2024 Simutrans Screenshot Contest

[Roboron]

Welcome, everyone! This year 2024 is about to end, and what would be better than end it with our traditional Simutrans Screenshot Contest? Nothing! So prepare to compete and win the best prize of all: the winner of this year will become the new banner image for simutrans.com, which has remained unchanged for years.

Participation
1 - You can participate with any pakset and any Simutrans version.
2 - You can submit as many screenshots as you want.
3 - You need to include title for every screenshot. Screenshots without title will not be eligible!
4 - You have until January 24st (inclusive) to submit your screenshots!

Theme and guidelines
1 - The theme this year is... Stations! Enough of showing the countryside, show us your bigger stations! Or perhaps that little, calm station in the countryside. Whatever you want, if it contains at least one station.
2 - To keep screenshots clean, try to disable city/station names and avoid showing title bars, overcrowded menus, etc.
3 - The winner screenshot will be cropped or resized to fit our header (1000x500 pixels), so this is the minimum size required.

You can submit screenshots that do not fit the theme or guidelines just for the sake of showing others your work. But theme and guidelines will be used to select the winners!

Prizes
The winner image will become the new banner image for simutrans.com.

Voting
Voting will be done on a wiki survey (I will post a new announcement when the time comes). Everyone (participants and non-participants) can vote, but you can only vote one time.
If two or more screenshots have the same votes, our benevolent dictator will benevolently select a winner, taking into account theme and guidelines.

Submission
You can submit your screenshot through the following platforms (don't forget to include title):

• The International Simutrans Forum: Posting your screenshots to this very same thread.
• Steam: submitting your screenshots to the "Screenshots" section of the community Hub
• Mastodon/Misskey/Fediverse: Post your screenshot and mention @simutrans@fosstodon.org with the hashtag #SimutransScreenshotContest
  
• Reddit: Submitting your screenshots to /r/simutrans/
  
• X.com: Post your screenshot and mention @SimutransTeam with the hashtag #SimutransScreenshotContest
  

[danivenk]

Mizumori Tara-Toyama station


Genkyu Nunohara station


Akiwa/Genkyu Yoshikawa station


Akiwa Narahara station


Akiwa Tennoji station


Mizumori/Nanbu/Horiki Railways Hiroki station


Nozomi Railways Kurino station


Akiwa Shin-Takahara station


BFT U-bahn/Sydower S-bahn Ofterschwang Wilstedterweg station

[DThunder518]

Updated 23 January 2025

Alpharetta Cargo Terminal (ACT)




Bad Kreuznach Hauptbahnhof




Baltimore Penn Station




Escanaba Air Force Base





Friendship Field (FLD)




Granger South Station




Greensburg Cargo Terminal (GCT)




League City Printworks Station



Libonice Refinery Yard




Nassau Airport Rail Station




Skokie Airport (SKO)




Sussex Station




Taos Glassworks Yard




Zwönitz Airport (ZWN)

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

If those work for you, it means you're logged in. They're not appearing, alas.

[danivenk]

Cool DThunder! You did some cargo stations as well!

[1993matias]

That's a lot of entries :O
Let's give pak128.Britain some love, shall we?


Silverwell is not a very big city, but rather a suburb. Since the main station of the big city nearby is surrounded by all sides, the trains terminating continue to Silverwell where there is more space to turn around and wait for the scheduled departure time.


Dublin Central with ferry connections and long distance express trains.


Rochester is a railway hub north of London where several lines meet and diverge. Trains bypassing London leave the mainline here and follow the outer circle line (which crosses on a bridge). Only named expresses take the shortcut, charging a premium for the shorter travel times.

[Flemmbrav]

Quickborn is a small town serving as a traffic hub in the 1920s


http://flemmbrav.de/simutrans_hosting/Quickborn.png


Oberbach is a big city with a tall station hall and several feeding lines


http://flemmbrav.de/simutrans_hosting/Oberbach.png

[Mishasama]

A light version can be used on light-style pages.


A dark version can be used on dark-style pages.


A higher resolution version of the light style that provides more detail for displaying game content.


High-resolution version for the dark style.


This station uses as many different gaming elements as possible, making sure to keep people captivated by the multitude of game content available.


4 screenshots's title are the same: A very busy transportation hub

Add: (Day) or (Night) at the end when combined with a light or dark page color scheme.
e.g.

• A very busy transportation hub (Day)
• A very busy transportation hub (Night)

I think pak128 should be used as the front page image. Since pak128 is currently used by default after downloading, this would prevent potential churn from uninformed new players having the feeling of being deceived by the image.

[cousjath]

Sheinton station zoomed out:



Sheinton station zoomed in:



Valentine Road station:

[Roboron]

Submissions are closed: It's time to vote to choose a winner! As always, voting is done on the Simutrans Wiki.

If you want to see the original images in full quality check the 2024 Simutrans Screenshot Contest gallery (press the tool button below the image and "Show").

