#openttdcoop vs AIs: now on ProZone!

With the newly started ProZone game we try something new, making use of a number of recently added features to OpenTTD: we make it a coopetition game of us players vs. 14 other AI companies. In order to not completely fall into chaos I prepared a map which is basically ready to play for many people where we don’t need to care too much about money and many people can start building right away.
partial view of the map

look on part of the map Read the rest of this entry »

The Feature – spree continues

Just yesterday OpenTTD got another nice feature added to trunk: arbitrary map edges! From todays nightly onwards the map borders no longer need to be water but can be at any height, allowing for a far greater flexibility and also nicer looking maps which especially adds to certain scenarios (like coastal scenarios where you don’t want to have islands…)
arbitrary map edges (in trunk since r15190)

arbitrary map edges (in trunk since r15190)

The game creation dialogue got a new button which allows you to choose the sides which are enforced to be water:game configuration window

game configuration window
This option is only available though, if you allow freeform map edges in the advanced settings (it is found in the construction section). Congratulations to and two thumbs up for OpentTTD’s newest dev, Yexo. Happy gaming to all.

Have a banana everyone!

For just a weekend offline I return to discover another new feature merged to trunk OpenTTD when reading the changelog: In the fruit basket I found a bunch of bananas, or more properly spellt, BaNaNaS.

BaNaNaS is an acronym which stands for Base graphics And NewGRF And NoAI And Scenarios and is the new content delivery system of OpenTTD. It allows you to update to the newest version of base grfs (OpenGFX), NewGRFs and NoAI – computer players.
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Optimization of Logic – Logic Gates [Part II]

Almost half a year ago I blogged about Logic Gates and already the headline promised that this story is not over yet. Now, I was finally able to concentrate my thoughts about logic gates again and was able to optimize the gates again. As I pointed out earlier the reaction time is too long and gates are reacting too sluggish. The slow processing made the gates only interesting in places which don’t need to be fast. For example the timing of injection. But when it comes to mainlines, sidelines, station entries and many other fancy coop-ish constructions they were more an impediment.
Download Logic Train NewGRF

I hope, this’ll change now, because these new constructions require only one train without any wagons and are extremely small in comparison with the old gates and the once I see nowadays in our games.
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Merge with trunk of NoAI branch

Fellow coopers,

great news, another big step forward in OpenTTD development: the new framework for computer players has been merged from the NoAI branch into trunk. So, from now on, there’s no need anymore to complain about those stupid AI which OpenTTD had up until now – everyone may programme his or her own AI with as much intelligence as desired. Like many people did as documented in the NoAI subforums. Check out the threads there for different AIs.

Company chart from our first coop game against a few AIs Read the rest of this entry »