Good things come to those who wait. OpenTTD 15 is starting the final lap with first release candidate!

With a release candidate, the focus shifts from adding new features to finding and fixing bugs to make OpenTTD 15 the best OpenTTD yet. The finding part is where you, the players, come in, too. If there’s anything you notice, head over to our issue tracker and make a report.

If you’ve already played any of the betas and use the OpenGFX baseset, you might have noticed a message about missing sprites. This is due to some of the new features in OpenTTD 15. We recommend switching to the newer (and still updated) OpenGFX2 baseset, which you can easly get via the in-game content downloader.

Some notable changes over the previous beta3 release are:

• Automatic font loading for characters not part of the normal language files (like e.g. player names or chat messages)
• Signs, waypoint and station names may be moved
• Terrain generator can make wetlands for rivers unable to reach the sea
• Island maps and heightmaps can be surrounded by infinite water instead of black
• Bridges can now be built over locks and docks, too
• Various tweaks to interface scaling
• Improvements and fixes to badge support
• [NewGRF] Support for trains with multiple rail types
• A variety of bugfixes

As always, see the changelog for the full list.

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Did you have a lazy summer? Over at OpenTTD HQ, we did not!

We’ve continued to make improvements to OpenTTD, both very visible to player and under the hood. It’s time for another beta so you can help us test. Highlights include:

• Bridges can now be built over stations (NewGRF stations must be updated to support this)
• [NewGRF] Bridge GRFs can now have pillar information, so that a pillar can be skipped if it obstructs the tile below (rail, road, or station)
• Ships traveling in opposite directions try not to drive on the same line of tiles
• Purchase and picker menus can now be filtered using NewGRF Badges
• Settings and Options menus have been merged
• Scenario Editor has improvements for placing and expanding towns
  • New buttons to expand town roads and buildings separately
  • “Many random towns” button now prompts for the number of towns
• Picker window sprite previews can be increased in height, so you can see the entire skyscraper in the house picker (for example)
• The Infrastructure list window now has a scrollbar
• A variety of bugfixes

(As always, see the changelog for further details).

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• Changelog
• Bug tracker

April 1st has come and gone, but have no fear, for beta2 is here.

We’ve fixed a bunch more since beta1, and need more testing. Also, we added some new features! Highlights include:

• Snow-covered rocks are now visible
• Steep hills from map generation or heightmap import now get extra rocks
• Houses can be individually placed by players in the scenario editor and (if enabled) in-game, and can be protected from replacement during town growth
• Touchpad two-finger map scrolling for Windows
• NewGRF Badges
• A variety of bugfixes

(As always, see the changelog for further details).

What are badges, you ask? Badges are something add-on (NewGRF) authors can put on their content to help you find e.g. the vehicle or station you want to use. For example, various vehicle add-ons use a mix of different icons, overlay images or texts to indicate the power source or the suggested usage of a vehicle. With badges, this information can be represented in a clear way including built-in filtering, that is cohesive between different add-ons.

As this beta is the first release featuring badge support, there aren’t many updated add-ons yet, but we’re excited to see what authors do with the new feature.

Finally, the usual titlegame competition has been announced on the forums.

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Ho, ho, ho, Santa is in town. And he’s brought a gift with him.

Here’s a shiny new package for you to unwrap, containing the first beta version of the upcoming OpenTTD 15 release.

It comes faster, with road waypoints, fewer passwords, better scenario editor, and hopefully with a lot less bugs. To be a bit less vague, here are some of the highlights:

• Improved picker windows for stations/waypoints/objects/and more. Oh, and that does include road waypoints.
• Better perfomance in various places, including faster path signals that are now green by default.
• Password-less network authentication using keys.
• Several improvements for NewGRFs regarding cargo support.
• Better scenario editor with a town data importer and manual house placement.
• A large tree fully hung with ornamental bugfixes.
• Sadly though, not everbody was good this year. The old NPF pathfinder was finally retired, after YAPF being the superior default for many, many years now.

There’s a lot of bugs left for you to find, though, guaranteed. Enjoy the beta, test all the things and report anything you find amiss, to make OpenTTD 15 the best OpenTTD 15 ever.

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Our players have played a lot of OpenTTD 14 since it was released a few weeks ago – in last week alone those who opted into our survey played 34,700 hours across 17,219 games.

In all those hours, you’ve found some bugs, and we’ve done our best to fix them. The first maintenance release for OpenTTD 14 fixes a multiplayer desync bug and cleans up a few rough edges with the new ship pathfinder and the unbunching feature. As always, there are plenty of other bugfixes, which you can find in the changelog.

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• Changelog
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