TrueBrain

Introduction

If you have played OpenTTD without NewGRFs and GSes for a bit, with the default settings, you get interested in spicing up your game. Currently this requires some pretty good knowledge of all kinds of things:

• What NewGRFs are good and which work good together?
• What settings make the game more interested (cargodist) and which should you never touch (inflation)?
• What GS increases the fun of a game, and in what climate does it work best?

To get answers to these questions is difficult. You need access to any OpenTTD community, and other people need to help you out to piece everything together.

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This guide is build for WSL2 / Linux. For Windows it is also possible, but I can never remember Powershell syntax.

The beginning (one-time effort)

Get Python3.8+. Create a venv (for Debian, install python3-virtualenv package first):

python3 -m venv venv

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It now follows very simple rules:

• 0 - Fatal, user should know about this
• 1 - Error, but we are recovering
• 2 - Warning, wrong but okay if you don't know
• 3 - Info, information you might care about
• 4 -
• 5 - Debug #1 - High level debug messages
• 6 - Debug #2 - Low level debug messages
• 7 - Trace information

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[SDT_OMANY]
var      = game_creation.landscape
type     = SLE_UINT8
from     = SLV_97
guiflags = SGF_MULTISTRING | SGF_NEWGAME_ONLY
def      = 0
max      = 3
full.LT_TEMPERATE = temperate, 0
full.LT_ARCTIC = arctic, 1, subartic
full.LT_TOPIC = tropic, 2, subtropic

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Few things happening for each repository:

• Rename "master" into "main"
• Cleanup workflows to use the new centralized versions (instead of custom shell-scripts copied everywhere)
• Enable the "check annotation" step
• Ensure "default" branch can be anything configured

Repositories left to do:

• aws

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GC = Game Coordinator

Cleanup

• ✓ Server name not empty (or default to "playername's server"?)

Client Info

• ✓ 9114 Add GAME_INFO to TCP and use it for lobby
• ✓ 9469 Sync NetworkGameInfo from server with all clients, so clients locally know the server they are on (and sync servername changes when they happen); possibly only sync information client doesn't already know via a Command packet.
• ✓ 9469 Show server name in GUI

TrueBrain

To start with, few things to keep in mind:

• I am not a lawyer.
• Neither are you.
• 1000 people 1000 opinions; this is not so much about opinions, but about facts, options, and risk.
• I did a morning of searching the web to gather this information, just so we have something to talk about. To bring this a bit more into facts rather than opinions we all have on what GPL is and isn't :D

Problem description

With us going to Steam, the request for Steam integration has increased.

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Intro

New game

New game - Advanced

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• Organiser announces title game competition, and give an end-date for entries.
• After end-date, organiser adds all savegames + metadata to git repo (say, OpenTTD/title-game-competition).
• GitHub Actions generates the required screenshots + Markdown for it, and publishes this in another branch (say, "output"), which is published via GitHub Pages (read: available via https).

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• Organiser creates a "QA" Discussion thread for Title Game Competition.
• Each entry will be its own reply.
• People can upvote the reply if they like it.
• After closing, we have a winner.

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This is meant as extension on: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Development/Design%20Drafts/Scripts/Capability-based%20API

In addition to having capabilities, GS would benefit from being able to instantiate controllers for certain objects.

For example, take a town. Currently either a GS controls all towns or it doesn't. By adding capabilities, as written in the wiki, it can either share all towns with other GSes or keep them all for him self. I would propose a more fine-graned method: instances.

Every GS has a function like: HasInstanceFor(capability). As example: HasInstanceFor(TownGrowth). The GS either returns 0 if it has nothing for this capability, or N with N > 0 for how many different forms it has for this instance. Next, OpenTTD adds up all the Ns, picks a random number in range, and selects that GS + index to handle that town now forths. For example: GetInstanceFor(TownGrowth, 2).