Getting familiar with playing on a server was supposed to be the sixth and final lesson. However, it’s better to review—and I hope you will complete—your homework in a multiplayer game. Recorded gameplay videos would make this process slightly easier, but the best option is when I can see everything myself.

So, this fifth lesson will be about online play.

During the fourth week, I already showed you my server for completing homework, and some students have already created their own companies there.
But remember — any server can disappear. The game has autosaves, but you should also manually save your progress from time to time.

Starting Monday, I will restart this server and create a NEW, larger map specifically for the fifth lesson — so that there will be enough towns, resources, and land for everyone.

The sixth and final lesson of this season will be about trains. However, the topic of trains is so deep that it could fill an entire new season. There we will cover multiple types of signals for managing traffic flow, railway junctions, different station designs… all of that will be in the next season.

In my opinion, trains surpass all other types of transport — which is exactly why I saved them for last.

So I plan to submit an application for the next season — with the motto: “Teach a friend to play OpenTTD” 😁
And the main topics will be trains and the different types of multiplayer games in OpenTTD.

For those who haven’t read my article about multiplayer yet — here it is:SteemTTD Express

Multiplayer

So, let’s launch the game and enter multiplayer mode.

Next, in the Filter field, enter “steemit” to speed up the search.

In the server name, there is often a short description of the modes it uses — we will talk about all of that in future lessons of the next season (I hope!).

Right now, I will explain the most important indicators. At the end of each server name, you will see circles of three colors:

🟡(yellow) – The game version matches your version, but the server requires additional content (mods and expansions, known here as NewGRF). In theory, you can play if you download this additional content.

🟢(green) – The server version EXACTLY matches your game version — you can join and play.

🔴(red) – The server version does not match. For example, we are using the latest stable version 14.1, but version 15-beta is already available. Some servers run on that version, and some on older versions.

As you can see, some servers are marked with a lock icon — these are password-protected servers, like ours. 😄

So, type “steem” in the search field, and the server list will be filtered. Select the server with week5, enter your Steemit username in the name field, and join the server.

To prevent outsiders from joining us, I protect the server with a password.

In this window, you can see the server name, and then an icon with a pencil where you can still change your name.

You can also create a new company by clicking the person-with-plus icon.

From this point on, make sure to join your own company each time.

1 – Here you can see the name of your company and the players who have joined it.
2 – Don’t forget to immediately protect your game with a password, even a very simple one like 123 or 1111, since it’s only a temporary password for a short game session.

This lesson is quite short, and the assignment is simple — most of the work needs to be done directly on the server, and only a small part needs to be described in your homework report.

Howework

So, focus on the game, not the report 😁 — on building your own company and making a profit.

To complete the assignment, join my server and create a company. Use your Steemit username as your player name. The earlier you start, the more developed your company will be by the end of the week.

Since you are no longer playing alone:

The game will continue even without you online. This is good when your company is profitable, but bad if it’s running at a loss. I set it up so that if no players are online, the server automatically pauses. You can still observe everything in spectator mode.

Don’t block others from building; don’t place your roads in front of theirs. I made the map quite large, so don’t take over everything. Mark your city with your headquarters and develop mainly within your own city.

The assignment consists of two parts: a blog post on Steemit — 4 points, and completing tasks on the server — 6 points.

🚂Task 1✈️

The blog post can be about anything related to OpenTTD. Describe your vision of the game; maybe you discovered something new and interesting that wasn’t covered in my lessons.

🚂Task 2✈️

The tasks should be completed on the server. You may describe them in your article, or not — it’s up to you. Everything on the server is visible, so I can see it myself. You can just point out certain difficulties or features of your company. This assignment is meant as a summary of what you’ve learned in these four lessons. Of course, one of the main indicators of any business is profit. So there will also be a competition — who earns the most money — but that’s not the main point.

• Create your own company on the server
• Organize road transport
• Organize ship transport
• Organize air transport
• Demonstrate active use of transfers
• Refit vehicles to carry a different type of cargo

The more you do in your company — the better; the higher the profit — the better.

If someone new joins the challenge based on your recommendation — bonus points😁.

✨Rules for Participation

🚌 Title of your work: SLC S27 Week5 - Let's Play OpenTTD Multiplayer Competition

🚌 You can publish your work in any language, in any community, or simply in your own blog. Add the link to your work below as a comment.

🚌 To help me quickly find, review, and evaluate your work, leave the link in the comment under this text, and in your work, use the tag #openttd-w5, your country tag, and your club status tag

🚌 Plagiarism and the use of AI are prohibited.

🚌 Participants must be verified and active users of the platform.

🚌All images used must belong to the author or be free of copyright. (Don’t forget to credit the source.)

🚌 Participants must not use any bot services for voting or engage in vote buying.

🚌 Recommend your 4 friends to participate.

🚌 Submission Period: From Monday (27 Oct 2025), to Sunday (2 Nov 2025).

🚌 Promote on social networks like X.

Rewards:

✈️ SC01/SC02 will evaluate posts across all participating teaching teams. Upvotes are not guaranteed for all articles.

✈️ Your work will be reviewed, commented on, and evaluated by me. Six best works will be selected. Participants who won last week will have a lower chance of being selected again, while those who did not win previously will have a higher chance if their work is well executed.

Good luck 🍀 on your task!