When was the golden age of TTD?

[Mrsunman]

As someone who's only really been on the forums during it's quiet times, I ask those who were on here around 2010; What happened to the TTD golden age and what caused it?

[ChillCore]

multiitude of reasons ....

- peeps are getting older ... they have kids and lives to live now ... some are no longer here ... RIP Romazoon
- the low hanging fruit has been picked .... it is getting harder to add anything meaningfull to the code without screwing something else up
- making NewGRFs is where's it at now but even that takes effort ... like no joke
- ... more
- I don't see well enough no more to programm all day long
- just time happened and tioo many games to play ... steam happened?



still here and not going anywhere untill my last breath ... or owen gives up

time for a younger generation to step up ? it is open source .... but them be busy scrolling on their retarded phones .... don't call them smart (the phones that is) xD

just my 2cc ... others may feel differently

^^^^ had to come back to edit many times ... just saying

[Mrsunman]

time for a younger generation to step up ? it is open source .... but them be busy scrolling on their retarded phones .... don't call them smart (the phones that is) xD

well, as one of those who are part of this younger generation, I'll promise to help where I can in continuing the community onward

[ebla71]

What happened to the TTD golden age and what caused it?

Is "Golden Age" really just the number of active users or posts???

I've been playing the game for too long to really remember when I started and to me, the "Golden Age" is now:

- There have never been more exciting new features to use (last addition e.g. road waypoints, badges)
- There are tons of very nice content (NewGRFs, map, ...) to play with, with a graphical quality not seen before
- It's still, even after all those years, fun to play

[ebla71]

Beyond that, I'm not an expert on programming but it seems like there is a lot of code modernization going on behind the scences that will never manifest itself in user-visible features but will make maintenance of the code (and then possibly also addition of new functionality) easier for the future.

https://cdn.openttd.org/openttd-nightli ... angelog.md

[uzurpator]

What happened to the TTD golden age and what caused it?

The game looks dated. Much prettier, and somewhat more advanced, similar games ( Train Fever, Transport Fever, Mashinky ) finally started to crop up. I couldn't play the game for a long while because there was no interface scaling and I'm half blind.

[ChillCore]

time for a younger generation to step up ? it is open source .... but them be busy scrolling on their retarded phones .... don't call them smart (the phones that is) xD

well, as one of those who are part of this younger generation, I'll promise to help where I can in continuing the community onward

cool ....

Is "Golden Age" really just the number of active users or posts???

mentioning that ...

the community got a bit thin spread also by the fact that the game is (now-ish) also available on steam and there is a forum there .... then there is a dicord channel and on github you can talk too (since moving there) ... so yeah

[SwissFan91]

How has r/openttd in Reddit affected the game and the forums do we think?

I don’t think it existed when I was most active on the forums. Hopefully it brings new players to the game by spreading visibility while also not detracting from the forums. I see a few familiar usernames on there and perhaps a few more of us that lurk or have different aliases.

[Mrsunman]

Maybe if someone decided to advert the game or a lucky streamer shows and suggests the game, we could see a new spike in players . But for now, I guess we have to wait for a better time. At least on the google trends data it looks like the worst has passed, and the search term is slowly growing again.

[orudge]

It's hard to say exactly, but for me, the period of maybe 2006-2009 was rather a "golden age" for the forums and the Transport Tycoon community (especially the #tycoon IRC channel). The forums were extremely busy, we had OpenTTD reaching a decent level of maturity with many exciting enhancements (such as good Internet-based multiplayer), lots of NewGRFs were being worked on, TTDPatch was still under active development, the IRC channel was great fun, we had Zernebok Radio on the go, we had the first TT-Forums meets in the UK, and perhaps most importantly (for me), I was a student and actually had time to play TTD!

There have been various other periods both before and since that may be "golden ages" of sorts too, of course. The forums were very busy back in 2003-4 (after launching as a new entity in 2002), and TTDPatch was doing amazing things, plus Chris Sawyer released Locomotion which brought a lot of new excitement and energy in too. You could also point to 2018 when OpenTTD was migrated to GitHub, which reinvigorated development, leading to the launch of OpenTTD on Steam and bringing in whole new communities of players - plus of course all the YouTube livestreams and so on which we could barely have imagined 15-20 years before.

I'm intending to keep this place going for as long as I practically can - hopefully another 20 years at least!

[Geo Ghost]

When it comes to golden age... it depends if we're looking at TTD as a whole, the community (the forum), or the game as it is now with OpenTTD etc. Each is quite different in its own way.

It could be argued that TTD as a game and as a whole have never had a golden-age as it's still being played now, over 30 years later. I'd say that it's stood the test of time and it's golden-age is still on-going.

