6 ms·

This doesn't feel right for me. OpenTTD is so much superior in every way compared to the original TTD, that noone in their right mind would ever play the origin

This doesn't feel right for me. OpenTTD is so much superior in every way compared to the original TTD, that noone in their right mind would ever play the original. So Atari now, while spending zero effort compared to the years of work that OpenTTD devs put in, will basically sell OpenTTD as if was their own creation. People who buy the new TTD will simply play OpenTTD anyway, since it's so much better. I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.

jorl17 7mo ago
I can look at this from 2 additional perspectives: - OpenTTD (a game I truly love and have followed since before the 0.3 days) was not born as a clean-room reimplementation of TTD. It started as a disassembly effort, something which is perhaps morally gray, especially if you take into account the original TTD was coded in assembly (with sprinkles of C). Perhaps this way there is some vague contribution that goes towards Chris Sawyer? - This is a way you can legally get the original graphics of the game (GRF). Although I think the shareware version technically also worked...
altairprime 7mo ago
The downsides of putting “TTD” in the name “OpenTTD” is a certain level of vulnerability to the original creator (or a rights inheritor) deciding it’s worth their time to care again someday. I suspect this will do more for the TTD community than it will harm it, though; any modern sale of TTD is targeted precisely at the folks who would take mortal offense at harm to OpenTTD, and $10 (which would have been merely $5 in 2000) is the opposite of egregious after 100% inflation pushed AAA games towards $90 these days. I paid $5 for a used copy of SimTower back then, I would happily pay the same today for TTD resources, so this is all fine. I get that Atari isn’t perhaps as loved as, say, Bullfrog or Dynamix, but better that companies respect their properties and their fans with an outcome like this, than be another boringly-common community-destroying Nintendo Lawyer Takedown Club. (It’s also now in line with the various WAD and Descent games over time that used this model, where the engine is maximum rewrite amazing but the game resources require a GOG purchase. The point of rewrites isn’t to deprive the games of revenue!)
- Chaosvex 7mo ago
  It's similar to Valve and Dota2. We all know what it means but officially, it isn't actually DotA and doesn't stand for anything. They will never refer to the game as Defense of the Ancients. Seems to have worked for them. Worth noting that the Atari of today is a shell corporation that has precisely zero to do with the original.
  - larsiusprime 7mo ago
    IceFrog was on the Dota2 team, and valve owns the trademark
    - Chaosvex 7mo ago
      It's far more complicated than that and ended up in court. They own the commercial rights after a legal battle with Blizzard (and Riot was in the fray, somewhere), who retained some rights to the name. Valve's 'Dota' doesn't legally stand for anything because it'd be a direct reference to Warcraft 3 (Ancients), just as TTD can be said to not legally stand for Transport Tycoon Deluxe. That's the entire point that you've simultaneously acknowledged and missed. IceFrog didn't start DotA, either. He had no claim to the name. TL;DR there's complicated history behind it and much money was spent arguing over it.
      - literallywho 7mo ago
        IIRCC, Eul, the guy who made Dota originally, also works at Valve.
  - chocochunks 7mo ago
    It's also worth noting that the original TTD had nothing to do with the original Atari and a lot more to do with Microprose which was purchased by Hasbro Interactive, which was later purchased by Infogrames which renamed itself Atari after buying the remnants. Oh, and the "new" Microprose has even less to do with the old Microprose than the new Atari does with the old Atari (at least they own the rights to all the old Atari titles).
01100011 7mo ago
> while spending zero effort Why do you think it took such little effort? Is it simply utilizing an emulation/portability package like Proton?
- Chaosvex 7mo ago
  Yes, it is.
- TuxMark5 7mo ago
  I assume they will take the original and most likely unchanged TTD binaries and package them together with DOSBox and that's it. It's something that one dev could do in a weekend.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
fwipsy 7mo ago
Atari didn't put in the effort, but Chris Sawyer did. Now Atari paid Sawyer for the rights to the game. I do not think Atari is a parasite here just because they paid for the game instead of creating it. It seems to me that the logical outcome of your interpretation is that Sawyer's leniency towards the OpenTTD devs would be punished by losing exclusivity to his IP. Essentially, you are asserting "squatter's rights" to IP - if IP rights are not enforced, then they lapse. This is an interesting idea in principle, but I'm concerned that it might have prevented OpenTTD from ever being created. Original creators would be incentivized to chase off derivative works to protect their IP.
- TuxMark5 7mo ago
  My issue with this argument is that I'm not sure how much of OpenTTD is their IP. OpenTTD has been development for so long that I doubt that any original disassembly remnants remain in the latest version of OpenTTD. The only true piece of IP that OpenTTD may use is the name (the TTD part of OpenTTD) and the graphics, the latter of which being the more important one. However, as far as I know, OpenTTD devs have created their own version of all the assets that are also much higher resolution compared to the original. As a result, I see OpenTTD as an entirely separate game, that's been heavily inspired by original, but is its own separate entity.
  - singpolyma3 7mo ago
    Also "TTD" is hardly a name you can claim. It's three letters that don't make a word.
    - Chaosvex 7mo ago
      As long as it officially stands for nothing, perhaps. See DotA vs Dota2.
    - fwipsy 7mo ago
      KFC would like a word.
  - fwipsy 7mo ago
l72 7mo ago
How do you feel about old Lucas arts adventure games that are purchasable on gog and other platforms and come bundled with scummvm?
- TuxMark5 7mo ago
  I see no issue with it. The same way I see no issue selling old DOS games packaged with DOSBox. Neither ScummVM nor DOSBox are games themselves. In this case it's the content that matters. However in OpenTTDs case, the entire implementation is original (including the new high res assets). I would have 0 issues with this TTD/OpenTTD situation if OpenTTD was left on Steam as-is and TTD was a separate purchase that granted the original assets for use in OpenTTD.
  - anthk 7mo ago
    >Scummvm Scummvm could adapt OpenTTD for their own working in the exact same way as OpenTTD. They did that with Ultima.
  - pas 7mo ago
    unfortunately it's not that simple, especially as long as the original behavior is still in there and ... successfully defending the originality of the reimplementation as a standalone work would be a risky and costly legal endeavor (even though the standards for originality - "is it transformative enough?" was more lenient when OpenTTD was made than it's today)
flomo 7mo ago
Before OpenTDD was ready, the improved signals and etc were originally part of "TTDPatch", which made the original 'model railroad' much more fun. So I stuck with that for a long time. They should at least ship the patch with the original game.
nubinetwork 7mo ago
> Atari > parasites This is pretty typical for Atari... any software that ever graced their consoles magically becomes their IP, ripe for exploitation, even if they didn't write it...

