amittd 1.2.11

OpenTTD 1.0.5 for 68k Amiga and AROS

Short:        OpenTTD 1.0.5 for 68k Amiga and AROS
Author:       Grzegorz Korycki
Uploader:     marcopolak07 wp pl
Type:         game/strat
Version:      1.2.11
Requires:     68030/50 with RTG or 68040 with AGA, 24 MB Fast RAM
Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= 3.0.0; m68k-aros
Distribution: NoCD

AmiTTD is a native AmigaOS 3.x port of OpenTTD 1.0.5, an open source
remake of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. The same program runs on AROS 68k.
For MorphOS there is a native PowerPC version:
game/strat/amittd_mos.lha.

Everything needed to play is in this one archive. No original Transport
Tycoon Deluxe data is required: OpenGFX and OpenSFX are included, and so
is a full soundtrack.

Features:

  - Native video driver, no SDL: AGA 8-bit, OCS/ECS Extra Half-Brite,
    RTG through Picasso96 / CyberGraphX at 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits, or a
    resizable window on the Workbench screen. The mode is chosen from
    the game's own settings.
  - Mouse wheel zooms, with any wheel driver that speaks NewMouse.
  - Paula sound driver using audio DMA. AHI is not required.
  - Music either as samples through Paula, or as real MIDI through
    camd.library or straight out of the serial port. The OpenMSX
    soundtrack is included; if you own Transport Tycoon Deluxe you can
    use its original music instead.
  - No FPU required. The floating point it needs is done in software,
    so a bare 68030 or 68040 without a coprocessor is fine.
  - TCP/IP multiplayer, Amiga to Amiga or Amiga to PC, over a real
    stack or an emulated one. Direct IP, or an invite code through the
    OpenTTD game coordinator.
  - Reads modern NewGRF sets (container version 2). A tram set is
    included and enabled by default, which adds trams to the game.

Unpack it anywhere you like and start the program. It locates its own
drawer through PROGDIR:, so it can be launched from a Shell, from a
script or from its icon, whatever the current directory happens to be.

NEW SINCE 1.2.9

  - AROS 68k runs this very program, no separate build. Tested on the
    current AROS m68k nightly and on the AROS ROM built into WinUAE,
    which ignores the bitmap a program gives it: the screen stayed
    black while the game ran behind it. The game now notices and draws
    into the screen's own bitplanes.
  - The RTG list is read from the system's own mode list, the one the
    ScreenMode preferences show. On some setups - a PiStorm with
    Picasso96 on OS 3.2, for one - the old way found no RTG mode at all
    although the card had them. Every size from 400x300 up is offered.
  - The video driver writes its own log, amiga_gfx.log, and the screen
    mode list goes to amiga_rtg.log - both in the game's drawer, for a
    bug report.
  - MorphOS has its own native PowerPC version now, as a separate
    archive: game/strat/amittd_mos.lha. This 68k one runs on MorphOS
    too, through its 68k emulation, but there is no reason to use it
    there.

IF YOU HAVE 1.2.0, THE LOADING TIME IS THE REASON TO UPDATE

On a real hard drive 1.2.0 took minutes to start. A user with an
A1200/68060 measured 5:00 from a PFS3 partition and 3:00 from FFS. It
is now 0:37 on both, and 0:15 from a RAM disk.

The cost was never the amount of data, it was the number of disk
requests: the game checksummed 17 MB of base sets on every launch, read
through a 512 byte buffer, and physically re-read data it only meant to
skip. It now reads each file once, straight into memory, when there is
enough Fast RAM to do so - about 20 MB. Below that it says so in
PROGDIR:amiga_load.log and reads from the disk as before, which is
still far quicker than 1.2.0 was.

MUSIC, AND MIDI

The soundtrack in this archive is sampled and plays through Paula, and
that is what you get without changing anything.

If you have a way to play MIDI, Advanced Settings - Amiga - Music will
switch to it. Two sets are offered: OpenMSX, which is included in the
gm drawer, and the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe music, which is not
included and never will be - if you own the game, copy its GM_TT00.GM
to GM_TT21.GM into that same drawer and the track names come out right.

