission to begin, but you also can't expect your work to be accepted.

[blackeagle]

I'll repeat, I don't see any specific needs to change anything, the current layout and design is perfectly fine and functional.

So you don't have any aspirations or desire to improve what is already there ? You think that the layout is fine, the editing fine and there is no reason to modify, alter, or otherwise improve the wiki front end because "it works"?

A wiki, fundamentally, is there for new users to find information about "a subject". And that wiki should be easy to navigate, easy to search, easy to update, and above all, in this day and age, easy to navigate on any device.

I'd put forward the point of view that OpenTTD shouldn't aim for a wiki of "it works" but a wiki of "It's very usable, and looks good on my phone/tablet/desktop/laptop". Aspire to be better, don't accept the status quo, but want to improve it.

OpenTTD dev's want to improve the game, that's why they write code for it. Dev's don't write documentation though, or if they do, it's generally under duress because they think they could be writing useful code, rather than documentation. So, it falls generally to the community to write the docs. But no-one wants to use a front-end that isn't user friendly, that feels clunky, that you have to fight with to make your page or edits look good. And I know this because I've experienced it.

the current layout and design is perfectly fine and functional.

Again, non-aspirational, no desire to improve, I'm happy with what I have so that's ok. Well, maybe it is for you, but "it's perfectly fine and functional" is a short-sighted, narrow minded view that takes NO account of the way the web is designed today and is unlikely to draw in new players, something the game needs to keep progressing.

[jfs]

Please don't ignore the part of my post where I ask you to identify the parts that can be improved and what their deficiencies are. In a professional context, claims like these would need to be supported by a formal usability study. (*)
Make a good case and maybe someone will listen.
Make a good proposal and maybe it will be taken.
Make vague statements and people will just argue in vague statements and move nowhere.

(*) Ignore the fact that most major corporations seemingly keep changing their user interfaces around as soon as everyone have gotten used to the old, making everyone unhappy all the time, and often taking the powerful features people actually like and hide them away in the name of "simplification".

[andythenorth]

Thanks for taking an interest. OpenTTD can be a hostile project to try and contribute to. It's not deliberate, it's just the nature of a project that almost entirely makes progress by individuals pursuing their own interests.

Some of us have put significant work into trying to make it friendly to new contributors, not without some success, but it's a lot of effort to sustain that, and currently it's not working as well as at some other times. In recent years some of the most significant historical contributors have moved on from the project for a variety of reasons, although new devs have also joined and the project is generally in great health as far as new features in the core game go.

Additionally a couple of other factors are in play. I can't comment on details of the Atari arrangement, but that did tip the balance for one or more people, as to not wanting to be involved any longer. The other is that as with most other open source projects, the widespread availability of powerful LLM code generation tools continues to cause debate and some conflict, as to how those tools should be used, if at all.

The most obvious current deficiencies are not the game itself: the rate of new features and improvements to the grf spec etc is historically high, along with also modernisation of the codebase to recent C++ standards and so on. However the infra (game server, bananas, wiki etc) currently don't have many engaged contributors and maintainers. So it would be encouraging to have new contributors to these areas.

However this is a long preamble to a less positive note; I have been involved in the project for about 18 years, and in that time, I have seen many instances of debates in these forums that go nowhere. The real distinctive point about accepting new contributors is that these forums are probably the least successful entry point, again for a number of reasons.

Effective contributors tend to emerge most often via the official irc and discord channels.

Hope this helps. If I had more time, I'd have made this post shorter.

[GoldMine]

OpenTTD can be a hostile project to try and contribute to.

I encourage everyone who has problems with contributing to OpenTTD to start developing their own AI for openttd instead!

You'll be your own boss and won't need approval from anyone.

It's quite challenging and time consuming but it's fun seeing your creation work better every other day.

The state of AI is IMO the least advanced among other features (wiki, base game, GS, GRF's are all more advanced than AI's and have way more contributors),
so there you go an awesome opportunity to make openttd better!

In the mean time if you're not developer you'll learn how to become one in your own pace of time.

[peter1138]

I hope I haven't come across as hostile here, mostly just pointing out that the design is shared across multiple sites which would need to be taken into consideration.

[blackeagle]

I hope I haven't come across as hostile here, mostly just pointing out that the design is shared across multiple sites which would need to be taken into consideration.

Not at all, or at least, not from my point of view. I don't know anything about your backend infrastructure, but if the current interface can be served from *wherever* then a future one could be too.

Thanks for taking an interest. OpenTTD can be a hostile project to try and contribute to. It's not deliberate, it's just the nature of a project that almost entirely makes progress by individuals pursuing their own interests.

Well, thank you for all you have done for the game. The project I am involved with is also pushed forwards by people generally pursuing their own agendas (me included). We don't have a roadmap or a final goal. People work on the areas that they are familiar with and want to improve. To be fair, that's not usually infra, but we do have a few people that work on it, and some extensive documentation on how it all works for those that follow along later.

I'd like to think our project isn't that hostile, but git history (and svn before that) probably tells a different story. I just think it's a shame that some people think (or seem to think) that just because something "works" that that's now fine and it doesn't ever need improving or changing. Firs wouldn't have evolved into what it is now if you'd thought like that. Ironhorse too.

It's not really my argument but I've seen it so many times before. It happens with the project I'm a team member of too. "No need to change that, because 'A' works fine". "Yes, it does, but it's 25 years out of date and 'B' & 'C' both work much better, take less code, are easier to understand and navigate and are written in much more up-to-date c++ making them easier to maintain going forwards". "yeah, but 'A' works fine as it is". At this point I'm probably banging my head on a wall somewhere because I don't see it as "it works", rather I see it as "Taking this as a starting point, where could we go with it?"

Lastly, and this is only a personal thing, but discord and irc are both "in the moment". A forum records history and its searchable. Anybody can find this thread, read your comments, my comments and make a judgement on them based on what they read. I'm not sure that that applies equally to discord and irc. I like the history retention. Maybe why I like github stuff too. Everything is documented and pinned down to who did it and when. Guess I'm just 'old-school', but I do draw the line at mailing-lists !!

Thanks again Andy !!

Please don't ignore the part of my post where I ask you to identify the parts that can be improved and what their deficiencies are. In a professional context, claims like these would need to be supported by a formal usability study. (*)

TL:DR It isn't modern, it isn't intuitive, it doesn't help a new user find what they want. It won't fit mobile screens very well, it's information-light, visually dated, and not sufficiently task-orientated.

OK, UX design isn't my thing (I learnt that back in the 1980's writing COBOL on an HP3000) but I'll do my best !

1. The biggest problem is there is no obvious primary journey.

The current page opens with:
"Welcome to the OpenTTD Wiki"
followed by a description, then "Gameplay Manual".

For a new player, however, the first question isn't:

"Where is the Gameplay Manual?"
It's "I just installed OpenTTD. What do I do now?"

The landing page needs visual hierarchy

At present, the page is essentially a stream of headings and paragraphs.

There isn't enough distinction between:

• Something a new player needs
• something an experienced player might want
• something a developer needs
• something a wiki contributor needs

For example, "Helping with the Documentation" is arguably much less important to 95% of visitors than "Gameplay Manual", yet visually it occupies roughly the same conceptual level. The current manual already exposes a very useful information architecture underneath the landing page — infrastructure, vehicles, settings, graphics, game mechanics, multiplayer, etc.

The homepage should bring that structure to the fore, rather than making users discover it after clicking "Gameplay Manual".
OpenTTD's documentation is enormous. The manual contains subjects ranging from signals and junctions to aircraft, industries, settings, NewGRF and multiplayer.
Therefore, I'd give search much more prominence.

"What are you looking for?"

[ Search OpenTTD Wiki… ]

Try: signals, NewGRF, cargo, pathfinding, multiplayer

On desktop, that could be a large search box near the top. On mobile, it should probably be one of the first two things visible without scrolling, and ideally search results should support suggestions/autocomplete.

Like I said, I'm no UX designer, but these are areas that I would look at if I were to re-design it. "What do I do now, how do I find what I'm looking for, how does pathfinding work?" Stuff should be intuitive, people should land on the homepage and be able to understand how to easily get the information they are looking for. Right now its "here is the contents of our wiki", when it could be "Welcome to OpenTTD, What are you trying to do?"

It's technically tidy but information-light, visually dated, and not sufficiently task-orientated. It doesn't help a visitor decide where to go next to find what they want. Code appears to be statically written rather than produced dynamically or use css to fit the page(s) to different sized screens/devices.

In short, theres a bunch of stuff. I could go on but I think you probably get the idea by now.