Transport Tycoon Deluxe and OpenTTD: A Fan's Guide

Some games fade when the hardware they ran on disappears. Transport Tycoon Deluxe went the other way. Three decades after its release, a free open-source version of it is still getting new releases. Here's the story of Chris Sawyer's train-and-truck classic and of OpenTTD, the community project that keeps it running.

Who is Chris Sawyer?

Chris Sawyer's official site describes him as an independent game developer based in Scotland who specializes in construction, strategy and simulation games. He got into the industry in 1983, writing games in Z80 machine code for the Memotech MTX and then the Amstrad CPC home computers. From 1988 to 1993 he converted Amiga games to the PC, working on projects such as Virus, Campaign, Dino Dini's Goal and Frontier: Elite II.

His site says he has been developing his own original PC games since 1993. The first was Transport Tycoon.

Transport Tycoon and the Deluxe edition

MicroProse published Transport Tycoon in 1994. Sawyer's site sums up the premise: it's 1930, and you're dropped into a large world of small towns and raw-material resources with 100,000 in starting money. You build rail lines and roads, buy trains, trucks, buses, aircraft and ships, organize them to carry cargo and passengers, and earn money when the goods arrive.

Two follow-ups came in 1995, both from MicroProse:

• Transport Tycoon World Editor, an add-on that let you build your own landscapes. It also added a two-player game over a modem link and an alternative "Martian" graphics set.
• Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which Sawyer's site calls the ultimate version of the game. It came out at the end of 1995 with four game worlds, a scenario editor, new vehicles and "many enhanced features."

Sawyer went on to make RollerCoaster Tycoon (published by Hasbro Interactive in early 1999), RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 (2002) and Chris Sawyer's Locomotion (Atari, 2004), a long-awaited sequel to Transport Tycoon. His site's FAQ notes that RollerCoaster Tycoon was written almost entirely in x86 assembly language, a famously low-level way to program. In 2013, Transport Tycoon came to iPad, iPhone and Android in a version by 31X Ltd and Origin8.

What is OpenTTD?

OpenTTD's official site calls it an open-source simulation game based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It tries to copy the original as closely as possible while adding new features, and it's licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.0. Its Steam page adds a small fan favorite: OpenTTD "is not an abbreviation of anything."

According to the OpenTTD team, the first release came out in March 2004. The project's own wiki credits Swedish programmer Ludvig Strigeus with starting it by reverse-engineering the original game's code. Twenty years after the first release, the team released OpenTTD 14.0 in April 2024, wondering aloud whether it was their biggest release yet. As of late October 2026, the download page lists 15.3 (April 4, 2026) as the latest stable release, and the 16.0 betas are out for testing.

Do you need the original game?

No. OpenTTD needs a base graphics set to run, and its download page says one can be downloaded the first time you start the game. That free set is OpenGFX. Free sound (OpenSFX) and music (OpenMSX) sets are available through the in-game content download manager.

If you own Transport Tycoon Deluxe, you can use its original data files for graphics, sound and music instead. The OpenTTD team stresses that those files can't be downloaded from them. You have to own a copy. The team notes that Transport Tycoon Deluxe is sold alongside OpenTTD on Steam and GOG. OpenTTD itself is free, including on Steam.

What OpenTTD adds

OpenTTD's "About" page lists dozens of improvements over the 1995 game. Some of the biggest:

• Much bigger maps, up to 64 times the original size. The Steam page says up to 4,096 by 4,096 tiles.
• Stable multiplayer for up to 255 players in 15 companies, plus dedicated servers.
• Better pathfinding, so vehicles actually go where you send them.
• More signal types: presignals, semaphores and path-based signals.
• Larger, irregular stations that can be joined together, plus building on slopes and coastlines.
• Advanced and conditional orders, along with tools to clone, auto-replace and auto-update vehicles.
• Longer, higher bridges, and a reworked airport system with more types of airports and heliports.
• In-game downloads of AIs, scenarios, heightmaps and NewGRFs (community add-ons for graphics and gameplay).
• Translations into more than 50 languages.

The Steam page describes a game where you link industries and cities across four climates, complete production chains, and transfer cargo between vehicles in a network that uses every kind of transport. Cargo destinations are an optional setting.

Getting started: a newcomer's mindset

The original and OpenTTD reward patience. A hypothetical first company: pick two neighboring towns, connect them with a short bus or rail line, and let that income build up before you take on a long freight route across the map. As your network grows, OpenTTD's auto-replace and auto-update tools, which its About page lists among the enhancements over the original, help keep an aging fleet running.

Why it lasted

Sawyer's design pairs a simple goal (move people and goods, and get paid for it) with a lot of room to build. OpenTTD set out to keep that core while lifting the original's technical limits. Today you can play Transport Tycoon Deluxe much as it was in 1995, or play a version shaped by two decades of community work that still aims to stay close to the original.