Tutorial

From OpenTTD

Welcome to the OpenTTD general gameplay tutorial. Here you will be shown how to start a game and set up bus and train routes. This will probably take around 15 minutes. If you get stuck, right click on buttons in the game for a description of what they do. The menu to the right shows more detailed tutorials on particular aspects of the game that you may like to investigate if there is something specific you want to learn about.

Contents 1 Starting the game 2 Inside the game 3 Setting up a bus service 3.1 Finding a suitable location 3.2 Building bus stations 3.3 Buying a bus 3.4 Giving orders to your bus 4 Setting up a train route 4.1 Locating your route 4.2 Building train stations 4.3 Connecting train stations 4.4 Adding a train 4.5 Giving orders 5 Conclusion 5.1 Next steps

[edit] Starting the game

Upon starting OpenTTD, you will be presented with the main menu.

1. Click the New Game button. This will open the World Generation screen, filled with even more dazzling options. Leave these to their defaults for now.
2. Click the big green Generate button. The game will now create a new world for you to play in, and the game will start.

[edit] Inside the game

The screen you now see is what you'll be playing all of OpenTTD in. In the middle you can see the green landscape, perhaps with an industry, town or forest here and there. This is the world you'll be taming using the tools of your trade: roads, railways, docks and airports.

At the top of the screen you'll notice a menu bar. Right click some of the buttons - a popup will appear to tell you about what the button does. Some of the buttons have menus under them. You can access the menu options by holding down the left mouse button, moving down the menu and releasing on the option you want.

[edit] Setting up a bus service

Let's build one of the simplest types of transport available to you; a passenger transport service by road (otherwise known as a bus).

[edit] Finding a suitable location

Click and drag using the right mouse button to move around the map. Look for a group of houses - this is a town. Each town has its name displayed in the middle of it, followed by a number in brackets indicating its population. Try to find a town of 500 inhabitants or greater.

[edit] Building bus stations

1. Click on the Road construction button . A new toolbar with more buttons will appear. These buttons are all related to building road-based services.
2. Click on the Build Bus Station button . The Bus Station Orientation window will appear, giving you four choices for the orientation of your bus station.
3. Look for a free tile next to a road, near to some houses.
4. Click the correct orientation button so that your bus station will have its entrance facing the road.
5. Left-click on your chosen tile to build the bus station there. You'll notice a red number floating up, which indicates the amount of money you just spent. If you get the orientation right, you'll also notice the road is extended into your bus station.
6. Repeat this procedure for another bus station in a different part of town.

[edit] Buying a bus

To move passengers between these two stations you obviously need to have a bus. Buses (and all other vehicles) are built in depots.

1. Build a road vehicle depot by clicking the Depot button in the Road construction menu, and follow the same procedure as with the bus stations. Try to build it close to either of the bus stations but it doesn't matter if it's not surrounded by houses this time.
2. Click on your newly built depot. The depot menu will appear, and you will get an overview of all the vehicles in there - currently none. We can change that by building a bus!
3. Choose the New Vehicles button at the bottom of the depot. Another screen will open, this time listing all the vehicles available to you at this moment. At the top you will find the bus - an MPS Regal bus to be precise.
4. Click the bus to selected and then click Build Vehicle. A new vehicle window will appear.
5. Now your bus is built and ready to take orders. You don't need the Depot window anymore for now, so click on the x in its topleft corner.

[edit] Giving orders to your bus

1. In the vehicle window, click the Orders button .
2. Click the Go To button, and then click on your first bus station with the special go to cursor. This will add an instruction to the vehicle's orders; Go to <station name>.
3. Click Go To again, and add your second station to the vehicles order list in the same way. Once a vehicle has reached the end of its instructions, it will start over from the beginning.
4. In the vehicle window, press the status bar at the bottom that says Stopped, and your bus will leave the depot and start driving between the stations.

Congratulations - you have just built your first bus service! Over time passengers will gather at the bus stations, and your bus will collect them and drop them off at the other side of town. When this happens, you'll notice green numbers floating out of your bus - income!

Your bus will probably not be very profitable, as it drives only a short distance and will not carry very many passengers. You will need to create more transport services in order to build your income and empire.

[edit] Setting up a train route

Trains are faster than road vehicles and have a higher capacity, but they are more expensive and train networks require more planning than roads.

There are several types of cargo and industry chains in OpenTTD. The simplest and most profitable things to do is transporting coal from Coal Mines to Power Stations, so we will set up a route for this. There's a video that demonstrates this.

[edit] Locating your route

Scroll around the map until you find a Coal Mine and a Power Station in close proximity. For this tutorial it doesn't matter too much about how far apart they are, but the further you transport cargo the more income it generates so in a real game you won't want to pick them too close.

Now you have found some industries but we need a way to get the coal to the power station. We'll use a train, since this is the trains part of the tutorial, and besides they can hold lots of coal and are probably the most fun vehicle.

[edit] Building train stations

1. Open the Railway Construction toolbar by clicking the button.
2. Click on the Build railroad station button . A station building window will appear. Remember, you can right click on any button if you ever want a description of what it does.
3. Set the Number of Tracks to one, and the Platform Length to three. Each "unit" will take two carriages so in a real game, you choose the length of your station according to the length of the trains you want to load there, i.e. a station of 3 squares long will take one locomotive and five carriages.
4. Select the best orientation for your station so that you can run the track in the right direction between the industries.
5. Find some flat ground next to the Coal Mine and click to place the station.
6. Build another station next to the power plant.

[edit] Connecting train stations

Now you need to build the track between the stations.

1. Click the Autorail button on the Railway Construction toolbar.
2. Drag in a straight line from one of the stations towards the other to lay the track.
3. Add more connecting sections until you reach the other station (you can build the track in the screenshot to the right using two drags of the autorail - one for the straight bit and another for the approach to the power station).

If you make a mistake you can use the dynamite tool to remove parts of the track.

[edit] Adding a train

Now you need to buy some trains, but you can't just have them magically appear on your tracks - you need to build a train depot.

1. Click the Build train depot button on the Railway Construction toolbar. A new window will open giving you a choice of orientations.
2. Choose an orientation and place the depot so that the front entrance is facing onto some track, like in the screenshot. Connecting rails will automatically be added so your trains can enter and leave the depot.
3. Click on your newly built depot. The depot menu will appear, and you will get an overview of all the trains in there - currently none.
4. Choose the New Vehicles button at the bottom of the depot window. Another screen will open, this time listing all the vehicles available to you at this moment. Click on a locomotive from the top of the list, then click Buy Vehicle. A train window will open.
5. Scroll down in the new vehicles window and buy six coal wagons.
6. Whoops, actually I meant to say buy five - we'll have to delete one. Drag any wagon to this: button and then let go - it will be sold back and you will get some money in return.

See Buying trains for a more detailed tutorial.

[edit] Giving orders

1. Assign orders to the train the same way you did with the bus in the earlier part of the tutorial.
2. There are some extra options available for trains that we'll make use of. In the orders list, click on the name of the coal mine station in the orders list, and click the Full Load button. This tells the train to wait until it is full of coal before it leaves the station.
3. Click the "Stopped" button at the bottom of the train window to start the train.

Congratulations - you've built your first railway! After the train loads and delivers the coal, you will notice that it makes much more money than the bus.

This is the simplest type of railway in the game, and can handle only 1 train (try to add any more and you'll find they just stay in the depot). After playing for a while and reading some of the other Railway tutorials, you will learn how to make more complicated railways that can hold multiple trains at the same time.

[edit] Conclusion

So, you have set up your first transport company and some routes. What now? Well, it's up to you - you can choose to build a thousand bus services all across the map. Or you could see a nice business opportunity involving a forest and a nearby sawmill. Who knows? Just make sure you keep your company running profitably, and perhaps you'll end up as the greatest Transport Tycoon come the year 2050.

[edit] Next steps

• Expanding the railway with more trains and platforms.
• The menu at the top of the article lists some more detailed tutorials, particularly for railways.
• Read a detailed description of the interface or even more about Construction.
• Find out what kind of Vehicles you will encounter in OpenTTD. Meet planes & ships.
• Follow Railway construction for more articles on laying even more tracks, making incredible junctions and some more advanced stuff.
• Read the manual if you need information on anything specific - or try searching for it.