Introduction
Step up as the President of a start-up transportation company in the 1950's, try to connect various industries and cities with a varied choice of rail, road, air and maritime vehicles and build up your own transportation empire!
Outsmart your competition, beat rival companies to service profitable routes, and race them to become the largest transport company by the year 2050!
OpenTTD is an open source reimplementation of the game Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD) by Microprose and originally coded by Chris Sawyer. It introduces a rich set of new features, including multiplayer support, improved stations and vehicles, larger maps and a host of other options.
OpenTTD can be run on Windows, macOS, Linux, Unix and a few other supported platforms.
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Features
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Main Article: List of New Features
OpenTTD offers many features that enhance and rework the experience from the original TTD. Many of these were inspired by TTDPatch, a popular enhancement patch for TTD, while other features are completely original to this version.
Gameplay
Some of the most significant gameplay enhancements introduced in OpenTTD are the integration of the Multiplayer mode, an Autorail tool to easily build large railway networks, longer trains that can be fitted with multiple engines to enhance their power, an improved train pathfinder so your trains won’t get lost, and many, many more!
Make sure to check the full List of New Features to know everything OpenTTD has to offer!
Customization
OpenTTD also offers superior customization capabilities over TTD through the use of the Advanced Settings Menu and user generated content via NewGRFs that can enhance the game in a varied amount of ways.
Open Source Development
OpenTTD is an ever evolving, community driven effort where every player has the ability to contribute to the improvement of the source code of the game themselves.
Brief History of Transport Tycoon
The first Transport Tycoon (TT) game was released in 1994. It was developed by Chris Sawyer and released by MicroProse.
It was very popular at the time. Compared to many other games of the time, it was spectacular. The intuitive gameplay and the colourful, crisp graphics, combined with endless opportunities to build and shape the transport network of your dreams made it an instant classic.
With the release of Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD) in 1995, the game was greatly improved. Many new features, including 4 different environments, maglev trains, one-way signals, etc., were implemented.
TTD continued to be played for many years after by a small, but dedicated group of gamers. Even though the game had been fairly successful, no direct sequel was announced. Chris Sawyer's Locomotion can be considered as a successor, but could not replicate the previous game's success.
The Rise of TTDPatch
Somewhere around 1996-1997, Josef Drexler started a project called TTDPatch, which was (as the name implies) a patch for TTD. Originally it only did small things, but later on it was able to support NewGRF files, two company colours, and even trams. It fixes some problems with the game and also adds a lot of new features to it. The TTDPatch project has endured for many years and has changed the game quite radically.
A Windows version
A great problem during 1996 was that TTD had been written in assembly language and was not especially portable. Nevertheless, a Windows 95 conversion was made by FISH Technology Group in 1996, but it was only released by Microprose (later Hasbro Interactive) in 1999, in a compilation of similar games known as "The Tycoon Collection", which included Railroad Tycoon 2, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Transport Tycoon Deluxe. This Windows version introduced a few bugs, including broken tutorials, and had a FISH UK logo added to the startup screens (whic were later removed from OpenTTD).
Enter OpenTTD
The Patch's method of modifying the game made a lot of potential features near-impossible. In 2003, the user Ludde contacted Owen Rudge, owner of TT-Forums, and explained he was going to reverse engineer the game and convert TTD to the (programming language)|C programming language. A year later Ludde presented Owen Rudge with the first release life cycle release|release version of what is now known as OpenTTD. After this, forums were created where people discussed the new incarnation of the game. The reception form the community was positive, and other developers joined Ludde in the project. Work continues on OpenTTD to this day.
OpenTTD 1.0.0
At the end of 2009 an important milestone was reached. Up till this time graphics and sound files from Transport Tycoon Deluxe were required to play OpenTTD but now free and open alternatives, OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX, are also available and supported. These large community contributions made OpenTTD a fully stand-alone game for the first time and to mark this occasion this release was given the version number 1.0.0.