Gnomie alphaxion writes:

Hey, Chris!

thought I’d fill your random crap quota for the day :)

I know you love how the general Internet community can really take an idea and expand it beyond that which it was ever dreamt to be.

Well, there’s a project that really encompasses this quite thoroughly.

With you not holding much of a gaming background, have a quick read of this about a classic game called Transport Tycoon to get you up to speed.

The game was taken apart and rewritten by a member of the games community and thus OpenTTD was born. Since then it has been ported to numerous OSes as well as versions for the PSP and DS!

The people who have worked on OpenTTD have really done a great job updating and adding great new features and have implemented a fantastic multiplayer system — and its multiplayer aspect might be fun to get some of those in the chat channel playing. Be warned though, it can quickly chew through your spare time!

The only problem would be that OpenTTD requires some of the old game files, and while TTD can be found on the abandonware sites, it might still be dodgy ground to simply bundle those files with it.

They are, however looking into working on a new graphics system so they can do away with the old dependency, the only potential pratfall is that OpenTTD was created by disassembling the original game.

Still, it’s a great example on how a community can reinvigorate an aging bit of software and keep it going 13 to 14 years after the original was released!

It also shows that stunning HD graphics aren’t always needed to make a great game! Though back when it was first released, I remember playing it on my 486sx2/50 and the more vehicles you had, the more of a slideshow it turned into. The in-game time went from a month every ten minutes to a month every hour!