Simutrans
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 Simutrans Pak 64 screenshot from 2003 |
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| Design by | Hansjörg Malthaner (initial, left in 2004) |
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| Developed by | Markus Pristovsek "Prissi" (current head of development) Simutrans Development Team |
| Initial release | 6 March 1999 |
| Latest release | 0.102.0 / 5 March 2009 |
| Preview release | 0.101.1 |
| Operating system | Multi-platform |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Development status | Active |
| Type | Business simulation |
| License | Artistic License |
| Website | Simutrans Official Website |
Simutrans is a cross-platform simulation game which players has to run a successful transport system by transporting goods and passengers between places, similar to the open source Transport Tycoon clone, OpenTTD. Simutrans was originally written by Hansjörg Malthaner but it is now maintained and developed by a small team which releases bug fixes, changes or new features for the game[1].
Simutrans is available free for Microsoft Windows, Linux, BeOS and recently Intel Mac OS X under the Artistic License which was adopted in 2007. Prior to that, Simutrans was a closed source game and developed internally.[2] Simutrans also releases nightly for the program and its main PAKs.[3]
Currently the stable of Simutrans is version 102.0.
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[edit] Overview and features
The main goal of Simutrans is to provide an efficient transport system for passengers and goods to be transported to their desired destination fast and with minimal transfers, at the same time making the company grow and avoid bankruptcy.
Simutrans has a number of factory chains that are interconnected with other chains such as the coal mine which will produced coal for the Cement chain, the Steel mill, and the coal power station. Supplying a factory with electric power will increase the production and allows for fine tuning the economy.
The Simutrans executable can run many different so-called PAK-sets. These PAKs determine the objects in the game, their appearance, and can modify payments and even the main menu. Gaming experience is therefore very dependent on the PAK-set.
Simutrans currently features 6 AI players, but unlike OpenTTD has no online capabilities. The terrain in Simutrans is freely-modifiable. It has a day and night cycle, different climates and seasons. In Simutrans, nearly all modes of transportation exist. At least buses/trucks, trains, and ships are always provided. If defined in the PAK-set aircrafts, monorails, or maglevs can be used too.
Simutrans is multilingual and is compiled for Windows, Linux, BeOS and Mac OS X which make use of several graphics libraries such as GDI (Windows only), SDL (all versions) or Allegro (BeOS only). It is portable to any architecture using GCC and one of the aforementioned libraries.
[edit] PAK
The Simutrans executable must load a PAK-set which contains the game's objects. Over the years several PAK-sets have been created, an overview is given on the sourceforge page [4].
Simutrans can be easily expanded and modified. Simple modification can be done via editing the personal config file. Since the objects in the game just consist of a simple image and a short description file, it is very easy to create a house or add a train. Thus many contributed objects for all graphic sizes exist. The user can also add height maps and citylists which add city names into the game. Via the config file even deep modifications of the game mechanics are possible, like no stockpiling at factories.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ History of development
- ^ Simutrans's Artistic License, SourceForge
- ^ Simutrans Nightly
- ^ United Faces of Simutrans
