jeffryfisher

My notes are sketchy, and I don't have the game at hand, so I suggest opening the map in the game editor and reading the briefing / announcements (events 21, 74, 82, 126, 436, 466). My fuzzy memory is that you must deliver a load or two from your starting territory to a target city on the west coast (e.g. Canada -> Vancouver, US -> SF). Mexico might be inverted (deliver from Cal to Matamoros). Each has a news announcement during the game telling the award and its conditions.

Very cool -- That info could get someone into at least part of the code (perhaps the most interesting part). The "engine" might not crack as easily, and I don't know how that would affect a reverse-engineering project.

Waste can make electricity cheaper. Surplus lumber & steel can make rail-building cheaper. Surplus diesel can make fuel cheaper for diesel locomotives. None specifically discount bridges.

Open up the map in the editor and copy out the texts of these briefing events: 1: Briefing 7: SP - Goals 21: Transcon Rules 39: Designer's Notes 239: A Fuel Rules 449: Civ War Race Then find help translating them from English

Which information would help?

That's the early-game behavior. However, if you start in 1830 and play through the 1960s passenger slump to an event that boosts passengers back to something useful, then you'll see weirdness. My working theory is that the passenger recovery event affects all houses in the game at the same time, so it synchronizes many of their production dates.

That would be a neat trick. I've never used a decompiler myself, but I vaguely recall reading that some languages (like Java) decompile more easily than others. I don't even know what languages were used for RT2 (possibly C), just that some "game engine" was incorporated, so there might be multiple sources, and some portions might have been originally coded in assembly language. What decompiler tool would you recommend for an EXE of such unknown provenance (and age)?

If I understand your calculation, the "years" number is the total-cost optimal age when I should replace a loco type with itself (if I'm not up against some other constraint)?

The map itself is like any other -- Just copy the mp2 file into the "maps" folder of your RT2 installation (which you must find on your computer). To get the full experience, you can also upgrade your game. To do that, you'll want to first preserve the game files (RT2_PLAT.EXE and default2.lng) that you're about to replace. Preserve them by renaming -- It's customary to simply add an extension like "original" to each. With them out of the way, copy their modded replacements (something like RT2_PLAT.EXE.j10x2 and default2.lng.x3) into the RT2 installation folder where you found the originals you just renamed. Then rename the newly copied modded files to strip their extra extensions so they now look like the game's originals did before you renamed them.

What do you mean by "mods"?

I still stop by here daily, so please post if you have questions / comments. My US History map/scenario has over 500 events covering about 200 years, so you might not finish in one weekend

Well said! The feasibility of tunneling depends on map-scale. In Metra mode, a whole system should be possible underground. On a continental map, tunneling under even one square (six miles) would represent one of the longest tunnels in the US. If the game did have tunnels, then I'd allow only electric track and locomotives. While some steam and diesels can / do use tunnels, there are many places (e.g. under Manhattan and the Hudson) where heat and fumes caused so many problems that electrification came quickly. I'm not sure that max train length needs to be explicit. Loco strength vs cargo weight alone effectively limits length already.

Try these: editor3.txt EDITOR2.TXT EventsTutorial.zip

Is the AI buying industrial sites?

It's not an analogy -- It's a game mechanism. The stock market within the Railroad Tycoon II game really does move in response to earnings spikes.