The #openttdcoop Tutorial Savegame

After some 2+ years of #openttdcoop we felt like we had to do a compilation of key points from our games. Some of our well-known guides are a nice peek into the world of #openttdcoop but by any means not enough to tell our readers WHY we build weird structures such as Load Balancers or Sideline Hubs. Most important in order to understand these constructs is seeing them in action. As a result of our considerations we hereby supply a tutorial savegame to every interested reader.

Please retrieve the tutorial savegame

Technical Note: the savegame should work on any revision higher than r9000 or OpenTTD 0.6.0-beta (or higher). Get the latest nightly build or the beta version of OpenTTD 0.6.0 for now, as the most recently released stable version doesn't include some features that we use here.

How to use this savegame

Open your signlist

Open the signlist. The signlist is probably the most important feature of OpenTTD to our community since we are using signs a lot to guide people around and mark points of interest. Cooperative play is very much about communication, and the signlist allows us to more easily communicate spatially. If you click on a sign in the list, the client directs you straight to this point. We classified the topics within the tutorial in five headers:

1. Tutorial Savegame Mainline
2. Tutorial Savegame Sideline
3. Tutorial Savegame Stations
4. Tutorial Savegame Feeder
5. Tutorial Savegame Towns

With reference to these signs in the game, we dedicate the next pages to explain our ideas with the relevant constructs and concepts. We try to give you an idea of our thinking: in the end you'll be through a crash course straight into the core principles of network building in #openttdcoop.

If you feel impressed by a lot of signaling and lots of traffic, don't hesitate joining our Public Server. It's not that difficult as one could expect. You can just watch for a while if you wish. As you gain confidence and experience, you will learn to build parts of the cooperative network of increasing complexity. Other players can help you with what you build and tell you what you've done correctly and incorrectly. This tutorial savegame is just a good point to start at—we'll teach you the basics so you know what's going on.

A last suggestion to our readers: in case of questions or comments please use the discussion pages!