WmDOT v15 (and MetaLibrary v11) for OpenTTD released

After over a dozen years, I’m releasing an update to WmDOT (to v15). This update brings lots of bug fixers¹, improved ship selection², and introduces basic streetcar operations³ (although off by default). I’m also releasing an update to my related MetaLibrary (to v11) at the same time.

WmDOT is an AI for OpenTTD, a game in the genre of classic tycoon games. It was a project I started back in 2010, but hasn’t seen many updates since 2013. When I originally stated this, my plan was to build a competitive AI, but the task — particularly rail pathfinding — proved to be more involved that I expected, and so WmDOT ended up as a sort of “highway” department to build road between towns. I had added ship building previously to provide a bit of income, and also to start building the code needed for actually managing money-making routes. Every so often, I still think about releasing a competitive AI (tentatively named the “Edmonton, Yukon & Pacific”, after a “real” railway that went effectively nowhere), but the nut I haven’t cracked yet remains (bidirectional) railroad pathfinding.

I hadn’t played OpenTTD in a while when I started this update, so I was delighted to see the games has continued to improve! One of the interesting directions is it seems that the player base (or at least those that create the trainsets) are in favour of maintaining (relatively) low speed cargo networks (capped at ~160 km/h) separate from higher speed “express” networks (carrying passengers, mail, and valuables). Personally, my play style was to build one single network, tieing all the industries (and towns) together and then slowly upgrading the interchanges to support increading networks speeds. The monorail and maglev systems also seems slightly hokey to certain players; maybe (someday) I’ll have to realease a trainset that revolves around this “always a faster network” gameplay.

As for MetaLibrary, it is a collection support functions for WmDOT, and so many of the above mentioned updates are actual through updates to MetaLibrary code. The documentation for MetaLibrary has also been updated.

Another fun tidbit with this release was that the original was mostly written while I was on a working holidays of sorts in a French coastal town; this update was written while I was again back in that same town on vacation. Maybe I need to visit France more often? :)