Hey, I'll preface this by saying I've never played or contributed to OpenTTD, but I was a little fascinated by your comment. I always wonder when I see feature requests like this, where are the limits that have stopped something like this being added in the past?
Are there technical or historical limitations in OpenTTD that you can see from a player that makes it obvious no simple-fix would work without a full overhaul of certain systems?
From an outsider, and at the risk of sounding like a project manager right before receiving a whole range of "Sure, but..." answers, it seems like if they already have a system for drawing straight lines, can't it automatically draw a junction when those two lines meet?
Also, not to knock those "Sure, but..." answers, there is usually a whole lot of information in the but.
Your comment made me look this up, and it turns out that the copy-paste and blueprint functionality goes against the core ideas the original OpenTTD devs have. So it principle, not a technicality.
I have found an OpenTTD fork though, CityMania, which has several quality of life patches, including a copy-paste tool. I have just tested it and it works, kind of, but it doesn't copy terrain elevation, so junctions have to be made with bridges, instead of tunnels, to be able to be automatically replicated.
Surely no limits, cause computer opponents build proper railways most of the times. I also wish there was an option for "build railway through here-ish, suggest budget classes for landscaping".
OpenTTD is a cool game, but you quickly hit all the realistic walls: micromanagement, weak accounting and planning, scale-related issues. As a former ERP guy, it drives me nuts sometimes. Dammit, put all the data into a database, so I can write a proper resource planning system mod with all sorts of reports and automatic orders!
I agree, I love the game, but the game design is very dated. This is the thing about old games, it's not just that the graphics get old, but the UX, and the game design itself also gets outdated.
I think a large element of it is that... these games were not necessarily intended for an adult audience.
I remember picking up Transport Tycoon on the coverdisc of some PC magazine. I was in grade school, it was fun. Lots of clicky intricate detail that a child's mind used to narrow horizons could obsess over and learn to minmax. When you came home from school and your world was the inside of your house a game like that seemed like the universe, you obsessed over it because _it's what there was._
Then you... grow up and go outside. Your world expands to a fantastically large size and you move on from small toys. There's just... so much more out there.
Sorry to put it so bluntly. (And I have this game installed and fire it up maybe once a year for a bit of nostalgia.)
The older generation always had railroad simulators, for the nerdier grandpas out there who really wanted to replicate the railroad signaling systems from the late 1800s or whatever age they were simulating. It just cost real $$$ 50 years ago, since each toy-train and toy-track would have had to have been actually made out of plastic.
OpenTTD is easier than that, but harder than most games. Its a better balance (less to learn) than hobby-railroad hobby... cheaper... but still with the complex paths and simulated traffic needed to build a game off of.
Its a toy. Plenty of old folks have toys, and IMO it seems like the healthier retired folks I know of are those who continue to play with toys into old age. It could be a selection bias thing, but you have to keep the mind active in the retirement years.
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It could be a weird generational gap thing, wherein older folks play with expensive toy sets (ex: lots and lots of rails) in their basements. But younger folk today would have a toy-like video game (like OpenTTD, Minecraft, etc. etc.) instead.
I don't think its appropriate to ever "grow out" of toys. I think that... maybe... you run out of time to play with toys during the busier stages of your life.
Unlike a "game" where there's a set purpose and therefore a set limit to the complexity... a "toy" game (Rollercoaster Tycoon, OpenTTD, Factorio, etc. etc.) are designed to instead have the players reach complexity levels above-and-beyond what the designers dreamed of.
Minecraft is a funny case, because in alpha and beta it was really big on Reddit, the audience was clearly people in their 20s and 30s. The YouTubers making videos about it were adults.
Some time after 1.0 it exploded in popularity, especially with younger kids, and it's now almost universally seen as a kids' game. But it's still the same game; if anything it's become more complex.
> Minecraft is a funny case, because in alpha and beta it was really big on Reddit
Reddit in those days was a much smaller place than it is now and a lot of the users were functionally odd, a huge amount of the discussions revolved around 'how to behave in public' and 'how to navigate normal social interactions' and 'how to cope with social anxiety' - I'm not trying to judge because I was a user too, but the average reddit user around that time - and especially a reddit minecraft fan - could politely be described as a manchild.
And minecraft Youtube is still a very weird place.
I think it makes sense to differentiate them, just as you would differentiate them if it was displayed as a graph of "number of hurricanes by category". If you only include the highest category, you miss out on data that might also be useful, for instance whether there have been more category 1 hurricanes compared to category 5.
If it didn't differentiate them and the last category 5 hurricane was 110 days ago but the last category 1 hurricane was 2 days ago, how would you learn about the category 1 hurricane? In your example it would just show hurricane categories 1-5 sequentially all bunched together, so you'd also be duplicating data which wouldn't be that useful.
Are there technical or historical limitations in OpenTTD that you can see from a player that makes it obvious no simple-fix would work without a full overhaul of certain systems?
From an outsider, and at the risk of sounding like a project manager right before receiving a whole range of "Sure, but..." answers, it seems like if they already have a system for drawing straight lines, can't it automatically draw a junction when those two lines meet?
Also, not to knock those "Sure, but..." answers, there is usually a whole lot of information in the but.