About Simutrans

Simutrans started as a hobby project of Hansjörg Malthaner in 1997. Since that time, the game grew from the simple program of one man, to a great project that has own life and community of supporters and contributors. Hansjörg is still the head developer of the project, but great part of the work for the game is now done by a large international community of volunteers who try to improve the game every day. It is open to everyone who likes to contribute their ideas and time to make the game better. You can join right now. The story on this page is very summarized. You can you can look at the following: A short History of Simutrans Development - full version from game author.

I would like to say here a very big "THANK YOU VERY MUCH" to everyone, who has helped to get the game this far! Countless thousands (!) of work hours were spent to achieve this. Without this kind of voluntary help, this game would not have been ever possible... Please do so too, if you like the game!

In Simutrans you can build the railroad networks where you always dreamed of with platforms, discharging quays, level crossings, signals and much more. Transport the passengers from one city to another with the intercity short distance train or make use of High Speed Trains to earn big money by connecting cities from longer distances. You can choose from a large amount of trains including steam, diesel and electric engines and units. Each with a different properties.

Make your own bus company, transport people throughout the city and help make cities grow by laying out bus routes. Make your cities really come alive with trucks driving around with all kinds of goods. Supply the bookstore with new books and watch out, the Car Seller has almost run out of new cars! Be sure that the furniture factory has enough wood. Oops, the materials wholesaler has just sold his last planks, be quick buy a new truck to strengthen out that route!

Connect all kind of industries with each other, the Power Plant needs coal to run. The Refinery gets its supplies from either an Oilfield or an Oilrig, and produces plastics to build new cars to provide the Car Seller and gasoline that is sold in gas stations to make those cars run. More of these industry chains are built in this incredible simulation. Discover them all, download Simutrans game now.

Simutrans now exists in two distinct versions - 128x128 and 64x64. Those numbers describe the size in pixels of the tile which is used to store the game graphics - but it is not only the graphics, that differs between the versions. Simutrans 64x64 is the older and primary version that was in development basically from the beginning of the game. However in mid 2002 it was found, that 64x64 pixel tiles are not enough to deliver cutting edge graphics on large monitors of new computers - everything looked small and space for artists was very limited. So the development of version that uses 128x128 pixel tiles started.

In the beginning 128x128 was only up scaled copy of 64x64 set. But as the time continued, many helpers improved existing images and added large number of new ones - new vehicles, new buildings, new industries etc. Combined with new types of goods and new pricing system, 128x128 set evolved from just a bigger version of 64x64 to a brand new version of the game. It now offers graphics that is trying to be close to photorealistic and gaming world full of various different objects. (Plain object count of 128x128 is now almost 3 times higher than the one in 64x64.) But it has some drawback too - base package is 9 times larger than the one for 64x64, memory consumption is 6 times larger, and you need to use screen sizes over 1024x768, which require a lot more computing power (500MHz is minimum, over 1GHz is recommended). Simutrans 128x128 tile set development is coordinated by Tomáš Kubeš. Download Simutrans game now!

Therefore the 64x64 set is not dead, it is living and it is being maintained and updated to bring Simutrans to those players that do not have that powerful computer or just do not wish to play 128x128 version from other reasons (some prefer graphic style of 64x64 because it is more coherent). Compared to 128x128 set, 64x64 is really compact and can be played on hardware as old as Pentium 1, 166MHz with 32MB RAM - such computer can be here for 7 years already! Because of this, Simutrans is very unique game - almost no other game can properly adapt to so many hardware combinations.

Currently there exist also other image sets for Simutrans, bringing really large variety to the game. They are mostly based on the original 64x64 image set. We have Japanese version, for those who love Far East and its architecture, we have a German version for those who love architecture and vehicles known from central Europe and we have a winter scenario (on the image) for those who just love winter and snowy covered plains and roofs.