Welcome to Simutrans Extra! I have been pretty quiet so far this year as I needed a break after the Anniversary events of last year, but a lot of things have been happening in the Simutrans world meanwhile. It’s time to review them!

But first, let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

When there will be a new Simutrans release?

We couldn’t make a Simutrans release last year, the reason behind this being the war in Ukraine. Another negative effect of the war is that Ukrainian developer Pelya was drafted for the military. Pelya is not directly related to the Simutrans project, but he maintained a set of scripts that enabled games like Simutrans and OpenTTD (between others) to be compiled on Android.

Unfortunately, the build for Android stopped working and to fix it one would have needed to fix Pelya’s scripts. But no one in the team knew how to do so, so the release was delayed until we could release for all supported platforms at once.

Seeing that the war was not going to end anytime soon, I stepped in some months ago to do something about this. I developed a new build system for Simutrans on Android completely from scratch. It took quite a lot of work, but the end result is a far simpler build and, more importantly, one I know how to fix in case it stops working!

Wars are bad. But you know what’s good? UI improvements! A few of them are currently under development, so you can expect a new release when we are done with them. Let’s see which they are!

Font anti-aliasing is coming to Simutrans!

Thanks to the work made by developers Hajo and Dwachs, font anti-alising is nearly ready for Simutrans. While you can currently set any TrueType font in Simutrans 123, they look quite a bit ugly without anti-aliasing.

Introducing anti-aliasing will finally make these fonts look good at any size (although the UI still needs to be redesigned to adjust to font sizes, specially very large ones). We will also take this opportunity to move away from bdf fonts and change Simutrans’ default font, probably to Noto Sans font.


A screenshot showing how Simutrans looks with Noto Sans and anti-aliasing.

Main menu

What was initially going to be an addition of a “Play Tutorial” button in the initial banner has evolved into a redesign for the entire banner, adding a few more options and now working as a “main menu” to which you come back when you want to start a game.


The new main menu. Final version may change.

Consequently, the options windows and other windows will be simplified and adapted to the new flow.


The options windows. Final version may change.

Improved Station labels and markers

When legendary Hajo came back earlier this year, he focused on improving various part of the UI (which Simutrans is indeed in need of improving). One of his most exciting ideas was a new appareance for station labels and markers which could be defined by themes.


Just look at those, they look fantastic!

Hajo has unfortunately not been active since the start of this year – but you can bet I will do my best to finish this and include it in the next Simutrans version.

Lost and found musicians

You may remember that one of the Anniversary events of the last year was a post showcasing the music of Simutrans, where we asked for help to identify the unkown musicians for some of the songs.

Now with help from jm764 and other members, we have fully identified all the creators of Simutrans music! To honour them, in the next version, Simutrans will display credits for the current song!

Pak144.Excentrique

Another of Hajo’s comeback works has been a rework of pak44.Excentrique – now with better graphics!


Who said Simutrans paksets have to look old?

The project is on hold as Hajo is not active at the moment.

Pak48.bitlit

Okay, hear me. One of the most exciting things about Simutrans is the degree of personalization you can achieve. Experimental paksets like the recently announced pak48.bitlit are a proof of that.

What if your Simutrans game was set in a world made by Electrons, Bytes, Memory and CPUs? Welcome to pak48.bitlit, where you will transport Electrons instead of passengers, Data instead of mail, through uni- and bi-flows instead of roads and tracks!

New online server

In the previous weeks I have been experimenting with the hosting of Simutrans game servers, with the intention of hosting a permanently online Simutrans game server based on Simutrans stable (Simutrans 123.0.1 currently) and Pak128 stable, so anyone who just installed Simutrans can join to experiment online play.

I’ve learned enough in the process, so I will go on and open a new game server in the following days called “Simutrans Public Server” (the precursor server, “Roboron’s Public Server”, will close soon).

Everyone is welcome to join! If we manage to fill all slots, I will spin up a second game server.

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We have come to the end of this Simutrans Extra. But worry not, because you will hear from me again, soon. Don’t forget that, as every year, we will celebrating a Screenshot Contest by the end of this year. And for this edition we have a surprise! I will reveal all the details in a few weeks!

Until then, happy Simutransing!

How can YOU contribute to Simutrans

Simutrans is an open source project. That means that anyone – including you – can improve it! Did you ever want to contribute to Simutrans but you have no skill for coding? Worry not, you can contribute to Simutrans in a variety of ways:

Translating

Simutrans is constantly updating and adding texts so we are always in need for translators:

Painting

Simutrans is always looking for artists! If you want to paint graphics for Simutrans, check:

Coding

Reporting bugs and submitting suggestions