jorl17 7mo ago

I can look at this from 2 additional perspectives: - OpenTTD (a game I truly love and have followed since before the 0.3 days) was not born as a clean-room reimplementation of TTD. It started as a disassembly effort, something which is perhaps morally gray, especially if you take into account the original TTD was coded in assembly (with sprinkles of C). Perhaps this way there is some vague contribution that goes towards Chris Sawyer? - This is a way you can legally get the original graphics of the game (GRF). Although I think the shareware version technically also worked...

altairprime 7mo ago

The downsides of putting “TTD” in the name “OpenTTD” is a certain level of vulnerability to the original creator (or a rights inheritor) deciding it’s worth their time to care again someday. I suspect this will do more for the TTD community than it will harm it, though; any modern sale of TTD is targeted precisely at the folks who would take mortal offense at harm to OpenTTD, and $10 (which would have been merely $5 in 2000) is the opposite of egregious after 100% inflation pushed AAA games towards $90 these days. I paid $5 for a used copy of SimTower back then, I would happily pay the same today for TTD resources, so this is all fine. I get that Atari isn’t perhaps as loved as, say, Bullfrog or Dynamix, but better that companies respect their properties and their fans with an outcome like this, than be another boringly-common community-destroying Nintendo Lawyer Takedown Club. (It’s also now in line with the various WAD and Descent games over time that used this model, where the engine is maximum rewrite amazing but the game resources require a GOG purchase. The point of rewrites isn’t to deprive the games of revenue!)

