Transport Tycoon Forums

I was playing a game of OTTD set in the future, for a change of pace, and found content past [present day] rather.. lacking. While I understand why there isn't a lot of stuff past a certain date in the game, I'm still a little disappointed. So, be the change I want to see? Well, I know nothing of newgrf development, so.. attempt to be the change, I guess. I have many ideas, many pixels, none of the codes. Well, some of the pixels. It's rough adapting to using a limited palette I didn't choose, and mimicking someone else's art style. Now, see here:
You'll note that not all that is my work, sorry, I genuinely just saved my scratch pad without
delving through the layers to pick out my example images I'm working off of.

First off: Hover vehicles. I enjoyed the hover vehicles newgrf quite a bit, but I like getting new and shiny things every so often, and that, sadly, did not happen no matter how hard I hoped. My intent is a progression from "slow acceleration and low capacity" to "crazy acceleration and high capacity, could replace trains in more instances". Obviously the genre is science fantasy. Hover vehicles is my primary goal, it feels like the most likely one I could pull off, feel free to correct me. The design goal was to crib the design of eGRVTS and Hover Vehicles unashamedly.

Second: More futuristic buildings. I started to aim for future dystopia, but realized: The dark color scale was a hassle, and dystopia doesn't really fit. So I flipped and aimed at utopia! Then I made my cheese building way out of scale, but that's okay! It's just getting ideas onto 'paper'. My first thought for future residential was "houses with solar panels", but that wasn't quite silly enough, so I thought "Ah, geodesic domes!" My aim is primarily "feasible but ridiculous", so overly aesthetic architecture and "house of the future!" stuff.
Second.2: I'd like to pick through and to buildings for a handful of eras, the kind of thing where you can tell at a glance what era it is. But future buildings is my main goal, since I started this due to a perceived lack of futuristic content.

Third: Trains! Of course. I want some heavy freight maglev. I played with Future Reality Inspired Maglev Set, and Vactrain Set, but they look too urban, and they don't haul enough freight. If I can't sent 300,000 gallons of oil hurtling through the countryside at 500mph, am I really alive? I don't look forward to the sheer number of sprites I need to make for this, so it's my lower priority. My design aim was "anything that isn't shaped like a bullet or wedge", my result was that is really hard to do while still at least sort of looking like it can go hundreds of miles an hour without the unbridled energy of a pocket star to power it.

Fourth: I got sidetracked by a wind turbine, but it did seem like an appropriately 'future' tower replacement, even makes sense with how many of them the game places. Maybe a vertical turbine would be more futuristic.

So here's where I'm at: I have some ideas, so quick doodles, and a real need to figure out if I'm willing to learn to code these things into 'reality'. What I'd like here is ideas for neat looking trains, buildings, and improvements to my hover truck concept (and hover bus ideas). Please, tips, ideas, and feedback if you'd be so kind. At the very least I'll leave a sprite sheet someone else can pick up in the future.

This looks really quite cool, and I'm curious to see where you'll take this.

When I made FRIMS I was dealing with the exact same struggle; the future is bigger than the past, but we have nothing at all past like 2030 or so. It's nice to see more futuristic stuff.

Future-inspired vehicles? Watch more of The Jetsons. Although that style would now be "retro-future", you could get an idea of what some futuristic hovering vehicles could be styled towards. Imagine taking that style and imagine how it might have evolved.