The notes leave the machine either through camd.library, the AmigaOS
MIDI router, or as plain MIDI on the serial port at 31250 baud for an
ordinary MIDI interface. That choice is the setting underneath.
camd.library is not included; it is on Aminet as mus/midi/camd.lha, and
the game will find it in LIBS: or in a libs drawer beside itself.

If the music you picked cannot be played, the game tells you why and
then plays nothing. It does not quietly put a different soundtrack on.

This part has been tested under emulation only. Reports from real
hardware are welcome.

WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO PLAY IT

The game starts on a 68020, but starting and playing are not the same
thing, and on an 020 it is a miserable experience rather than a slow
one.

For a game that actually plays:

  - with an RTG board, a 68030/50 is enough
  - on AGA, a 68040/33 is the realistic minimum

What separates the two is the chunky to planar conversion. An RTG board
takes the 8 bit chunky buffer the game draws into exactly as it is; AGA
has to have every single frame converted into bitplanes first, and that
conversion is what eats the extra processor.

24 MB of Fast RAM is needed either way. No FPU is needed on any of them.

MULTIPLAYER, INCLUDING GAMES WITH PC PLAYERS

You are not limited to playing against other Amigas. A Windows build is
made from these same sources, and it is network compatible with this
one in both directions: an Amiga can join a Windows server, and a
Windows machine can join a server hosted on an Amiga.

That is useful in two ways. You can play a game with someone sitting at
a PC, and you can leave a Windows machine hosting the game around the
clock while the Amigas simply join it.

The Windows archive is on the project's releases page:

  https://github.com/angree/openttd_amiga_68k/releases

Take the Windows build from the same series as this one. Multiplayer
compares the major and minor version, so every 1.2.x plays with every
other 1.2.x, and a different series is refused outright rather than
joining and going wrong later.

Joining a game needs nothing special. Hosting one needs TCP port 3979
reachable from wherever the other players are.

Plain OpenTTD cannot join, whatever its version: the protocol, the
command table and the savegame format have all diverged from mainline.

DISK SPACE, AND HOW TO GET MOST OF IT BACK

Unpacked, the whole thing takes about 153 MB, of which 124 MB is the
soundtrack. If you are short on disk, or you simply do not want the
music, delete the music drawer or any of the sets inside it. Nothing
breaks: the driver scans those drawers when it starts, so an empty or
missing one just means silence, and the game runs exactly as before.

The music drawer holds four sets, each of which can go on its own:

  music/Title  the menu theme
  music/Nowe   the standard in game set
  music/Extra  an extension of the standard set, played alongside it
  music/Stare  a second set, played when the Old Style playlist is
               selected in the game's music window

The gm drawer holds the MIDI soundtrack instead, and is under a
megabyte; it costs nothing to keep even if you have no MIDI hardware.

Your own music works the same way: drop WAV files into any of these
drawers. They must be 22 kHz, mono, Microsoft ADPCM, which is what the
Paula driver plays back through audio DMA without a software mixer.

The music supplied here was generated with AI. It is not a recording of
the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe soundtrack and it is not sampled
from any commercial release.

CONTACT

If you need anything - a bug to report, a machine it will not run on, a
NewGRF set that is refused, a question about hosting a server - use the
project page on GitHub rather than mail. Issues raised there are seen,
and other people can read the answer afterwards:

  https://github.com/angree/openttd_amiga_68k

LICENCE AND SOURCES

This is free software under the GNU General Public License version 2.
See COPYING inside the archive for the full licence text. The complete
corresponding source code, including the patch set against the original
OpenTTD 1.0.5 tree, is available at:

  https://github.com/angree/openttd_amiga_68k

OpenTTD itself is the work of the OpenTTD team; this package is a port
of their version 1.0.5 to 68k Amiga hardware. The graphics and sound
effects are OpenGFX and OpenSFX by the OpenTTD graphics and sound
teams, both free to redistribute; their licences are in the docs drawer.

The included tram set is a modified version of PolTrams by Sojita,
Voyager One and McZapkie, also GPL version 2. The script that produces
the modified set from the original is in the repository named above.