OpenTTD Review

I don’t really play a lot of computer games. I like computers, but most games leave me a bit cold. People often ask me, “So, what do you enjoy doing?” “Computers,” I say. “You mean, like, games?” they ask. “Well, uh, no, not really.”

One of my favourite games, though, was RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. The combination of the funky 16-bit, isometric graphics and the unique plot was perfect. For the same reason, I was very excited to discover Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD). Created by Chris Sawyer, the same guy who created RollerCoaster Tycoon, it involves not a theme park, but a transport company. You build railways, roads, seaways, and airlines that transport all sorts of goods to and from factories, mines, farms, forests, and towns. As you build your business, the surrounding towns grow.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe is no longer manufactured; however, the good people over at the OpenTTD project disassembled its code and ported it to first C and then C++, allowing it to run on many different platforms, including the iPhone. OpenTTD has many new features that improve the gameplay, including the autorail tool, 32-bit graphic support, a console, and an online multiplayer mode. It’s not too hard to play, and it’s a lot of fun, at least in the “easy” difficulty level. (I myself have not yet been able to conquer the “hard” level.)

What I like:

• It’s fun to watch the artificial intelligence work. (Intelligence? What intelligence?)
• The graphics are really cool. Not at all modern – they look like something from the nineties – but cool.
• The sound effects are cool, too. I haven’t been able to get the music working on Linux, but I’m sure it’s cool. Shoot, the song titles are cool. (“Aliens Destroyed my Runway” is one of them.)
• The vehicles are all actually real vechiles, but with different names. For example, the Concorde is now called a “Yate Haugan”. The Boeing 747 is a “Darwin 300″.
• The towns all have odd names. (Gintfingburg. Tunningway-on-sea. Nafingbourne.)

What I don’t like:

• The timing of the game is way off. For instance, a typical flight takes around three months. Six months round-trip.
• Rails are a real pain to put in. You have to first find the best route, then level the hills, then put in the rails. It would be nice if the autorail tool really did do it all automatically.
• The AI, as mentioned, is really dumb. The way their railways loop back around each other is hilarious. I’ve seen an AI build a road that needlessly crossed a railway, drove on the other side for a few squares, and then crossed back over.

All in all, OpenTTD is a great game that is very addictive and fun to play. I took a bunch of screenshots of the game, which you can see below. If you’re looking for an intelligent game to play, OpenTTD may be the answer, although I will not guarantee that it is less mind-rotting than other games.

On Minesweeper

Since the long-gone dawn of Windows 3.1, Microsoft bundled Minesweeper – a game that everybody knows about and sort of knows how to play, but nobody is really good at – with Windows. The Windows version of the game remained basically unchanged right through Windows XP, except that with the release of Windows 2000, the beginner level was enlarged from 8×8 to 9×9.

Among the notable features of this version of Minesweeper were the charming “smiley face” button at the top of the screen (he would scowl if you lost, and clicking him would start a new game.) Also, you could cheat: if you typed “xyzzy” and then pressed Shift+Enter, hovering over a mine would cause the upper left-hand pixel of your monitor to turn black. Hovering over a non-mine square would turn the pixel white.

Sadly, however, this version of everybody’s favorite game is now gone forever. For Windows Vista, Microsoft got an independent game developer, Oberon Games, to create a new version. Gone is the smiley face; gone is the cheat mode. Gone forever are the cool 16-bit graphics that haunted the game from Windows 95 onward. Worst of all, you can now cheat in a perfectly legal way: because you can save your game and start over, people just click on a mine, take a screenshot, and then start from the saved point, using the screenshot as a reference as to which squares are mines. Farewell, Minesweeper. You will be missed.