OpenTTD (and Simutrans) in PC Gamer (UK) Issue 199

[Raccoon]

I came to the conclusion that the easiest way so far is probably to get around and add OpenURL support to OpenTTD as we then can have a big manual button in the main title screen that opens the wiki page.

Simple, yet effective solution to start with. However, it only works for those who speak English and have access to the internet (unless the manual is included in the package)...

You wrote the wrong name in the quote-tag, it was I who wrote the text you claimed you have quoted Yexo. But I'm not angry or anything, just wanted to point that out, so you are more careful next time you quote.

Aaah, you are right. I deleted the wrong quote tag after merging both quotes into one post. I'm sorry

About the Wiki tutorial. Like I said, it is a good thing to start with for now. But it will be necessary to update the Wiki regularly to include new features and/or changes. Currently some of the contents are outdated (e.g. the bus tutorial is missing the RoRo-station types and such things). And it would be even more work, if these tutorials would exist in different languages.

An ingame tutorial might be some work to do for now, but it also might be the better long-term solution. If done correctly (dynamic programming to cope with all the custom changes), it won't have to be updated after every change. Only fundamental changes such as the new "Vehicle's Orders" GUI then would require an update of the tutorial script (different buttons, different functions).

Well, these are just a few thoughts and its the wrong topic anyway I don't know, how much effort it would be to implement such a feature into the existing code, but it still might be worth the effort. As I remember, these tutorials helped me A LOT in understanding the basics.

[Xander]

An ingame tutorial might be some work to do for now, but it also might be the better long-term solution. If done correctly (dynamic programming to cope with all the custom changes), it won't have to be updated after every change. Only fundamental changes such as the new "Vehicle's Orders" GUI then would require an update of the tutorial script (different buttons, different functions).

I think you've hit the exact reason we won't be having an "in-game" tutorial for a long time. The game is still being made, still growing and expanding. If we did have a tutorial in-game right now, it would need to be remade to accomodate the button movements in the new waypoint GUI. The same is true for the different stations, vehicle types (Trams), and any other GUI changes.

The work involved in recording/programming a new tutorial to account for a small change will be much higher than what would involved in making an explanatory paragraph/updating the screenshot for a wiki tutorial.

[2007Alain2007]

we have videos on youtube showing how to build and run on here that some off you have made using automatic screenshots

[FHS]

The easiest solution is showing a video tutorial

[Drury]

Sorry for a bit dig, but Google Trends never lie...

[audigex]

No, but as any researcher will tell you, they can mislead.

Google trends, plus a couple of extra phrases

Your display shows simutrans as being approximately half as popular as OpenTTD based on searches for "OpenTTD" vs "Simutrans", but doesn't really tell the real story.

Suddenly if we include "Transport Tycoon" and "Open Transport Tycoon", we get a lot more results for OTTD. Add in various other variants such as "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", "OTTD" and "open ttd" and there are far more. I've ignored "TTD" as there are other things which it could easily refer to.

The point I'm making is that while google trends can be useful, it only really apples to a set term - there are many other ways of getting to OpenTTD or TTDPatch even through google; ignoring other references in game or review sites, open source software sites and people finding the games through various repositories or word of mouth. Don't assume it says all there is to be said.

The patch has a disadvantage in that searches for "Transport tycoon" and similar will show OpenTTD first.

[555gln22]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

[XeryusTC]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

They have a whole seperate community around it. Just take a look at the site of the Czech train/road/rail sets.

[555gln22]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

They have a whole seperate community around it. Just take a look at the site of the Czech train/road/rail sets.

I didn't know that. Thanks!

[XeryusTC]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

They have a whole seperate community around it. Just take a look at the site of the Czech train/road/rail sets.

I didn't know that. Thanks!

Hehe, no problem. Contrary to popular beliefs these forums are here for helping people out and informing them

[prissi]

Transport Tycoon is not very fair, because even every download advertizedment of Simutrans starts with: "You played Transport Tycoon. They you may want to ... " And "Open Transport Tycoon" came from pages like this:

Jan 15, 2009 - His senior advisers have said that Virgin could open its first gaming den in 18 months. The Virgin tycoon last week became a member of the British ... as UK operators seek to open as many so-called 'large' casinos as possible close to British town centres and major transport nodes. ...

Thus quotes are mandantory ...

Furthermore, I doubt that OpenTTD is not played in Japan or China/Hongkong (if you rank by simutrans http://www.google.com/trends?q=OpenTTD+ ... all&sort=0). Those asian simutrans communities just have their own forum and a gigantic wiki with zillions of crosslinks. I think those ratings depend very much one wikis/forums and their software.

In case of Simutrans one had to admid that our main forum and the wikis went hickup three resp. two times and were lost. Looking at the numbers I wonder, why the german Simutransforum and the active wiki (which is by far more active than the german (Open)TTDs) are not giving more coverage in germany language. Generally Germany created only 1/3 of whatever that measured compared to hungary, despite having nearly 10x more broadband users. (And at least for simutrans also more users in Germany.)

And for 2005 Simutrans is not even mentioned while OpenTTD exists?!? Even though it was very much alive back then (I did this every year or so to check.)

Thus, I think the statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt. Some of those are wrong or, for some other reasons, incomplete (like germany vs. hungary).

[Brianetta]

Simutrans is basically a better game, in my opinion. To many of those to whom I've introduced it, OpenTTD is utterly opaque. As a prime example, Simutrans' paradigm of defining routes then assigning vehicles to those routes is far more intuitive than OpenTTD's paradigm of ordering a single vehicle and then copying or sharing those orders onto other vehicles. This is because Simutrans is more obviously doing what bus and rail operators do, and people have first hand experience of buses and trains.*

OpenTTD is mired down by being, at heart, Transport Tycoon. This is good for those of us who know and love the game, but it really does suck for beginners, and it probably sucked for the PCGamer reviewers. I can't blame them. There's no fixing it, either - OpenTTD can't become Simutrans; Simutrans already fills that niche.

In the end, though, does it matter? As long as enough people enjoy OpenTTD, there will be enough enthusiastic and able developers, and the game will live on.

*My wife, poor thing, just couldn't understand the insanely complex hoops she had to jump through to order a lorry to take ore from a mine to a steel works. It wasn't even nearly intuitive, and it wasn't until I tried to teach her how to do it that I realised just how unsatisfactory it was. There ended my hopes of a decent LAN game.

[Killer 11]

You do know that it's entirely subjective. To me Simutrans feels repulsive, it just lack that feeling of fun that most games have, it just doesn't flow and that is why I can't stand it and no amount of sophistication will convince me that it's a better game. This is my own subjective opinion of course.

[Brianetta]

You do know that it's entirely subjective.

Not entirely, no.

Of course, much of it is my opinion (as I stated), but some is objective. When I said, "To many of those to whom I've introduced it, OpenTTD is utterly opaque," I made the statement based on the fact that I have introduced several people to OpenTTD, none of whom continued to play. Most of them said it was just too complicated, even for simple tasks. One of them just plain wasn't impressed at all.

I prefer OpenTTD. I don't play SimuTrans (I despise its automatic track laying, and I only really play OpenTTD because I love train track). That said, it is far more approachable for a newcomer than OpenTTD. Interestingly, it's also far more approachable for a newcomer than it is for an OpenTTD veteran.

[audigex]

That's not too surprising, it's pretty well documented that it's easier to for someone new to a field to learn to use a tool, rather than re-training someone who uses a different tool.

The similar aspects can be picked up on straight away, but the diferences can make the transition difficult. That's why Linux (or at least, certain distro's) is trying so hard to emulate windows or apple in terms of GUI, because it's actually harder for most people to move from windows to linux than it is to learn linux from scratch.