Simutrans Development and History

Development Team

Simutrans is open source software (and some graphic paks are freeware). The code and the main graphic paks are developed by an international community of volunteers who improve the game every day.

We would like to say here a very big "THANK YOU" to everyone, who has helped to get the game this far! Without this kind of voluntary help, this game would not have ever been possible. You can find a full list of contributors in thanks.txt and credits.txt in your Simutrans installation root, and in our Thanks page. Please say thanks too, if you like the game!

This community is open to everyone who would like to contribute their ideas and time to make the game better. You can join us at Simutrans Forum.

I think I found an error...

Even if you do not know enough about programming, you can help it by thourough testing. Also for those, who want to experience the latest features and are not afraid of bugs, there are nightly builts for Windows, Linux, and Mac and several pak-sets available.

If you found something which you feel is not correct, please report it in the Development and Bug Reports section of the forum. Usually you will recieve an answer quite fast.

The forum is also the first address to discuss or receive help on compiling simutrans and related questions.

Source code

The C++ program code of the current development stage can be obtained via subversion or git:

• SVN: svn://tron.homeunix.org/simutrans/simutrans/ (username anon)
• GIT: http://github.com/aburch/simutrans

Alternatively you can download it as tgz or zip archieves.

The images and dat-files of pak64, pak128 (open), pak32 and some other graphics sets under development are available via:

• SVN: https://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/simutrans

Or if you prefer, browsable at Simutrans sourceforge.

You can also follow the development via those RSS feeds of the change logs:

• Simutrans (program engine)
• Pak 64 (the official game world)
• Pak 128
• Pak 128.Britain

Get involved!

Creating new graphics, buildings, vehicles...

Thanks to Volker Meyer for his design of Simutrans pakfile system, you can easily extend Simutrans with new vehicles, buildings, industries, goods types and other game objects. It is very simple and quite satisfying to see one own creation run in SImutrans. Tools to create these are publicly avialable.

Our wiki will tell you many things about creating addons. Additionally, at the Simutrans Forum there are many helpful people, who will answer your question on the creation of objetcs.

Also we have an useful graphic repository to create new addons at your disposal: Simutrans Graphic Archive.

Translating Simutrans

You can easily help us to translate Simutrans to your mother tongue. Please use SimuTranslator, this tool allows cooperative work on translations so even small help is useful. If you would like to help us translating Simutrans in your language, please register for an account.

Writing manuals and tutorials

New players will always need texts that help them to play and create new add-ons to Simutrans. You can write new tutorials and guides. These are our main reference sites for manuals and guides: Simutrans wiki (other languages available here).

Manual in form of PDF documents are available on Simutrans Docs. There is also a site pointing to various Simutrans videos that are available on the net. Some of them are tutorials in different languages.

Programming

Simutrans is freeware and now open source. It is developed by a team of coders and frequently incorporates patches submitted via the forum. All details about the development can be found in the Development and Bug Reports section of the forum and in the wiki.

Simutrans history

Simutrans was not always this neat. It took a long time and many strugles for the program and graphics to reach the present state. Praises go mainly to Hansjörg Malthaner (Hajo) who started Simutrans as a hobby project in 1997. Since that time, the game grew from the simple program of one man, to a great project that has its own life and community of supporters and contributors.

Hansjörg retired from the development in 2004. Since that time the development is in the hands of the Simutrans community. Each project (or part of the game) has its own coordinator. Thanks to efforts of people who try to help the community and solve communication problems, development continues in friendly atmosphere of cooperation and respect.

The story on this page is very summarized. You can you can look at the following: A short History of Simutrans Development - full version from the game author.

Below, you can find some screenshots of earlier simutrans versions.