Transport Tycoon

Transport Tycoon
DOS cover art
Publisher(s)MicroProse
Producer(s)Steve Ramsden
Designer(s)Chris Sawyer
Programmer(s)Chris Sawyer
Artist(s)Simon Foster
Composer(s)John Broomhall
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Mac, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Android, iOS
Release
November 1994
  • MS-DOS
    • NA/EU: November 1994
    Macintosh
  • PlayStation 1
    • EU: September 15, 1997
    • JP: August 6, 1998
  • Sega Saturn
    • JP: November 20, 1997
  • iOS, Android
    • WW: October 3, 2013
Genre(s)Business simulation
Mode(s)Single-player

Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game designed and programmed by Chris Sawyer, and published by MicroProse on 15 November 1994 for DOS. It is a transport business simulation game, presented in an isometric view in 2D with graphics by Simon Foster, in which the player acts as a transport company owner, who competes against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea and air.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe is an expanded and improved version of the original game, released in 1995. A version for Android and iOS was released on 3 October 2013 based on the sequel, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion.[1] A fan-made game engine recreation OpenTTD is also available.[2] In November 2024, Atari SA acquired the IP rights from Chris Sawyer.[3]

Gameplay

Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game where the player takes control over a transportation company and is tasked with building out a transportation network by constructing transport routes in order to move passengers, goods and materials around an isometric map to earn money.[4] Routes are created by building stations between two or more locations, with the available transportation options being rail, road, air and maritime.[4] One transport route can utilize several different forms of transport, e.g. truck→ship→train.[5] The player's company and the individual stations each have ratings that depend largely on their efficiency at moving goods from one stations to the other. A station with high ratings may attract more goods. Players can terraform the land or build canals to improve their routes.[6]

The game begins in 1930, and ends in 2030.[7][8] The player starts out by borrowing money to finance construction of transport facilities,[5] and is charged interest until the loan is repaid. As the user plays the game and earns revenues, they have the choice of expanding service along existing routes, or expanding their transportation network.[8] The game features a progression of technology: in any particular year of the game generally only contemporary types of technology are available. For example, railroad signals which allow more than one train to use a section of track are initially semaphores. Later, they are replaced by red and green traffic-light signals. Similarly, in the beginning there are only steam engines, but later diesel and electric engines are introduced. In the game year 1999, monorails become available. These require a separate track system from railroads. If the player remains in business until 2030, the game announces that they have won, allows them to post their name on the "hall of fame" and then continues. At this point, the year stays 2030 and never goes any higher, although the game can continue indefinitely. Playing the entire 100-year campaign takes about 40 hours. The game allows the player to save at any time, and multiple saves of a particular game at any point are possible.

Vehicles in the game must be constructed at corresponding depots, which must be connected to the road or rail networks. Towns and cities have their own road networks, but extra roads may be needed to connect them to other towns, or to various resources.[9]

Chart illustrating flow of commodities between industries and towns in Transport Tycoon, and Temperate scenarios in Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

The player earns revenue by picking up resources or passengers at a certain station, and delivering them to another station where there is a demand for them. Demand is determined by the area which surrounds the station; for example stations close to towns will demand passengers. The revenues will depend on the delivery time, distance, and quantity delivered. The influence of these factors on revenue varies according to the type of goods being delivered. A product like mail will rapidly fall in value, meaning that it can only be delivered profitably over short distances, or over long distances very fast. In contrast with a resource like coal loses value very slowly, so it retains its value over long distances.

At times, subsidies are offered to the first company to move a particular resource from one place to another.[6] This encourages the player to create a larger, more complex transport network, rather than focusing on previously profitable routes. The game features also a system called Local Authority. Each city has a rating for every transport company based on the impact of their transport network. When the rating falls too low, the player will no longer be able to demolish buildings or construct new stations. The rating depends on, among others, the level of service and the deforestation caused by the company.

