Welcome, everyone! The first Simutrans Video Contest is about to begin! This is the first time ever we celebrate a video contest, and it is not the only surprise! This year you can also win actual prizes just by participating! Let everyone win!

Participation
1 – There are no categories. This means you can choose whatever pakset you want, and also whatever Simutrans version you want (yes, including Extended and OTRP).
2 – You can submit as up to two videos. This also means you can win up to two prizes!
3 – You need to include title for every video. Videos without title will not be eligible!
4 – You have until Januay 15st (inclusive) to submit your video!

Theme and guidelines
1 – The theme this year is… Routes! Show us your best routes, for example by following a convoi or different convois. Be creative!
2 – To keep videos clean, hide city/station names and waiting bars. Also, avoid showing non-Simutrans elements such as the title bar.
3 – There are no limits to video size and resolution, but recommended resolution is 1920×1080 as this is the most common resolution.
4 – Video duration limit is 10 minutes, but consider a duration of around 5 minutes.
5 – Use Simutrans music when possible. If you wish to use other music, please check that the license allows for its usage freely.

Remember that you can submit videos that do not fit the theme or guidelines just for the sake of showing others your work, but theme and guidelines will be used to select the winners!

Prizes
1 – For the first winner ONLY: The video will be displayed on the Simutrans Steam store page, alongside the new trailer. If the version used is not Simutrans Standard the next winner will be considered.
2 – For EVERY participant: You can choose a game* from the following list (choosing will be made in order, starting from the first winner):

  • Surviving Mars + Green Planet + Project Laika + Colony Design Set + Marsvision Song Contest + Space Race + Deluxe Edition Upgrade Pack
  • DEATHLOOP
  • Just Cause 4: Complete Edition
  • Ghostrunner
  • Killsquad
  • Railway Empire
  • Little Big Workshop
  • Epic Chef
  • Not tonight
  • Dinosaur Fossil Hunter
  • Gas Station Simulator
  • Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
  • NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER
  • Embr
  • A Plague Tale: Innocence
  • Emily is Away <3
  • The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
  • Forgive Me Father
  • Descenders
  • Monster Train + The Last Divinity DLC
  • The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
  • Disciples: Liberation
  • Golf Gang
  • Maid of Sker

* Games are provided as Steam keys. Some keys may be region-locked in some countries; in such a case, you can choose a different game.

Voting
Voting will be done on a wiki survey (I will post a new announcement when the time comes). Everyone (participants and non-participants) can vote, but you can only vote one time.
If two or more videos have the same votes, we will select a winner, taking into account theme and guidelines.

Submission
1. First upload your video to a site where we can download it (a cloud storage like Nextcloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc…).
2. You don’t need to upload it to a video site like YouTube. You can do it if you want, but we will be uploading the videos to the Simutrans YouTube channel later anyway.
3. You can submit then a link to the video file through the following platforms (don’t forget to include title):

  • The International Simutrans Forum: Posting the link to this thread.
  • Steam: submitting your videos to the “Videos” section of the community Hub, or just posting the link on the Announcement comments.
  • Reddit: Submitting your videos to /r/simutrans/
  • Twitter: Using the hashtag #SimutransVideoContest and mentioning the @SimutransTeam account.
  • Mastodon / Fediverse: Using the hashtag #SimutransVideoContest and mentioning the simutrans@fosstodon.org account.
  • E-mail: Send us your submission via e-mail to social@simutrans.com

We reserve the right to decline any submission that does not follow the guidelines and that we believe not enough effort was put into it.

Resources
If you have never recorded a video before, here are some resources that were used for the new Simutrans trailer video:

  • OBS Studio: Cross-platform tool to record your screen and applications. Fully free and widely used https://obsproject.com
  • Kdenlive: Cross-platform tool to edit your videos. Fully free and part of the KDE project https://kdenlive.org

Finally, if you want some examples / inspiration, you can think on something like the video showcased in our last interview to himeshi.

Simutrans 25th Anniversary
This is the last of the events planned for the 25th Anniversary. Getting to know better the people and the history behind Simutrans has been such an experience, and the videos and projects done like the trailer or the Simutrans Timeline were definitely fun to do, but also very time-consuming and tiring.

I hope you have enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed doing them, and that they were worth doing. And I hope we have many fruitful years of Simutrans to come. At least, 25 more!

I need to take some months to rest now, but I’ll come back next year with more Simutransing. Until next time, Roboron.