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SimuTranslator
Make Simutrans speak your language.

Thanks!

Started by zc15-nyonker, December 09, 2009, 03:31:45 PM

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zc15-nyonker

    I have played many freeware and commercial transport simulators, but this is the best.
    Chris Sawyer's Locomotion has great graphics and all, but it is so simple and boring. In 1900, did  anyone drive trucks? No, Mr. Ford started the Model T. in 1908. Locomotion has you buy trucks right away.
    Open TTD does not even go back that far in time. Transport Tycoon is just outdated.
    Not to mention, in this game you could go back hundreds of years to the 1700's, which is fun. I like the fact that passengers actually want to go to certain place: if a passenger wants to go to a friends house miles away, they first get on the stage or train to the town, then on a trolley to the nearest stop to their destination. I also like the day and night feature. This game is awesome!

EvanBGood

I was going to write pretty much the exact same thing, so I'll just tag it under yours!
I found Simutrans after a bit of a dig through my old games, trying to find a good simulation game (there hasn't been a good new one in a while, after all, particularly not in transportation/city building). I eventually came to it through a wiki article on "business simulation games" and "tycoon games". I've tinkered around with freeware and open source things before (as a user, not a programmer) but nothing has grabbed my focus quite like this. You can see in every little building, every bit of text, every little car or train, just how much love and effort was put into this. In a world filled with Halo and Wii obsessions, it's great to see that there's still people working with the kind of mindset I grew up with. The kind of minds that came up with ideas like SimCity or X-Com.
Playing this game gives a great ammount of both creative and intellectual satisfaction; two things I was lacking in my "mainstream" gaming experience these days. In addition, you've managed to bury me under a mountain of nostalgia with something completely new. It simultaneously brings me back to my early days of gaming, to my HO and N model train sets that I built when I was little, to the Brio trains I built when I was... littler, to my first game of SimCity played in summer school, and even to my love of midi music. But, at the same time, there's so much "newness" that I feel like I just dropped half a week's pay at Best Buy.
On top of all of that, whether it was intentional or not, I find this game extremely educational. I keep learning things about trains and signals that I never even knew before. Admittedly, I never had much experience with this kind of thing in reality, so learning what a "tender" is, is actually kind of fascinating. This is, of course, on top of the disgusting ammount of math I've been doing trying to figure out profits and such. I don't have children, but if I did, I think I would try to have them spend their time with things like this.
So, though I've been quite tired at work in the days following my discovery of this game, I still want to say thank you! Perhaps, one day, I can do something to contribute to the game, myself!