In the course of a game cities develop and expand according to various economic factors, and new industries (demand) or other resource sites (supply) may appear. Some natural resources can also eventually be exhausted and industries without adequate transport service can shut down. New models of vehicles are introduced and eventually come to replace older models. These new vehicles generally have improved characteristics, but may suffer from reliability issues.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe

Transport Tycoon Deluxe is an expanded and improved version of the original game. It included many significant changes, such as:

  • 3 new gameplay environments alongside the original Temperate climate. These are: Tropical, Arctic, and Toyland. The new environments introduced different industries and challenges. For example, towns in the Arctic environment do not grow without regular deliveries of food, while those in the Tropical environment require access to fresh water before they will grow.
  • World Editor included - Allowing the creation of custom maps and scenarios.
  • Network play, allowing multiplayer games.
  • Improved railway signals. The original Transport Tycoon only included bi-directional signals, permitting trains to pass in either direction, while the Deluxe version introduced uni-directional signals, to restrict trains to a single direction of travel. This has significant effects on gameplay, as the original bi-directional signals could result in trains trying to travel towards each other on the same section of track. While this would not result in crashes on a properly signalled route, it did require either building extra track, to allow the trains to pass each other, or building a great many tracks in parallel, to avoid the problem. The new uni-directional signals enabled building one-way track systems, giving the player greater control over the operation of their rail network, enabling far more efficient routes, and preventing trains from trying to travel the "wrong way" on a section of track. By utilising both uni- and bi-directional signals, the player could now build effective switching yards, junctions, and other useful designs. It also enabled the building of continental-length railroad systems, by incorporating one-way tracks in both directions, as well as the option to merge other rails with the main line. This became a very popular strategy, allowing for transportation across entire game maps, resulting in larger profits.
  • Maglev trains and track.
  • Buy/Sell Shares and take-over rival companies.
  • Heliports.
  • Ability to re-fit aircraft and ships to carry alternative cargo types.
  • Games now begin in 1950 and end in 2050, while the original game covers 1930 to 2030. Accordingly, the Deluxe version loses many of the earlier vehicles from the original game, while adding several new types later on.[10] Moreover, the vehicle names in the original game were based on real-life models, but were replaced with fictional ones in Transport Tycoon Deluxe, due to trademark issues.
  • The Deluxe version also allowed players to rename their vehicles, stations and towns in-game; this can be useful for identifying services in a network and adding a personal touch.
  • Remixed music theme for the main menu.

Development

Having been playing Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, Populous and SimCity,[11][12] Chris Sawyer began exploring ideas and prototypes for a transport simulation game as early as October 1992,[6][12] using his own isometric game engine he had developed in his spare time.[11] For Sawyer, the game, known originally as Chris Sawyer's Transport Game or Interactive Transport Simulation, started off as a way to contend with the monotony of his game conversion work,[13] which he began in 1988 and during this period he worked on various high-profile games like Frontier: Elite II, Goal!, Campaign and Elite Plus.[8] Transport Tycoon would be his first major original computer game,[8] his goal for the project was to try and create a game that would improve upon Railroad Tycoon, which he spent six months playing.[14]

The game also would allow him to combine his love for open ended simulation games and trains, he began with adding them into the game world alongside other vehicles.[11] Sawyer wanted "little vehicles all going about their business", where both playing and observing the action is enjoyable.[12] The game was entirely written in x86 assembly language, Sawyer has stated that he prefers to write in a low-level programming language as opposed to a high-level programming language like C as he wants to know what every function does in complete detail and to optimise for efficiency.[13] He claimed that working in assembly code allowed him to add more complexity to game, as it allowed him to optimize the workload on the processor better.[13]

