Transport Tycoon

Transport Tycoon is an economic simulation by Chris Sawyer for the PC and was released in 1994 by MicroProse. The aim of the game is to build a successful transport company. Here are ships, various road vehicles, airplanes, and especially track vehicles.

Gameplay

The player is head of a transport company and need this help to blossom. In the play area can be found at the beginning of the game, some cities and farms, the player on the game landscape perspective is isometric - similar to other games of that time, such as SimCity 2000.

The player can now farms with goods that are needed there to supply, or bring goods that are produced there, to where they are needed. One example is called from the coal mine to the power plant, the transport of coal. For this transport, the player is rewarded and be able to expand his business further. The transport to the processing facilities the local production rises goods. Some plants process the raw materials and goods also to so-called "goods" on, which can then be delivered to the cities. It is also possible to transport passengers and mail between cities.

The game takes place in the period from 1900 to 2030 ( Transport Tycoon Deluxe: 1950-2050 ). With time, other technologies such as magnetic levitation are developed and made ​​available to the player. After the year 2030, there will be no more technological innovations, but can be played indefinitely, while remaining in the year 2030 are available.

The transport of goods and passengers shall be made either by land - with road and rail vehicles -, by sea or by air freight. As in the game the most efficient way to show the land with the transport by rail vehicles and the use of aircraft. It is possible to build complex systems with a signal track systems and in this way to optimize the paths of the railway vehicles. Here we reach the limits of the game relatively quickly: With increasing number of trains on the same route, there is very long Zugstaus; the delivery time of goods to the premises shall be extended. For even greater number of trains it can happen that the train service completely come to a halt because less block sections are available as features. The cause of these problems lies in the fact that the landscape - is extremely heavily compressed - similar to the model railway. The track lengths are in proportion to the train lengths shorter dimensions than the model, which makes an effective, very busy route virtually impossible.

It is possible to play both against the computer and against another human player on the network.

Further development

Transport Tycoon ( TT, later also: TTO for Transport Tycoon Original ) was initially a pure DOS game. 1995 saw an expansion in the form of a " World Editor ", with which it was possible to create your own cards. In addition, the expansion also included a new graphics set, a futuristic Martian landscape with red water, but was missing again in the new edition.

In 1996 Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD ), a remake of the game from 1994, which included some detail changes and additions in addition to the already built-in editor. There were now four landscape forms: still got an alpine world, a desert landscape and a toy landscape to the classical landscape of TT ( temperate climate ) are added, each with the new economy and new behavior of urban growth. TTD could be played over a computer network, also the game was revised and improved in some details. For example, new types of signals for trains, and the ability to buy land, added. Now Furthermore, it was possible from competing companies to buy shares ( 25 % ) packets, which ( like shares) were sold later on successful business management at a profit, or to the acquisition of the company led (at 100 % of the shares ). This and many other features of TT and TTD are not reflected in the sequel Locomotion.

After TTD initially ran in a DOS environment still appeared a little later a version for Microsoft Windows. MicroProse then dealt not with the game. An independent gaming community published, however, until today (2012 ) regularly unofficial extensions for TTD, so-called " unofficial patches " that extend the original game with additional features, bug repair and repeal restrictions in the original game. In addition to advanced signal systems and completely new vehicles and graphics, the user interface has been significantly improved and can even be replaced by, for example, the controls of Locomotion.

The late 1990s was designed by Josef Drexler TTDPatch the Transport Tycoon expansion. With this it was possible to get extensions, so-called GRF in the game. This made it possible to bring such as new vehicles, road textures or buildings into play. Furthermore TTDPatch brought further improvements.

In July 2013 it was announced that a remake of Transport Tycoon will be released for iOS and Android. Chris Sawyer himself is involved in the development. The beta test phase began in August 2013 and the game was released on October 3, 2013 for iOS, Android and Kindle.

Similar games

Locomotion

Locomotion is considered the successor to Transport Tycoon. It was also developed by Chris Sawyer and published in 2004 by Atari. It is built on the same basis as RollerCoaster Tycoon, thus providing much more free options at haul and construction of the station. The new features such as trams and virtually unlimited construction in the underground there are many cuts in the details opposite: How can no longer be traded company shares and all ways to take direct, immediate impact on competitors and cities have been removed. The fact that the build system has also been adopted directly from Roller Coaster Tycoon, but was not optimally adapted to transport a game of Kreuzungsbau is complicated sometimes very time consuming and confusing. So you can track pieces no longer be placed anywhere, but must they "remote controlled ", leave as RollerCoaster Tycoon, build.

OpenTTD

In March 2004, OpenTTD, an open- source engine, which originated from the disassembled original executable files appeared. OpenTTD is constantly being developed and includes the full functionality of the original, whose video data is needed to run OpenTTD. Since August 2008, however, the base graphics can be replaced by free OpenGFX graphics, original sound files can be omitted since October 2008 and replaced by OpenSFX so that no files from the original game are no longer necessary in principle. There are also other game elements such as a multiplayer mode via the Internet, the ability to create maps up to 64 times the size of the original and significant improvements in the user interface.

OpenTTD is maintained steadily and by a large community and is available for, among others, the following platforms: Microsoft Windows (95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 ), Linux, Solaris, BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD ), Mac OS X ( 10.3-10.5 )

SimuTrans

Simutrans, a transport and economic simulation with different transport