Worldwide Rush | Blogpost 1
Hi everyone!
We played some OpenTTD multiplayer last weekend. It was like a nice start for the week after filling a small map. Playing other similar games, even those you already played for countless hours, is always a good inspiration. It is much easier to find problems with something that others have made. There is probably a scientific reason why it is difficult to evaluate your own work with the same scrutiny. I always start to think in ways how you would improve certain mechanics, and that leads to a week starting full of motivation. And yes, multiplayer is fun.
Now let's talk about what we added.
Note, that this is not yet in the demo build.
[h2]Route Management[/h2]
The most requested feature is done. The game will automatically create or assign vehicles to a route, which then you will be able to rename and adjust. Vehicle will be assigned to the same route with either Atlanta > Tampa or Tampa > Atlanta instructions. As long as it is the same route with just a different start position.
Buying a new vehicle, duplicating, selling existing ones or changing the whole route will be just a click away. Still need to add equal spacing, which turns out is not as straightforward with different vehicle speeds.
[h2]Renaming[/h2]
Together with Routes management, we added renaming for vehicles. It also has a bonus of allowing to add some decorations due to how text works in the game.
[h2]Removing Roads and Rails[/h2]
Next addition from feedback is road and rail removal. As long as you own the road, you will be able to remove it. For now, it is for free as the standard definition of how it should vary. Some games add a price tag for removal, some refund you. It did not make much sense to go in either of these directions, and we left it in the middle.
[h2]Vehicles[/h2]
One small, but fun change from feedback is making vehicles drive on the correct side of the road. Adding different road graphics based on country requirements would be cool as well, but there would need to happen some more significant changes to not increase draw calls.
Talking about vehicles, they now show the whole route they are using instead of the current stretch. Next, if you buyout the whole month's inventory of a vehicle, then the first vehicle you have done that to will increase its inventory by 1. Supply and demand, I guess.
[h2]City Names[/h2]
There were many smaller changes as well. For example, some city names were overlapping. In UK that is not a big problem, but where city density increases it becomes quite hard to understand where is what. For that, we manually adjusted names placement like in the picture above.
[h2]Trust System[/h2]
The new Trust system is the main way to play against competition. Trust basically means how much passengers trust your company. You mainly earn trust by transporting local travelers to their desired destinations. Infrastructure and marketing can influence how much trust is earned.
In this system, each city calculates trust individually and marks the most trusted company. If you do not have the majority of trust, then you will not be able to buy a hub there. However, if you have at least 75% of trust, then you can forcefully buy competitor's hub with local government help.
Finally, if you own the most trust in a country, then you will be chosen as the most trustworthy company for a month. The screenshot above shows how you can see that in the game. This will result in natural marketing and faster trust accumulation. With this system, you can take over the competition bit by bit. Still, there is much work and testing left.
[h2]Destinations[/h2]
We experimented with destinations a bit, but had to revert changes. Sometimes ideas that sound good on paper are not so good in practice. I wanted city destinations to not only grow, but shrink as well. So I separated destinations level growth from city growth, leaving city level as a destination level cap. This means you can level up specific destinations and leave others alone. In case fulfillment is bellow 20% for two months in a row, then destination level would shrink. The city itself would grow on general passengers transfer instead of all destinations' fulfillment.
At least for me, it sounded good on paper. This would add some dynamic challenge, with indirect traffic ruining your plans if you expand too fast. Allowing leveling up cities in more ways. But once we started testing, it felt "murky". It was much easier to fulfil city demand, and it felt pointless with much more added logic and tooltips. On the other hand, the current solution is clean and simple with enough challenge to make it fun. So that was a wasted time. But it is better to step back and accept losses instead of forcing something just because you spent time on it.
Until the next Friday, where we will talk about AI.
We played some OpenTTD multiplayer last weekend. It was like a nice start for the week after filling a small map. Playing other similar games, even those you already played for countless hours, is always a good inspiration. It is much easier to find problems with something that others have made. There is probably a scientific reason why it is difficult to evaluate your own work with the same scrutiny. I always start to think in ways how you would improve certain mechanics, and that leads to a week starting full of motivation. And yes, multiplayer is fun.
Now let's talk about what we added.
Note, that this is not yet in the demo build.
[h2]Route Management[/h2]
The most requested feature is done. The game will automatically create or assign vehicles to a route, which then you will be able to rename and adjust. Vehicle will be assigned to the same route with either Atlanta > Tampa or Tampa > Atlanta instructions. As long as it is the same route with just a different start position.
Buying a new vehicle, duplicating, selling existing ones or changing the whole route will be just a click away. Still need to add equal spacing, which turns out is not as straightforward with different vehicle speeds.
[h2]Renaming[/h2]
Together with Routes management, we added renaming for vehicles. It also has a bonus of allowing to add some decorations due to how text works in the game.
[h2]Removing Roads and Rails[/h2]
Next addition from feedback is road and rail removal. As long as you own the road, you will be able to remove it. For now, it is for free as the standard definition of how it should vary. Some games add a price tag for removal, some refund you. It did not make much sense to go in either of these directions, and we left it in the middle.
[h2]Vehicles[/h2]
One small, but fun change from feedback is making vehicles drive on the correct side of the road. Adding different road graphics based on country requirements would be cool as well, but there would need to happen some more significant changes to not increase draw calls.
Talking about vehicles, they now show the whole route they are using instead of the current stretch. Next, if you buyout the whole month's inventory of a vehicle, then the first vehicle you have done that to will increase its inventory by 1. Supply and demand, I guess.
[h2]City Names[/h2]
There were many smaller changes as well. For example, some city names were overlapping. In UK that is not a big problem, but where city density increases it becomes quite hard to understand where is what. For that, we manually adjusted names placement like in the picture above.
[h2]Trust System[/h2]
The new Trust system is the main way to play against competition. Trust basically means how much passengers trust your company. You mainly earn trust by transporting local travelers to their desired destinations. Infrastructure and marketing can influence how much trust is earned.
In this system, each city calculates trust individually and marks the most trusted company. If you do not have the majority of trust, then you will not be able to buy a hub there. However, if you have at least 75% of trust, then you can forcefully buy competitor's hub with local government help.
Finally, if you own the most trust in a country, then you will be chosen as the most trustworthy company for a month. The screenshot above shows how you can see that in the game. This will result in natural marketing and faster trust accumulation. With this system, you can take over the competition bit by bit. Still, there is much work and testing left.
[h2]Destinations[/h2]
We experimented with destinations a bit, but had to revert changes. Sometimes ideas that sound good on paper are not so good in practice. I wanted city destinations to not only grow, but shrink as well. So I separated destinations level growth from city growth, leaving city level as a destination level cap. This means you can level up specific destinations and leave others alone. In case fulfillment is bellow 20% for two months in a row, then destination level would shrink. The city itself would grow on general passengers transfer instead of all destinations' fulfillment.
At least for me, it sounded good on paper. This would add some dynamic challenge, with indirect traffic ruining your plans if you expand too fast. Allowing leveling up cities in more ways. But once we started testing, it felt "murky". It was much easier to fulfil city demand, and it felt pointless with much more added logic and tooltips. On the other hand, the current solution is clean and simple with enough challenge to make it fun. So that was a wasted time. But it is better to step back and accept losses instead of forcing something just because you spent time on it.
Until the next Friday, where we will talk about AI.