Over the course of development, Sawyer in addition to adding different modes of transport, he implemented various different worlds and a basic economic mechanic to earn money, one that was even more simple than the one in Railroad Tycoon.[11] The time period was set from 1930 to 2030, as this would according to Sawyer lead to "greatest variety of train and vehicle type" and that 100 years per playthrough felt right. It would give players 30 years of steam trains followed-up by diesel and electric trains, and ending with high-tech monorails.[7] Creating a challenging artificial intelligence was of paramount importance for Sawyer. He considered it the most challenging element to program, he would spend hours playing the game on his own figuring out the best strategies a human player would use and then building algorithms that simulate those aforementioned strategies for the opponent companies.[7] He wanted the computer opponents to play by the same rules as the human ones did.[14]

Jacqui Lyons, Sawyer's business agent,[15] approached a number of video game publishers with a half-finished version of the game.[11] Sawyer would leverage his preexisting relationship as a work-for-hire programmer with MicroProse, to convince them to take a chance on a game.[12] Following a productive meeting with MicroProse, Sawyer agreed to sign with them to publish the game, as he found the team at MicroProse more supportive. Ultimately, they would publish the game, which included changing the name to Transport Tycoon, where it would sit alongside their Railroad Tycoon franchise. When he signed the contract with MicroProse, the railroad parts were already nearly finished. Originally, a producer at MicroProse set the timetable of two years for the rest of development, but Sawyer managed to get the game in shippable state in 4-5 months, although he had to cut some content and ideas. Some of these were later included in the deluxe edition.[11] MicroProse had very little input on the game itself, most of their suggestions were either unfeasible or ignored. On a suggestion of Sawyer, the game contains a few easter eggs referencing other MicroProse games.[13]

By the time Sawyer had finished up his last game conversion contracts, he had created a full-fledged version of the game in low resolution with his own crudely hand-drawn graphics. He decided to spend all of his time for a couple of months on the project and see how much progress he would make. The low quality bitmaps Sawyer drew were replaced by Simon Foster, an artist he had met around that time. Foster recreated the art of the trains, trucks, buildings and scenery with high-resolution bitmaps. This was made possible by newly released graphic cards with the ability to render 8-bit graphics which allowed them to render the redone art and sound.[11][13] Within several months the game was almost hundred percent complete and would be shown to MicroProse.[13] In their October 1994 issue, the PC Review preview described the build as being in early beta.[8]

Music

The music in Transport Tycoon are original compositions by John Broomhall.[16] It features old-style blues and jazz tunes including parts of Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island.[17] Transport Tycoon was part of Broomhall's early scores as a composer that he created in MIDI, the soundtrack was limited to a nine-note polyphony and was built on a FM soundcard.[16]

Broomhall alongside some of his industry colleagues would in 2014 record a remaster of the original soundtrack in a live environment and employing the latest sound technology. He envisioned them as the definitive version of the originals as he initially had imagined.[18] The new remastered music was included in the Easter update of the mobile port of the game.[19]

Release

A demo of the game was included in various demo discs of video game magazines, including an exclusive 3.5" disk for the October 1994 issue of PC Review.[20] MicroProse published the game for DOS on 15 November 1994.[21][8] The game received its first add-on titled with Transport Tycoon Scenario also referred to as World Editor. It contained a Martian tile set, a world editor, that allows the player to create their own maps and scenarios, and modem play.[22] It was released somewhere in Spring 1995 and required the base game.[23][22][24] The expansion that would ultimately become Transport Tycoon Deluxe, was at first reported to be a sequel named Transport Tycoon 2.[25][22]

iOS and Android version

On 15 July 2013, Sawyer's 31X Ltd and Origin8 Technologies announced that they were working on a mobile version of Transport Tycoon. At first, Sawyer had set up 31X Ltd as an holding company for the Transport Tycoon IP in 2010, but over time, it evolved to a company that could develop and publish a new port of the game. Sawyer was originally focusing on funding for the game, but ended up overseeing the design and helped with the debugging.[26] The game was released for iOS and Android on 3 October 2013.[27] The game is single player and is primarily based on Chris Sawyer's Locomotion.[28] Unlike what is a common practice in mobile gaming, the release was not free-to-play. Sawyer has stated that he found the revenue model unsuitable for the game.[26]

