Giving Thanks/Questions/Ideas

[Holyway]

Hello everyone!

First of all, I’d really like to express my excitrement about this project. I was just surfing the net when I found you today, and you really made my day. Back in my childhood, my favourite games were Sim City, Transport Tycoon, later Traffic Giant, Indutry Giant, even Railroad Tycoons. I really grew up with these games, I love this genre, and they were among the reasons that led me to be an IT student now. They made me fall in love with computers, and i still have great nostalgic feelings about them (and WoW later on, but that’s not important now :D). I still have the great OpenTTD remake on my machine, and play it if i have to let some steam out (and have a few hours of stressless fun).

It was always my dream to recreate the feeling of these games in a modern environment, for todays kids and fans to play, but, ofc, I always lacked the time/dedication/programming skills to start anything serious. But now, you are here, and make me proud, and happy that there are people out there who are also dedicated to this genre, even more than me, and have the tools and time to revive the great old Transport Tycoon feeling, even rethink the whole genre. I can only encourage you to go on, and make something awesome! If you don’t fuck it up, you can be the Chris Sawyers of the 21st century 😀

Now over to my questions abou the game:

1. Tourism
It is trivial, and I don’t think you missed it, but what about tourism? It would be nice to see that people want to travel between cities to see the sights, and to have a way to see how many tourists wish to move between certain cities.

2. Business Policy?
Is there a plan to allow the creation of business policy rules, like giving discounts to elderly people/students/kids, etc.? All in all, will there be any way to attract people/goods to use our services?

3. Industries
Will the player be able to create his/her own industries?

4.City planning
Will there be city planning? Different city layouts, like chess table style, or circular with avenues, etc?

5. Train tracks
How trains will be able to pass each other? Will we have to build waiting tracks, and semaphores/lights as in Transport Tycoon, or you choose the lazier approach of trains “sliding thru each other” as it was in Railroad Tycoon? I personally really liked that i had to create different track layouts, and use lights wisely to make a train network go, i love this kind of micro management…

6.Game time/Simulation time
Will there be a way to separate in-game time from the simulation? I’m thinking about a function that makes me able to choose how long an in-game year should last real time, without altering the simulation speed, maybe with appropriate changes in income per transport, to keep yearly incomes in line. Im asking this because I love to just, you know, plan what my next step will be, look around, follow trains, see as the system i built works. I hate that in TTD, i always run/ran out of the in-game time span, while i could not build what i originally wanted.

7.AI competitors in single player/multiplayer
Will there be any?

Thank you for your response in advance, and thank you again for your work, and the whole project all together.

(And sorry for my english mistakes if there are any, it’s become really rusty since i last used it…)

[mikael]

Hi there,

Thank you for your kind words. We try to create the best game we can in the time we’ve got. Our goal is to get the transport tycoon games back in business with new technologies and accessible controls that meet the current standard. We’re happy about every support we get from the community.

 

About your questions:

1. Yes, there are leisure transportation needs.
2. No, we’re not going to give the player control about the pricing. The attraction for using the players transportation mainly depends on the time benefit the inhabitants will get using your public transportation line.
3. Train Fever is focused on managing your transportation empire, we don’t include additional income facilities.
4. The cities grow autonomous, but the player’s influence will increase the growth drastically. You as the player are able to build your own roads which the city will include into its own structure.
5. We do have a signal system for our tracks. Trains are not going to pass through each other, you have to create good signals and create a nice layout.
6. An in-game year will pass in 6 minutes. You’re able to speed the time up, what will shorten an in-game year.
7. Not in the release version. We’re eager to create a multiplayer and some AI competitors, but not in this version .

[Holyway]

Hi!

Thank you for your quick reply! The game seems to be perfect.

Only if those 6 minutes could be increased by an option when I start a new game… that would be awesome. 🙂

 

Anyways, you can count on me among your first customers for sure. Oh, and be sure that the news get to everyone, it seems that not too many people know about this awesome project yet.

[atpat]

2 things:

1. I’d like to add my support to your undertaking.  I too am excited at the potential of what you are doing.

2. Signalling.  The purpose of signals is mostly to promote safety by enforcing sufficient gaps between trains (“headway”), speeds and caution to prevent collisions, but also to assist the integrity of the timetable.  Traditionally, signals not only protect junctions but also subdivide a route into sections.  Since you are having lineside rather than dynamic (“moving-block”) signalling, a block section approach is implicit.  On the other hand, all this could get very complicated and I wouldn’t expect you to go for ultra-realism.  What, then, will happen if a train catches another up?  Will it stop intelligently (i.e. its braking characteristics are always assumed to be adequate to do this by line-of-sight) or will there be block sections between signals?  i.e. if we put signals only at junctions, the entire route from one junction to the next will be considered a block section and no train will be admitted into it until the previous one has left it at the other end.  This would be beautifully realistic!

[douglas]

Are you going to include different levels of difficult? Hard, very hard, extreme, impossible?

I’m a bit afraid that without AI it will be easy to lose motivation. I do enjoy just making the network and looking around, but after a while you have a huge network, meaning loads of money, and then its just too easy to get around.

What kept my motivation in RailRoad Tycoon 2 is the fact that you can spend money to purchase the AI and re-make all network, spend money in the stock market and upgrade the entire fleet. Things that are very expensive even when your company have a lot of cash.

Another thing you could include is the possibility to build a headquarters. Each HQ upgrade will unlock new features. That gives a sense of development. Take this as inspiration: http://i48.tinypic.com/2cxyonk.jpg

Just like Traffic Giant, some areas of the map can also be locked, and can only be served after some criteria is reached.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by douglas.

[mikael]

@atpat: Yes, we’re trying to keep it simple. An update about the signaling will come in a few weeks. Block and path signals are in schedule.

@douglas:

An AI would be great but takes too much time for our small team. We do have difficulty levels and trying to balance them as good as possible.
Thank you for the Headquarters input, we’re trying to make something similar to keep the motivation high.

 

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