Wasteland
Please keep in mind while reading, that this set is a work in progress! Although pretty much everything is now implemented as intended, nothing is written in stone and may change in the future!
Introduction
The world has inevitably collapsed upon itself.
The once verdant fields and bustling cities of modern society lie smoldering in ruins after nuclear war ripped across the planet. Only the most fortunate have survived, only to emerge in a world of total ruin. Supplies are scarce, and survivors are forced to wander the wasteland aimlessly, hoping to find refuge somewhere amongst the rubble.
The remains of pre-war cities are an obvious magnet for inhabitation, but without a reliable stream of supplies, staying in one place for very long is difficult. Because of this, people are willing to pay whatever they can to get the supplies they desperately need while avoiding the dangers of the wasteland; and entrepreneurs quickly seize the opportunity. Simple caravans and trading posts are set up almost immediately, providing basic services and supplies to transient wastelanders. But it isn't enough. For society to rebuild, a reliable network of supplies must be built.
This is where you come in. As a person of vision, you imagine a world where everything is as it used to be, and the only way to get there is by connecting the resources to the people. So you embark on a mission of rebuilding the wasteland to its former glory, by transporting the necessary cargoes to get civilization back on track. By salvaging the parts and pieces of the pre-war infrastructure, you set off to build the greatest transportation network in the new world...
Basic Overview
The game is intended to be started in the year 2077 in the temperate climate (although for now it will work on any settings). When you first start a new game, the whole map is desolated. The goal of this NewGRF is to transport food, water, and building supplies to towns in order for them to grow and rebuild, ultimately returning the game to its "normal" state. I will lay out the specific mechanics of that a bit later.
Industries work similar to that of FIRS; primary industries always output cargo, but will produce more when certain cargoes are delivered to them (think like engineering/farm supplies). This allows a player to always deliver cargo, but rewards those who take the extra steps to "do things right". Most industry chains end up producing cargoes necessary for town growth, with one "optional" chain included for something extra to do. This currently includes 12 industries and 13 cargoes. More details here.
Towns, however, work very differently from the standard game. There are four stages of buildings: destroyed buildings, makeshift shacks, renewed buildings, and self-sustained buildings. On map creation only the first type of building is present, while the other types require specific cargoes to be delivered nearby in order to appear. Each stage of buildings accepts the cargoes necessary for buildings of the next stage to develop (these cargoes are outlined later).
Initially, towns only supply Wastelanders which can be transported to various industries for a production boost. Only once you've managed to deliver the required supplies to allow creation of renewed buildings will regular Passengers start appearing. After enough renewed buildings are built in a town, self-sustained buildings will automatically begin appearing, at which point the town should no longer require you to deliver any of the town growth cargoes. This is the point where towns will behave as they normally do in an OpenTTD game, and passenger transportation becomes the primary way of growing towns.
The entire "goal" of Wasteland is to deliver cargoes to towns in order to rebuild them and return the world to its "normal" state. You can find more details on towns here.
Due to some limitations of OpenTTD and what NewGRFs are allowed to do, some things just aren't possible, such as making the trees and grass return to normal, or make stations or other objects change their appearance as the world gets better. The best approximation of this would be having things change at fixed dates over time, however since world development can vary so much depending on map size and other factors, there is no reliable time scale with which the world will advance. Thus, without any way of querying the overall game-state, such progress-dependant changes are currently not possible.
One of the ways such global progress can be tracked is through the use of a GameScript, which is something I have seriously considered making for Wasteland, but have not yet started on. Such a GameScript could not only track overall progress, but crucially it could also utilize the Story Book feature to provide some context to the game world and perhaps even critical gameplay tips to players for how to grow towns without the need for reading this guide. However, even a GameScript cannot (currently) be used to alter things like graphics, nor can NewGRFs query the GS to make decisions, so even such a GameScript as I want to make will only add supplemental information to the game world rather than change it directly.
Click below to find more specific info
Towns || Industries || Vehicles