OpenTTD Online (Transport Tycoon in the Browser)

What it is

Transport Tycoon Deluxe was Chris Sawyer’s 1995 business game for MicroProse: you run a transport company, linking towns and industries with trains, buses, lorries, ships and aircraft. OpenTTD is the community’s open-source remake. It plays like the original and has grown far past it, with bigger maps, better signals, AI rivals, multiplayer and thousands of add-ons. The OpenTTD team releases it for Windows, macOS and Linux.

OpenTTD Online is a fan build of OpenTTD compiled to WebAssembly by Owen Gerke (Overgrown Studio), with the source on GitHub under the GPL v2. It is unofficial: the README says it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the OpenTTD team. The same build is also listed on itch.io.

What you get

• The full game: new games on random maps, scenarios, all four climates and the usual company, finance and vehicle windows.
• Free base sets: on first start the game shows “Missing base graphics” and downloads the OpenGFX graphics (about 11 MB) from OpenTTD’s own content server. Sounds come from OpenSFX, and the page has a jukebox with OpenMSX music. None of these are the original Transport Tycoon files.
• Online content: download AIs, vehicle sets, graphics and scenarios from OpenTTD’s official add-on service, BaNaNaS.
• Save import and export, so you can move a game between this page and the desktop version.
• An iOS beta through TestFlight, separate from the browser version.

First steps

1. Press Play above (or open the site), wait for the title screen, then start a New Game. Pausing right away gives you time to look around.
2. Scroll the map by dragging with the right mouse button and zoom with the wheel.
3. A first bus line: put two bus stops in one town, build a road depot, buy a bus and give it orders to go from one stop to the other.
4. A first train: find a coal mine near a power station, build a station touching each, lay track between them with a depot, then buy an engine and coal wagons. Order it to full load at the mine and unload at the power station.
5. Take the bank loan early; good routes pay it back quickly.

The OpenTTD wiki has the full manual and tutorial.

Is it safe and legal?

• Legal: OpenTTD, this web build, OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX are all free software under the GPL v2. Nothing from the commercial Transport Tycoon Deluxe is included.
• Unofficial: built by a fan, not by the OpenTTD team, Chris Sawyer or MicroProse’s successors.
• Embedding: the author offers a code generator so other sites can embed the game, which is why it plays on this page.
• Ads: the OpenTTD Online site loads Google’s ad script. You need no account.

Not working?

• Text shows as empty boxes, with a red “font is missing some of the characters” warning: the game picked a translation from your browser language that the bundled fonts can’t draw. This happened to us with a non-English browser language. Open Game Options and set the language to English.
• Lost saves: browser storage can be cleared, and private windows forget everything. Export important saves to a file.
• Stuck on “Missing base graphics”: that screen is the first-start download of about 11 MB, with a byte counter. Give it a few minutes on a slow connection and keep the tab open; reload only if the counter stops moving.
• Map generation fails on a Mac: one player reported this on a MacBook Air. Try another browser, or use the free desktop version from openttd.org.
• It runs slowly on a huge map: start with a smaller map size; the browser build can be slower than the desktop game.

Unofficial. This page is written by an independent directory. It is not made by, endorsed by or affiliated with OpenTTD team (original Transport Tycoon Deluxe by Chris Sawyer / MicroProse) or Owen Gerke (Overgrown Studio) (OpenTTD Online (Transport Tycoon in the Browser)'s author). We do not host any files, and we never link to game files, ROMs or ISOs.