Reception

A reviewer for Next Generation gave the DOS version four out of five stars, commenting, "The best economic sim since Civilization, Microprose's new Transport Tycoon has all the features of Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon mixed with the look and ease of Maxis' SimCity 2000 and a host of new features ... that give the game a feel that is all its own." He further lauded the game for its graphics, "pleasant" music, sound effects, addictive play, and realistic simulation of the growth of cities and towns.[30]

Next Generation reviewed the Transport Tycoon Scenario, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "A solid upgrade for a great game."[24]

Succesors

Chris Sawyer's Locomotion

Main article: Chris Sawyer's Locomotion

After the success of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Chris Sawyer turned his attention towards a sequel, but during development he changed his mind and produced RollerCoaster Tycoon, which turned out to be a runaway hit. After RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was done, work on the third version was left to another development team, and Sawyer returned to work on a Transport Tycoon sequel, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion. It was released in September 2004 and was described by Sawyer as the "spiritual successor to Transport Tycoon".

It received poor reviews and was deemed a commercial failure on release, but sales through the digital releases are unknown. Regardless, there is an active Locomotion community that continues to produce modifications.

Third-party creations

Main article: OpenTTD
OpenTTD network game across 4 monitors

Several development teams are currently working to improve Transport Tycoon. TTDPatch provides gameplay enhancements and numerous bugfixes to TTD by patching the original binary.

OpenTTD is an open source complete recreation of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, achieved by reverse engineering the original game.[2][34] It delivers many bug fixes and general enhancements to the game, like making it possible to run TTD on multiple platforms, including Mac, Linux, PSP, and Android. While both games allow new graphic sets for vehicles and terrain to be used, at present, TTDPatch still requires the original TTD graphics, sounds, binary and music files to run. While OpenTTD can still use the original TTD graphics and sounds, it does not need any of the TTD files to run as it has free graphics and sounds.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Whitehead 2013.
  2. ^ a b c RPS 2016.
  3. ^ Batchelor 2024.
  4. ^ a b Buchanan 1995, p. 88-89.
  5. ^ a b CGR Previews 1994, p. 133.
  6. ^ a b c Perry, Chapman & Kaiafas 1995.
  7. ^ a b c MacDonald 1995, pp. 48–55.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Bennett 1994, p. 92.
  9. ^ CGSP 1994, p. 12.
  10. ^ Rudge, Owen. "Owen's Transport Tycoon Station - Vehicle List". www.transporttycoon.net. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Arcade Attack 2018.
  12. ^ a b c d Faraday 2013.
  13. ^ a b c d e f Barnes 2015, pp. 92–97.
  14. ^ a b Bennett 1994, p. 93.
  15. ^ Yin-Poole 2016.
  16. ^ a b Batchelor 2014, p. 20.
  17. ^ Sawyer, Chris. "Is the music used in Transport Tycoon available as MIDI files?". Archived from the original on 25 August 2009. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  18. ^ MCV Staff 2014.
  19. ^ James 2014.
  20. ^ Bennett 1994, p. 4.
  21. ^ USPTO 1994.
  22. ^ a b c McDonald 1995, pp. 117.
  23. ^ World Editor 1995, p. 71.
  24. ^ a b c NG6 1995, p. 109.
  25. ^ PC Games 1995, p. 45.
  26. ^ a b Rose 2013.
  27. ^ Nelson 2013.
  28. ^ Brookes 2013.
  29. ^ Bennett 1995, pp. 84–85.
  30. ^ a b NG4 1995, p. 93.
  31. ^ PCFormat 1995, p. 30.
  32. ^ Buchanan 1995.
  33. ^ Kent 1995, p. 108.
  34. ^ Smith 2016.

Sources

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