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Railroad Tycoon II

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Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#41

Post by ryandrake »

mrighele wrote: post #33

> Indeed, in some of the most difficult scenarios, the efficient operation of your railroad provides no more than the seed capital for the real key to victory, your shenanigans on the stock market. This is in fact what I don't like about RR2. The stock market had too much of a big part in my opinion, and I never enjoyed it. I liked much more Transport Tycoon (and its open source version OpenTTD) which had much more f…

This is the same problem with the more recent Offworld Trading Company game. You can take a half an hour building a great colony, harvesting all the resources, building all of the goods, and so on, but none of it really matters. The end game takes about 60-120 seconds and it's all trading on the in-game stock market, resulting in a sudden "you lost" screen popping up even if you did everything else right in the first 29 minutes. Kind of a let down.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#42

Post by lukevp »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
mschuster91 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel relying on WINE and Proton instead of building a proper GNU/Linux ecosystem will eventually backfire, it didn't happen already because thus far Microsoft chosen to ignore it. Microsoft can't do shit against WINE/Proton legally, as long as either project steers clear of misappropriated source code and some forms of reverse engineering (Europe's regulations are much more relaxed than in the US). The problem at…

They surely can, and Valve got lucky UWP didn't took off as they feared. Microsoft can easily do another go at it. That is the problem building castles on other vendor platforms. As reminder, https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/127475-valve-confirms-ste...

Games aren’t going to suddenly start targeting only updated copies of windows 11 though… if they target even win 10 then they need to be API compatible with what’s currently there in windows. It doesn’t matter what new stuff comes out. Just like how we had to keep using ie6 compatible code for ages for the 5% of people still on windows xp even though it kept us from using modern web tech for everyone else.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#43

Post by acjohnson55 »

I absolutely loved this game growing up. It scratched a similar itch for me as SimCity. The corporate layer wasn't particularly sophisticated, but it did give me some early insight into finance.

The soundtrack was also incredible, and I wish it were available independently.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#45

Post by jader201 »

esafak wrote: post #16

Is there a board game equivalent? I'd like to play with my kid, without us staring at a screen.

In order of complexity:

- Thicket to Ride series: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/17/game-ticket-to-...

- Crayon Rails series: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2010/crayon-rail...

- Cube Rails series: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/18979/series-cube-...

- Age of Steam (with hundreds of print-n-play maps available): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/86/game-age-of-ste...

- 18xx: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/19/series-18xx

There are (several) other “train games” that are mostly one-off implementations with a train theme (often route/network building and/or tile placement, but sometimes not), but all of the above are families of several games that share a common system (components) and board game mechanisms, so once you play one, it’s often easy to understand/pick up on others in the same family.

The first, Ticket to Ride is probably the most accessible, and therefore one of the more popular options. But the others definitely offer a deeper experience, if you can handle the (increasing) complexity.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#46

Post by pjmlp »

lukevp wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They surely can, and Valve got lucky UWP didn't took off as they feared. Microsoft can easily do another go at it. That is the problem building castles on other vendor platforms. As reminder, https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/127475-valve-confirms-ste...

Games aren’t going to suddenly start targeting only updated copies of windows 11 though… if they target even win 10 then they need to be API compatible with what’s currently there in windows. It doesn’t matter what new stuff comes out. Just like how we had to keep using ie6 compatible code for ages for the 5% of people still on windows xp even though it kept us from using modern web tech for everyone else.

Depends on how much Microsoft decides Windows Store and XBox App are relevant for game developers targeting the PC going forward.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#47

Post by pjmlp »

jandrese wrote: post #38
pjmlp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel relying on WINE and Proton instead of building a proper GNU/Linux ecosystem will eventually backfire, it didn't happen already because thus far Microsoft chosen to ignore it. However as Steam vs XBox slowly escalates, Microsoft might eventually change their stance on the matter, forcing devs to rely on APIs not easier to copy, free licenses for handhelds, taking all Microsoft owned studios out of Steam, see wh…

On the other hand building Linux binaries and keeping them running for years without maintenance has proven far more difficult than emulating Windows. For an example track down the ports Loki games did many years ago and try to get them running on a modern machine. The most reliable way for me has been to install a very old version of Linux (Redhat 8, note: Not RHEL 8) on a VM and run them in there.

Naturally it means GNU/Linux will never improve until being forced upon.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#48

Post by pjmlp »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #30
pjmlp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel relying on WINE and Proton instead of building a proper GNU/Linux ecosystem will eventually backfire, it didn't happen already because thus far Microsoft chosen to ignore it. However as Steam vs XBox slowly escalates, Microsoft might eventually change their stance on the matter, forcing devs to rely on APIs not easier to copy, free licenses for handhelds, taking all Microsoft owned studios out of Steam, see wh…

There's a good chance that if that if Microsoft doesn't act soon enough, and a lot more devices running Steam OS are released, Proton might become the de-facto platform against which many new games are developed, and which engines target. At that point, there is nothing Microsoft can do.

Microsoft controls Windows and DirectX, Valve only gets to play until Windows landlord allows it.

DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PC.

Lets see if SteamOS makes the list as well, this is after all round two, Steam Machines didn't go that well.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#49

Post by bombcar »

b112 wrote: post #22
linsomniac wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of 1999, where I threw a party to help my friends modify their Celeron 300A CPUs so they could run dual-socket. My dual 300A running at 450MHz would run Starcraft under WINE faster than Windows could run it because at the time Windows couldn't do multi-core. Under Linux one processor would run the graphics (in X) and the other would run the game mechanics, and it would blaze.

I hate you. Well, just envy hate and just momentarily. Back then, such hacks were harder to find/discover. I would have loved to do that hack, I yearned for true multicpu.

That stuff was all over Slashdot at the time, where I heard about it; even got one and ran it for awhile, eventually relegating it to a Linux server.

Re: Railroad Tycoon II

#50

Post by pjmlp »

freedomben wrote: post #39
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good chance that if that if Microsoft doesn't act soon enough, and a lot more devices running Steam OS are released, Proton might become the de-facto platform against which many new games are developed, and which engines target. At that point, there is nothing Microsoft can do.

Agreed. I actually think it might be too late at this point since it takes so long to turn the aircraft carrier. Microsoft can't realistically deprecate/remove Win32, so all they could do is entice with new APIs. That will work for some games, but especially with the frameworks in place, they'll have to be really good to get people to abandon Steam Deck compatibility to use them.

They already control enough studios, PC and XBox market.

SteckDeck compatibility relies on "emulating" Windows ecosystem.

Remember DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PC.

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