Hajo’s first Simutrans sketch. At the top-right, a date can be read: 30-06-1997. Today, 25 years ago.
Simutrans started 25 years ago. Not yet as bits and bytes, but in the mind of a man: Hansjörg Malthaner (known by the Simutrans community as “Hajo”). Today, Simutrans is still alive, not only as bits and bytes in the thousands of computers (and now smartphones) that run Simutrans, but also in the hearts of many talented programmers, excellent artists, amazing modders and dedicated players.
To everyone of you: Thank you! Simutrans has gone very far, and it will go even further, thanks to everyone who believes in the Simutrans project.
Let’s take some time to congratulate ourselves and celebrate this milestone!
But first things first…
A little bit of history
Hajo started Simutrans alone in mid-1997. It was not until early 1999 that the first public beta was released. Simutrans started gaining some interest, and the first contributors, as the precursor of our current forum was created in the early 2000’s to accommodate a growing community.
Hajo kept developing Simutrans until he retired from development because of personal reasons in 2005. Since then, Markus Pristovsek “prissi” takes care of Simutrans, but not alone. In 2007, Simutrans became open source. This move ensured the long term survival of Simutrans and attracted many contributors.
Simutrans stayed on good track after that and would eventually come to other platforms such as Linux distributions, Steam, or more recently, Android.
Meanwhile, as Simutrans matured, other projects were born from it with the intention to innovate even further like jamespetts’ Simutrans Extended or himeshi’s OTRP.
But enough of reading about history. Reading about history is boring. So why don’t you instead see it?
The Simutrans Interactive Timeline
For the first event of this anniversary, here is an exciting idea: Let’s build a Simutrans Timeline of events. Surely a project as old as Simutrans has a lot of history to tell! So let’s tell it, graphically.
The very good news is that we already have built the foundations of this timeline, and it is interactive!
See it right now at simutrans.github.io. You can look more closely an also filter by event type. Here is a closer look at the last two years.
I have added the events that came to my mind, but there are many things missing, and I don’t know everything about Simutrans. Help us get a complete view of Simutrans history by adding missing events to the repository at GitHub. Missing releases, the date a contributor joined, or important events such as the forum migration. Every help is welcome!
The Simutrans 25th Anniversary
That’s not all we have prepared for this anniversary, but that’s all for today. In the upcoming weeks, you will see more posts to celebrate the anniversary. Join us in two weeks from now for an exclusive interview with the Man Who Started It All: Hansjörg Malthaner (Hajo).
If you want to know about the rest of the events: I am not telling you yet!
- 2022-06-30 – A look back at our shared history. The Simutrans Timeline.
- 2022-07-15 – An interview with Hansjörg Malthaner, the Founding Father.
- 2022-07-30 – ???
- 2022-08-15 – ???
- 2022-08-30 – ???
- 2022-09-15 – ???
- 2022-09-30 – ???
- 2022-10-15 – ???
- From 2022-10-30 to 2022-12-31 – ???
Happy Simutransing!
