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Article about "Comparing the transport simulation games"

Started by mEGa, April 14, 2012, 02:37:13 PM

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mEGa

After my recently post on presentation of Simutrans to french linux community (http://linuxfr.org), an interestive discussion about OpenTTD VS Simutrans was began.
An article about comparing the transport simulation games was linked :
http://www.squidoo.com/linux-transport-simulation-showdown

Do you know it ? What do you mean about it ?

Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Dwachs

Thanks for sharing :)

It is a little bit outdated now. But the author really played the games for more than say one hour :)

There is also this page about simutrans tips:

http://www.squidoo.com/simutrans-tips
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

Vonjo

Quote from: mEGa on April 14, 2012, 02:37:13 PM
An article about comparing the transport simulation games was linked :
http://www.squidoo.com/linux-transport-simulation-showdown
That was the article which brought me here in the first place.

Fabio


Roads

@mEGa

Thanks for posting this.  I had wondered at odd times what TTD was like but never thought to look it up.  One reason I guess is that I'm very happy with Simutrans.  At any rate, my curiosity is satisfied and I'm even more happy with Simutrans now.  To me, TTD sounded like a stagnant old game, very simple and with no ability to customize to individual tastes at all.  I'm sure it would appeal to all those people who are fond of saying, "ewwww, this is too hard!"

yorkeiser

I have great respect for TTD, that WAS a great transportation game in the past, as railroad tycoon was before.
About goods transportation, I don't see enormous differences that let me prefer TTD or Simutrans.
But about pax transportation, simutrans has a feature that overwhelms TTD: passenger source/destination is solid. Passengers go to work to factories near their cities, go to nearest cities, seldom travel on the other side of the map. This is how real life goes.
In TTD sometimes I build random pax stations, and passengers begin to travel in random way, as it seems to me. In simutrans this strategy lets you to bankruptcy in a pair of months: pax networks must be well thought and well balanced; every zone of the map needs to be connected, but the key is the "weight" for those connections: how many lines, how fast, how redundant, how many switches to go from A to B, and substantially pax transported/maintenance costs rate. This leads to a completely different game approach. I sometimes spend more time to think how to connect zones or rebalance network after main enlargements, rather than really building. And this is what I ask to a strategy game: think.

Carl

That all seems right. The main thing that OTTD has over Simutrans is that it's better for building a train-set -- it has better junctions between track, better diagonals etc. But Simutrans is *much* better for network simulation, so for those of us who have any interest in the latter, the choice between the two is simple.

Roads

@yorkeiser

Yes, RR Tycoon was a great game.  There was at least one thing I hated about it and that was as soon as you got your networks running - wait times, etc., the industry would disappear - remember the cattle farms?  I had so looked forward to RR2 and was sorely disappointed when it was released.  It was "dumbed down" to point where it really was not playable for me.  I confess I haven't looked hard but from what I've seen that has been the trend in strategy games since RR Tycoon.  Well, either that or war games...

So I may have judged TTD too harshly without knowing the facts but to some extent my reaction was based on my experience with the Civilization series which I thought went steadily downhill after CivII.

I totally agree with you on one thing you said - thinking - I like thinking more than clicking.

ӔO

I remember RRT3 was pretty simple to play.
the 4th one was pretty botched.

Has anyone else played A-trains, cities in motion, etc.?
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

yorkeiser

RT2 wasn't bad, even if it was quite simple (and that's a severe sin for a simulation). Also the station management (with all those buildings) was stupid imho. However I had some amusement with it.
I tried A-Train many years ago, but it didn't impress me nor for general look nor for gamestyle, so I left it quite soon.
I also tried Locomotion, that has nice graphics and railroad construction (curves, shifts), but in a bit turns out to be quite boring.
I never tried Sim Meier's Railroads, I'm quite curious about it. Also that cities in motion, that I didn't know, seem to have nice graphics, anyone tried it?

mEGa

About Cities in motion
I tried to play with cities in motion... But I was disappointed... Yes graphics are nice but in fact  as this 3D technology games based (City XL is better imho).
But defaults are in the core of IA... Poor very poor... And his basic pakset :
you can only play with some basic vehicles and elements after installation. If you want more... pay it !

It is finally the philosophy of the editor of this game:
- you must be connected to Internet to install and validate your buying
- New accessories are regularly proposed (via this channel) but it is necessary to buy them.

When I test first, I can't make a rail network, just realise line buses and metro... And speedly be in bankrupt !
I mean it' a mixed philosophy between City life (first version of City XL by Monte Christo) and SimCity... with a little spirit of transportation made in 3D technology.
So a beautiful shell (or box as U want) but few things inside.

I know I am maybe a little bit hard... But I really disappointed! Too much misleading advertising?

Just for information :
a big post-discussion appeared  around this comparison after my article in linuxfr.org portal.
Some french people estimate that Simutrans good chains are too simplistic and do not look like the complex reality of exchanges.
No comment !
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

An_dz

I hate games that:
  • Require you to be connected to the internet, just to validate.
    How can I play when I'm in the middle of nothing, between nowhere and anywhere?
  • Comes incomplete, have a very poorly complete game but you need to pay and download for new objects
    This just makes the game even more expensive, I remember when I bought my RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 for R$30 in 2001, it is an awesome game, mega fun. Now any game costs more than R$90 and some come with this idiot feature, and to make it decent you need to pay thousands more.

Carl

Quote from: mEGa on April 18, 2012, 12:04:37 PM
About Cities in motion
I tried to play with cities in motion... But I was disappointed... Yes graphics are nice but in fact  as this 3D technology games based (City XL is better imho).
But defaults are in the core of IA... Poor very poor... And his basic pakset :
you can only play with some basic vehicles and elements after installation. If you want more... pay it !

I bought the Complete Edition of Cities in Motion in the Steam sale at Christmas -- but I've only managed to play it for a couple of hours in all those months. It seems nice enough, but I think my main beef is that it focuses only on inner-city transport when I'm more interested in developing inter-city passenger networks.

ӔO

It was pretty fun designing roller coasters in RCT3.
Sometimes, I wish road and rail design in simutrans was like RCT3, with the banking and all, but the current method is easier.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart: