Is there a current development direction or list of priorities for Simutrans?

[victor_18993]

If that concern was partly directed at me, please don't worry too much. For me, working on Simutrans is genuinely a very enjoyable hobby, and I really enjoy developing things for the game.

In fact, I also get to enjoy the improvements afterwards as a player, both the ones I contribute myself and the ones added by the rest of the team. Seeing the game evolve little by little is very rewarding.

Outside Simutrans, I work as a Product Owner in the healthcare systems field. Part of my work involves managing integrations between clinical systems, designing workflows and products, translating functional needs into technical solutions, and connecting people, software and systems so they can work together effectively. I am also quite involved in applied AI, especially in designing interfaces and workflows between people and artificial intelligence so that both sides can complement each other in a useful way.

In general, an important part of what I do professionally is precisely connecting different pieces — people, technology, processes, data and AI — and making them understand and reinforce each other. That is one of the reasons why I find Simutrans such an interesting hobby: I can apply some of that way of thinking in a completely different environment, experiment, learn, and also directly enjoy the results.
What makes it even more satisfying is that the work does not remain just a technical exercise. Other people can actually enjoy those improvements afterwards.

Simutrans gave me many, many hours of very addictive gameplay years ago , so being able to contribute now and give something back to the project is very rewarding and, above all, a lot of fun for me.

[Andarix]

I believe the existing code should first be critically reviewed to determine what's actually there. There's likely a lot that isn't documented and therefore simply unknown to users.

Regarding the GUI, I think separate versions are needed for mouse/keyboard and touch. The two systems are very different. Touch is also found on smaller screens (smartphones/tablets).

A first step in this direction would be to add an option in the UI to select different menu layouts. pak64.german has three menuconf.tab files. However, using them is rather difficult for players because they have to be renamed in the program directory (usually read-only via the installer).

[isidoro]

I completely agree with Adarix.  Unfortunately today "more accessible" or "eliminate barriers" usually means to have an ugly interface only because of touch devices.  Where we used to have nice menus completely accessible with mouse, now we have ugly sandwich buttons that gives way to uglier huge buttons so that you can use your thumbs to push them.

The evolution is even more annoying in operating system graphical interfaces.  And worst of examples is GNOME, imho...