Recently, it was discovered by @Blytung and myself that Locomotion runs at different speeds on different computers. With some experimentation, we could not find a solution to make the game run at a uniform speed on all platforms. As a result, we would like to propose the following change to the community:
The replacement of the Jan1 category with an in-game time category. The Jan1 category is the least-run category that I believe will only shave off a second or two from most Base category runs.
This new category will be igt (in-game-time) and will be determined by the year/month/day on the top of the challenge completed window. This will allow strategic pausing, fast-forwarding and saving/loading. These runs will be probably longer times, but will be well balanced by the new strategies that should emerge from them.
If you have any concerns with these proposed changes, please post below. Otherwise these changes will be made in ~2 weeks.
Unfortunately it does not seem to be possible to have in-game time in the days, nevermind months or years. As of right now, I have decided to remove Jan1% and add the AB%. I welcome other ideas or feedback for ways to get around this.
I've realized that the mobile version of the game is actually available on iOS as well as Android. As a result, I have renamed the AB% category to MB% (Mobile Base). The category remains the exact same; no fast-forwards, no pausing, but will allow submissions from iOS or Android versions of Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Lite.
Based on a request by AmigaXOfficial (The only one to submit multiple runs for the MB% category), the MB% category will be changed to a MFF% category. This will allow fast forwarding like the FF% category, but be for the android and iOS versions of Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Lite. If the mobile version is well run, then the MB% category could see a return in the future.
My concern is with the track prices on some of your scenarios. For example Stepping Stones where you are building an elevated railway in the sea across most of the map for a much lower price than on the land in other scenarios in many cases. You are paying $60 a track. This can't be done with the current GOG/Steam versions of the game (as far as I can see) and also the CD distributed version of the game for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP which I possess (and which plays perfectly on my Windows 11 laptop btw). The CD also has similar track pricing to the Steam version, as far as I can tell. But even so the cost of track across the water is $210 in Stepping Stones, a lot more than you are paying. I think its essential you state the exact version of the game you are using. Same applies for Dodecon and Santorini, where I have tried to replicate your speedruns, but the track pricing in my versions prevent me from getting anywhere close to achieving your speedruns. With respect to the current GOG version of the game I don't think Dodecan Diaries scenario can even by beaten (let alone do a credible speed run) given the track prices are double the Steam/CD version. Maybe with ships which would be slower. Happy to be proved wrong and I might be missing something but speedrun strategies should be repeatable (if not the time) by the community even if we don't achieve as good as a result, and it ought to be a level playing field, which it certainly doesn't seem to be at the moment. Tested with the original Atari version and OpenLoco and it makes no difference to track pricing as OpenLoco needs the original game files to work.
Hello hostwey! Glad to see a new user on here! Sorry for taking so long to see this; I didn't get a notification for whatever reason.
I totally agree that speedruns should be repeatable and I'm sorry that you have had this frustrating experience of not having the prices match up with the version that I'm playing. So please work with me here while I try to problem:
I use the latest Steam version of the game in my runs. I have chatted with Blytung (another competitive speedrunner) and they use the Steam version as well. According to the changelog in the game files, I use the Steam version 21.05 (2021-05-11). I suspect this is only a Steam version number though. If you run the game and click the game logo in the top left of the title screen, you can see the game version. Mine (the latest Steam version) is 4.02.039. Do you own the Steam version of the game? What is the version number of the version(s) that you play?
I have not tried the GOG version of the game and have not played the CD version in several years. I switched away from the CD version as it seemed to have serious issues running on Windows 7 and Windows 10 (At least for me). However, if you are really interested in running the game on one of those two versions of the game, let me know. I'll pull out an older computer to do a proper investigation and see if we need to add additional categories or do something else to make it fair for all competitors.
I would enjoy nothing more than seeing some additional competition up on the leaderboards, so I hope that we can work through this.
