If the temperature outside is not enough reason to stay at home playing OpenTTD, here is another one: The next beta of OpenTTD 1.2!

While it contains some features, you might not notice them unless you are a developer of NewGRF, NoAI or NoGo add-ons. However, beta 4 also includes some imporant bug fixes for desyncs and NoAI/NoGo scripts locking up OpenTTD.

Please help testing the beta, so we can quickly get a new stable! You can find the download, changelog and readme in the usual place. Bugs are reported best to our bug tracker.

Also note that the deadline for submissions to the titlegame competiton is approaching quickly.

Have fun playing OpenTTD 1.2.0-beta4! (even if you have to wear gloves)

It's already time for the third beta release. We present you with OpenTTD 1.2.0-beta3. Several bugs were fixed in NewGRF handling, including a desync.

The game scripts were also further developed, and Zuu made a nice tutorial that needs testing (downloadable from the BaNaNaS online content service) for the benefit of our new players.

You can find the new release at the download page, where you can also find a link to the changelog. Give the new release a good workout, and report any bugs that you find at our bug tracker.

If you hurry, you can still enter the titlegame competition (deadline is 14th February 2012, 00:00:00 UTC).

Enjoy!

New year and with OpenTTD 1.2.0-beta2 we present you the second testing release of the 1.2 series. Like usual for beta releases we have quite a range of bug fixes, some of which fix very nasty bugs in the network code, others which avoid crashes in certain situations.

But as it's a beta release we still have new features. Among those you can now use the game scripts to ask questions to the companies and check the NewGRF parameters also when playing.

Have fun with this new release, give it a proper swirl and test. As usual bugs go to our bug tracker, a full changelog is also available and downloads can be found on our main page.

Finally let me remind you of the titlegame competition. Playing and thus creating a nice titlegame might also be a good test ;-)

Enjoy!

As you might have noticed we have not had a fundraiser these last couple of years. The reason for this is that the donations have increased significantly, especially since the release of the 1.0 series. This means that we have enough donations to pay for our server, which runs the compile farm and hosts the website, for the coming 30 months (paid in advance yearly contract that ends in June). We thank you for all of these donations.

Thus we have some extra money to spend. We have thought about using the money to buy mobile phones for some developers to get a mobile version of OpenTTD started, but none of the developers are interested in that. Also buying Apple hardware to revamp the Mac OS X port has no benefit when no developer, besides planetmaker who already owns a Mac, is interested in maintaining that port.

We finally decided to donate some money to two "projects" that we think have been and still are very important to OpenTTD. First there is the forum graciously hosted by Owen Rudge. The forum hosts the most used first line of interactive support, as well as threads for many of the NewGRFs, AIs, suggestions and patches developed over time. Secondly there is the devzone of #openttdcoop. The devzone hosts the development of OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX which are vital for bringing OpenTTD to the big public. It furthermore hosts the development of GRFCodec, NFORenum and NML which are needed for the development of OpenGFX as well as many other NewGRFs.

Although we could start offering these services ourselves, it would mean putting all eggs into one basket of the OpenTTD servers, making it a big single point of failure. Additionally, both the forum and the devzone are vital parts of the OpenTTD community and provide for a lot more than just support for the official OpenTTD versions and rely on donations just as OpenTTD does. Taking over the "official" tasks would only result in duplication of servers and infrastructure, leading to wasted donations. As such, we think it to be prudent to support and thank them for their efforts by donating £200 each to help cover a share of their hosting costs.

We feel this is warranted as many people donating to OpenTTD have no idea that the forums or the development of OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX are hosted by third parties and may not realize their donation does not support them, even if they intended otherwise.