Chaosvex 7mo ago
It's similar to Valve and Dota2. We all know what it means but officially, it isn't actually DotA and doesn't stand for anything. They will never refer to the game as Defense of the Ancients. Seems to have worked for them. Worth noting that the Atari of today is a shell corporation that has precisely zero to do with the original.
- larsiusprime 7mo ago
  IceFrog was on the Dota2 team, and valve owns the trademark
  - Chaosvex 7mo ago
    It's far more complicated than that and ended up in court. They own the commercial rights after a legal battle with Blizzard (and Riot was in the fray, somewhere), who retained some rights to the name. Valve's 'Dota' doesn't legally stand for anything because it'd be a direct reference to Warcraft 3 (Ancients), just as TTD can be said to not legally stand for Transport Tycoon Deluxe. That's the entire point that you've simultaneously acknowledged and missed. IceFrog didn't start DotA, either. He had no claim to the name. TL;DR there's complicated history behind it and much money was spent arguing over it.
    - literallywho 7mo ago
      IIRCC, Eul, the guy who made Dota originally, also works at Valve.
- chocochunks 7mo ago
  It's also worth noting that the original TTD had nothing to do with the original Atari and a lot more to do with Microprose which was purchased by Hasbro Interactive, which was later purchased by Infogrames which renamed itself Atari after buying the remnants. Oh, and the "new" Microprose has even less to do with the old Microprose than the new Atari does with the old Atari (at least they own the rights to all the old Atari titles).

01100011 7mo ago

> while spending zero effort Why do you think it took such little effort? Is it simply utilizing an emulation/portability package like Proton?

Chaosvex 7mo ago
Yes, it is.
TuxMark5 7mo ago
I assume they will take the original and most likely unchanged TTD binaries and package them together with DOSBox and that's it. It's something that one dev could do in a weekend.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

fwipsy 7mo ago

Atari didn't put in the effort, but Chris Sawyer did. Now Atari paid Sawyer for the rights to the game. I do not think Atari is a parasite here just because they paid for the game instead of creating it. It seems to me that the logical outcome of your interpretation is that Sawyer's leniency towards the OpenTTD devs would be punished by losing exclusivity to his IP. Essentially, you are asserting "squatter's rights" to IP - if IP rights are not enforced, then they lapse. This is an interesting idea in principle, but I'm concerned that it might have prevented OpenTTD from ever being created. Original creators would be incentivized to chase off derivative works to protect their IP.

TuxMark5 7mo ago
My issue with this argument is that I'm not sure how much of OpenTTD is their IP. OpenTTD has been development for so long that I doubt that any original disassembly remnants remain in the latest version of OpenTTD. The only true piece of IP that OpenTTD may use is the name (the TTD part of OpenTTD) and the graphics, the latter of which being the more important one. However, as far as I know, OpenTTD devs have created their own version of all the assets that are also much higher resolution compared to the original. As a result, I see OpenTTD as an entirely separate game, that's been heavily inspired by original, but is its own separate entity.
- singpolyma3 7mo ago
  Also "TTD" is hardly a name you can claim. It's three letters that don't make a word.
  - Chaosvex 7mo ago
    As long as it officially stands for nothing, perhaps. See DotA vs Dota2.
  - fwipsy 7mo ago
    KFC would like a word.
- fwipsy 7mo ago

l72 7mo ago

How do you feel about old Lucas arts adventure games that are purchasable on gog and other platforms and come bundled with scummvm?

TuxMark5 7mo ago
I see no issue with it. The same way I see no issue selling old DOS games packaged with DOSBox. Neither ScummVM nor DOSBox are games themselves. In this case it's the content that matters. However in OpenTTDs case, the entire implementation is original (including the new high res assets). I would have 0 issues with this TTD/OpenTTD situation if OpenTTD was left on Steam as-is and TTD was a separate purchase that granted the original assets for use in OpenTTD.
- anthk 7mo ago
  >Scummvm Scummvm could adapt OpenTTD for their own working in the exact same way as OpenTTD. They did that with Ultima.
- pas 7mo ago
  unfortunately it's not that simple, especially as long as the original behavior is still in there and ... successfully defending the originality of the reimplementation as a standalone work would be a risky and costly legal endeavor (even though the standards for originality - "is it transformative enough?" was more lenient when OpenTTD was made than it's today)

flomo 7mo ago

Before OpenTDD was ready, the improved signals and etc were originally part of "TTDPatch", which made the original 'model railroad' much more fun. So I stuck with that for a long time. They should at least ship the patch with the original game.

nubinetwork 7mo ago

> Atari > parasites This is pretty typical for Atari... any software that ever graced their consoles magically becomes their IP, ripe for exploitation, even if they didn't write it...