#openttdcoop

Today we started a new game on the openttdcoop.dev server. The patch tested is the track sharing patch currently under development by Gendemon (Forum thread).
UPDATE 3: we now use the updated version 0.3 with an additional “move player” possibility to allow easier swaping of companies. For downloads see below.

Please feel free to join, open your company or join an existing one (don’t use individual company pw here. Server has maybe pw ‘coop’ or no pw) and extensively test this feature. Besides being a really nice feature for the usual multiplayer games, giving them a completely new dimension, this patch is, if tested successfully, also a nice, big step forward to maybe a next incarnation of the next wwottdgd (World wide OTTD gaming day) with much more than just 10 clients connected – a real co-opetition event :).

So far available: r13031IS.diff, linux binary (32bit), OS-X (intel) binary and Win binary

Whenever starting a new game, be it local or on #openttdcoop, one important question to be cleared before starting to build the network always is: “What tilelength (TL) are we going to use for our trains?”.
The chosen setting will mostly depend on the size of the map, as you don’t want to have a hundreds train servicing a single coal mine on a 2048*2048 map. However, there is a great difference between using even tilelengths such as 4, 10 or 20 and odd ones like 5 or 11.

The patch setting “When dragging, place signals every: X tiles” should always be set to “2” when playing on #openttdcoop, and most players will also use this setting if playing alone. If dragging signals, you will always have one piece of track with a signal on it followed by one without one and so on.

Now, if trains are jamming up somewhere in the network, for example behind a full station, those trains should block as little space as possible, so that they won’t for example block the mainline.

As you can see in the first screenshot, with signals every 2 tiles, the trains with tilelength 5 (left) fit almost perfectly in between the signals. However, the TL4-trains (right) always have a gap of more than one tile between them and need as much space as the TL5-trains. To fix that, you would have to place additional signals in the gaps, which might look ugly (especiall for straight track, see below) and is a lot of work, as you would have to do it manually.

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Following is only for these who wants to read a lot… and comprehend some simple math. I figured, that in light of recent conversations about coopetition concept, there is a need to develop a decent criteria for evaluation game performance with having coopish aproach in mind. In game scoring mechanics and profit by itself are not enough to define a successfull and efficient network as far as i am concerned…

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Hi guys, I was thinking the other day that it would be very awesome if we started running a 4v4 coopetition game.

Phazorx and I were discussing this, and I wanted to open it up to other suggestions.

Our ideas:

The game would be a medium sized map with two identical continents. Each team would have a different continent, and they would try to build rival networks of the same type (freight v freight, pax v pax, combo v combo). For this to work, we need to make a ‘score’ system. This is some formula that will take into account differences between each team’s network and then work out which one was the best. We thought that the formula should take into account:

Yearly profit in last game year.
Number of Vehicles.
Cargo delivered in last game year.
Flow and visual appeal of network.

If anyone has an idea of a formula we can use. Please post it.

Also, my main thought was that unlike previous coopetition games that were run for a period of two hours or so,

this would be a much longer game. Running till about the year 2150-2200 in game. Also, its my idea that every
‘usual suspect’ and member be assigned a team before the start of the game, even if they dont play, it gives some
indication of who should be on what team when they join the game. It should be an even mix between skilled and new players, as well as taking into account who is online at what times usually. Its no good if the teams are equal if
you can only get one online at any one time.

Finally, there should be a rule about no deliberate interfering with the other team’s network. I know that removes a bit of the fun, but I’d like this game to be about network design, so players spend their time building their own
network instead of trying to ruin the other team’s.

For this to work, there will need to be some set ‘Judges’ who can keep an eye on players. It would probaly be best if they joined the game as spectators, then all players could agree that the Judge wasn’t helping one team build or something like that.
I think that if we can get people interested in this, it can be one awesome game of OTTD.

What does everyone think?

Great news for our upcoming coopetition ladder! Thanks to TrueLight, a dedicated branch for our coopetition gametypes will be created! If created, you may find it here.

There are already some patches for our purposes around. Additionally, there is this wiki-page dedicated for ideas to be implemented within this branch. Feel free to join our IRC-Channel and report your ideas!