IMPORTANT: Remember that each checkbox corresponds to the image above and not to the image below, even if there is a lot of space between the checkbox and the image!

The winner will represent Simutrans as the new banner image at https://simutrans.com . Choose you favorite screenshot!

Voting can be done until January 30th.

[Combuijs]

No checkboxes to be seen, I'm using Firefox. For me the winner is picture 14, the one with id=2628

[Mishasama]

Simutrans Wiki

Has the previous user data been cleared? I can't seem to log in using my previous account.

[Andarix]

Has the previous user data been cleared? I can't seem to log in using my previous account.

If you have such problems, please use the contact page of the wiki or the email address provided there.

[Roboron]

No checkboxes to be seen, I'm using Firefox. For me the winner is picture 14, the one with id=2628

I think I did something wrong and anonymous voting was not working. Please try again.

[Mishasama]

If you want to see the original images in full quality check the 2024 Simutrans Screenshot Contest gallery

The gallery page doesn't seem to work.

[Andarix]

https://simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/file237

[Mishasama]

2 - To keep screenshots clean, try to disable city/station names and avoid showing title bars, overcrowded menus, etc.

3 - The winner screenshot will be cropped or resized to fit our header (1000x500 pixels), so this is the minimum size required.

I think most people forget these two guidelines when taking screenshots...
One is not hiding unnecessary text elements; the other is not considering the webpage's layout design.
They place the main display elements like stations in the middle and upper part of the screenshot, which can be covered by the homepage's logo.
A reasonable composition should place the main subject in the lower part of the screenshot, especially in the two lower corners. This way the logo's placement has the most flexibility and there's no worry about the displayed content being blocked by the logo.
Actually, I think there's no need to be picky about just showing one picture. Just like Steam, using a slideshow would be more appropriate. Moreover, given today's HTML technology, creating such a slideshow with a few pictures shouldn't be too difficult.

[Andarix]

It would generally be difficult to create a narrow strip with an attractive view.

That's why I would rather divide the 1000x500 into 3 parts of 330x500. Or 2 parts of 500x500.

I wouldn't use a slide show. I would rather have the banner change when the page loads. Either based on the time or the date.

[Mishasama]

It would generally be difficult to create a narrow strip with an attractive view.

That's what the contest is for! Of course, it's going to be challenging, isn't it?

I would rather have the banner change when the page loads. Either based on the time or the date.

But this reduces the chances of all the images being shown, and if the user doesn't refresh or visit the page at a different time, they may never be able to enjoy all the images!

[Andarix]

...
But this reduces the chances of all the images being shown, and if the user doesn't refresh or visit the page at a different time, they may never be able to enjoy all the images!

To see all the images, a link to the gallery is the better choice.

It is questionable whether a user will stay on the page until all the images have been displayed. If the interval is too short, the images scroll through too quickly. If the interval is too long, it will take a long time depending on the number of images.

That's what the contest is for! Of course, it's going to be challenging, isn't it?
...

When I look at these competitions, there are usually only a few users taking part and it's always the same 2-3 packages. And they're always limited to the users of this forum.

Organizing such competitions on multiple platforms is time-consuming, especially when it is done by one person.

A parallel call in the Japanese forum would probably increase the number of participants. But this would require mediators because of language skills. Language is the biggest obstacle to exchanging information.

[Mishasama]

It is questionable whether a user will stay on the page until all the images have been displayed.

Maybe something just like the M$ store home page's slideshow... I think it's a good design.

A parallel call in the Japanese forum would probably increase the number of participants.

Japanese forums haven't been active for a long time......
I remember Prof. prissi knows Japanese too.

I think the biggest problem with the participation numbers is that there aren't many active players in this game to begin with......
Of course this could have something to do with the lack of translation of the game itself and the page introductions, so perhaps we could consider introducing AI translators to do the pre-translation work and draw players in first.

[prissi]

Not to derail this topic too much, but Simutrans is not very much casual gaming which, in when 90% of the revenue in the games industry is from mobile games lasting 1-15 minutes/game. That is what most audiences expect, and which OpenTTD caters much better than Simutrans (and also has a higher brand name recognition because of the original game).

But also the number of OpenTTD contributor and message there on the forum is strongly declining.

[Roboron]

2024 Simutrans Screenshot Contest Winners https://blog.simutrans.com/?p=2554

[Leartin]

Now the page needs darkmode, so it can use the two winners properly 

[FLN]

Can't wait to see Mishasama's screenshots on the Homepage =D
Simultaneously I'm a little sad, my favorite didn't win, but at least achieved a honorable third place

[Roboron]

I finally took some time to upload the screenshot to https://www.simutrans.com

It looks fantastic. Thank you, Mishasama

[FLN]

Very good looking!
The ships, the monorail, Airplanes (Concorde) and road vehicles all around the harbor-airport-station.. Very nice

[otis5842]

Is there a community Discord or forum thread where participants can discuss the contest, share tips, or troubleshoot submission issues?

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Welcome, Otis. You can use this very thread to do so.