The forums of course saw its busiest and most active times many years ago and is relatively quiet. But I don't think that's down to the game or the forum themselves. Back in those times, it was really the only way we all communicated online. Forums, chat rooms, MSN messenger. Since then, we have all sorts of methods of digital messaging, communities, massive social media's all over the place flooded with people and controversy. So all our online 'social energy' tends to get filled by them (or we simply end up avoiding them). Doesn't leave much time to dedicate to the classic little forums. Call it a change in culture.
Of course this extends to new generations too who are being brought up in the digital age and being exposed to social medias, whatsapp, snapchat, messenger, discord, steam, etc etc. Most probably don't even know what a forum is, let alone think to seek ones out. Thus we'll likely see less youth and young people coming in to fill the games of 'older hands' departing or drifting away.

When it comes to OpenTTD, I'd say the golden age was in the early days with it's conception and development and all these fantastic and amazing new features that were flying out of the factory doors. Now it's all become what we can refer to as the standard game I guess. There's not masses more you can really add that hasn't been done or tried. It had it's golden era for development, now it is simply enjoyed by many and always being introduced to a new crowd


I myself.... I missed my 20th year anniversary on the forum sadly. Completely forgot. I'm much more of a lurker these days than a poster (not helped by I always get logged out!). But I imagine there are others the same. Still about in the shadows, but not that active.


Plus.. I have three different jobs on the railway now, plus my hobbies at home, socialising and gaming, and a lot of people to keep in touch with. Can barely find time to lurk usually let alone post here

[Geo Ghost]

I'm intending to keep this place going for as long as I practically can - hopefully another 20 years at least!

You better! We want our place in the record books

[broodje]

I myself.... I missed my 20th year anniversary

Ahhh, darn I missed mine too! The worst thing is though that apperently I'm getting rather old if I've been on this forum for 22 years...

I do occasionaly start OTTD, but for me Factorio has taken over nearly al my gaming time. Life is getting in the way .

[orudge]

Ahhh, darn I missed mine too! The worst thing is though that apperently I'm getting rather old if I've been on this forum for 22 years...

broodje! Now that is a name from the “golden age” for sure! Hope you are doing well?

[broodje]

I'm doing fine, thanks. Somehow I got 2 kids, a proper job and a house in the last few years. I even found a few grey hairs!

[vear]

The golden age is on and will last as long as you have fun playing the game.

The community is obviously less lively than it used to be, but most of what has been acheived throughout the years still is and will be available to enjoy. The Internet is getting lousier in general (in great part thanks to the social media, which itself also suck more than they used to), hence places like this one suffer. Well... that's the way things are. Perhaps we'll have a renaissance one day? Audio CDs are already on a slow rise as more and more people being fed up with subscriptions

[Redirect Left]

I agree with vear, as long as people are playing & enjoying it, the age continues.
I think as mentioned before reddit & steam forums are hurting these forums. You also have different discords for openttd servers where people who play there get answers & help instead of making an account here which spreads things very thin. Unfortunately there's nothing you can really do about the above, although Discord i suspect is slowly imploding given their desperate attempts to grab money lately, so maybe that'd help the forums. I do kinda wish OTTD was advertised more, but that will cost money, so its understandable.

I still have OpenTTD running in the background 24/7, on a save I've had since 2023, still tab in and do a bit more every so often, but i have switched to mostly playing OpenRCT2 (again open in the background 24/7, rip CPU) as they add lots of interesting features, which has been lacking in OpenTTD recently due to the strict not adding things in vanilla that'd take away from the original experience. I still enjoy OpenTTD and i still do the AI testing, which is a bit of a thankless job but keeps me busy, but looking at my forum account I've been playing TTD (i started with TTDP when that was still getting regular updates) for over 20 years so its probably natural it wears a little thinner after that, especially given I am still just me & never really achieved much in those 20 years.

[2006TTD]

I have been reading the forums from time to time since student days. I agree with some of the views that life has went on for different people, for example getting into employment already taken up a significant portion of time compared to the "free" time and vacations during academic life. I still remember the days (wow it was over a decade ago) that I participated in adding sprites to the game graphics was very interesting, as well as the troubling part of setting up the palette in GIMP. It was motivating to see new features added to OpenTTD as time progresses, such as cargo distribution. Seeing this thread made me want to say thank you to all the people for keeping the forum and development ongoing, even if times have changed.

[ChillCore]

It was motivating to see new features added to OpenTTD as time progresses, such as cargo distribution.

that for sure was a glorious time


but yeah ...

[Mrsunman]

I'm thinking of creating a Youtube channel to create videos for TTD, now that i have more free time, so maybe that could bring extra attention to the forums?