As discussed here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=16674.0) and previously, Simutrans-Experimental has now become Simutrans-Extended as of to-day, the 13th of February 2017.
To summarise: the game (including its long-term develoment aims) is exactly the same as what was Simutrans-Experimental. The change of name is intended to make clearer that Simutrans-Extended is a fork of Simutrans-Standard aimed at extending the basic game-play principally by adding realism. Some people had previously been confused by the old name, Simutrans-Experimental, which gave the impression that this was a branch for testing features for eventual inclusion into Simutrans-Standard.
The history of the name Simutrans-Experimental is that it was originally developed from late 2008 with the aim of adding one or two features to Simutrans rather than being a separate fork. The idea of a separate fork as the project has become developed only later when it emerged that there were different preferences as to how the game should play, with some users preferring the relative simplicity of Simutrans-Standard, and others preferring greater realism and complexity.
Congrats on making this step, James.
May I suggest a more clearly-named pinned topic in one of the forums for downloading the latest version? A sub-title of 'Download latest version here', or similar. I think at the moment it is not clear enough where someone wishing to download should go. Similarly on the front page of the forum - maybe one of the subforum descriptions should include the text 'Download Simutrans-Extended here'. One final thing: what link should I share for the legacy Experimental builds?
Thank you for that suggestion. I have now implemented an automatically built Simutrans-Extended-Complete.zip for Windows from the nightly builds, and a guide for how to download Simutrans-Extended here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=16703.0).
As for the legacy builds, the links here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1894.msg19644#msg19644) should still be valid.
I just noticed the server listing is still using the old "experimental" branding.
http://server.exp.simutrans.com:8080/list
Ahh, thank you for spotting that - and I suppose that "exp" has the "p" which is inconsistent with "Extended", too. I wonder whether whoever is in charge of this server could modify it accordingly? I should be grateful.
The listing server will be moved soon to some other place, and probably a new hostname as well. However the only branding that is there is the logo. I have no idea who made it - it was included in the simlist repository. If anybody has logo with the word extended, I'll gladly use that. Or if anybody can fix the current logo.
Quote from: jamespetts on February 17, 2017, 01:36:11 AM
Thank you for that suggestion. I have now implemented an automatically built Simutrans-Extended-Complete.zip for Windows from the nightly builds, and a guide for how to download Simutrans-Extended here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=16703.0).
Just noticed this. Thanks, it means people without compilers etc. can now play a current version. Well done. :thumbsup: