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In 2003, Pop Top released Railroad Tycoon 3. Amid much hoopla, touting their new 3D Graphics, RRT3 sold briskly. After 5 years of playing RRT2, fans were ready for the new genre.
Admittedly, the 3D world of this new version was quite appealing to me. Camera movement was greatly improved and the animation of the factories, maintenance facilities, clouds, weather, and water was pretty neat to watch.
There were also some vast improvements in the Editor. No longer did you have to understand scripting to set up events. Just point and click. Of course you still have to understand how events work, but at least you don't have to try and figure out how to write it, although the new 'point & click' scheme did limit event scripting somewhat.
This version also included a Map Builder, a feature that gives the opportunity to grab a small patch of land mass anywhere in the world, and create a map with close to real world terrain. Mountains and valleys are easily created.
Unfortunately, it would seem the creation of this 3D world gave rise to sacrificing some of the features that were available in the earlier version, that or the creators just decided to leave them out for some reason. No longer could you drop a shipment off at a station to be later picked up by another train (later added back in with the release of the 'UnOfficial' 1.06 patch). Hauling freight that was not profitable was also an option sadly missed. On top of all that, this version shipped with a gaggle of bugs.
Granted, Pop Top issued a few patches in an attempt to correct these glitches, and were successful for the most part, but it seems the developers just decided to abandoned their posts and RRT3 still has a few bugs that may never get worked out Just as Railroad Tycoon II, the game contains a campaign with several scenarios, presented by continent - North America, Europe and the World. The campaign interface is an interior of a railway museum, with the voice of the elderly eccentric museum guide from RT2.
Game's interface is in full 3D, with free camera movement. The square grid is no longer rigid, as it was in Railroad Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon 2 - rail and structures can now be rotated 360 degrees.The track building function is not very realistic, as tracks are sometimes built at angles almost at 90 degrees to each other.
The economic model has been reworked. In previous games, goods could only be picked up at a station, and revenue depended on the distance between stations. Carloads in RT3 slowly move across the map (representing road and water transport) along the gradient of a scalar field representing price, where supply and demand sites function as sources and sinks. Revenue depends on the price difference between pick-up and delivery. This has several effects; raw materials can find their way to industries and get processed, without any trains involved, and a train does not need to pick up goods at the source.
Other changes include: each carload of mail, passengers and troops now has a destination; car setup can be automated, so that trains always pick up the cars that yield the most revenue; warehouse buildings also appear in the game, completing the commodity market the same way as ports do; trains can pass each other on a single track (as in RT1 on lowest difficulty level); no need for signal towers; service and maintenance depots, as well as station improvements (post offices, restaurants etc.), are placed individually on the map; players can buy industries, and also build processing industries wherever they like; processing industries have limited capacity, but they can be upgraded.The game interface is in full 3D, with free camera movement. The square grid is no longer rigid, as it was in Railroad Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon 2 - rail and structures can now be rotated 360 degrees.The track building function is not very realistic, as tracks are sometimes built at angles almost at 90 degrees to each other.The economic model has been reworked. In previous games, goods could only be picked up at a station, and revenue depended on the distance between stations. Carloads in RT3 slowly move across the map (representing road and water transport) along the gradient of a scalar field representing price, where supply and demand sites function as sources and sinks. Revenue depends on the price difference between pick-up and delivery.
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