HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

In case anyone was wondering how long they had to wait before they could load up Tropico and start dictating, I added a box at the bottom left of the screen indicating days left until Tropico is released (assuming a March 15, 2001 release).

Sort of depressing really.

I have been very busy making changes and additions.

I added the MINER to the Characters page.

I also added four new galleries in Screenshots. That's 19 new screenshots with thumbnails.

Enjoy!

I added Queenie the Cow to the Characters page.

Below is a screenshot indicating that a cow has a political agenda. I am wondering if a cow will count towards the 500 or so inhabitants of an island. I suspect that each character in the game will have education, intelligence, ambition, leadership and skills as well. Perhaps these characteristics will change as the game progresses. For example, by building a college, will a characters' education and intelligence increase? What will cause ambition and leadership to improve? If you listened to the videos in the download section, you may know that each building will have different characteristics as well. This is not verified info, but it appears that you will be able to change wages, price of exports, etc., of your industries. (In the expert industrial mode of Railroad Tycoon II, the more items you deliver to a city, the less the demand and the less money you receive for the item. I expect there will be a similar industrial model in Tropico.)

I have been able to find some new information on Tropico, but I have been too busy playing Railroad Tycoon II to post it. (If you haven't played RT2, you really should. It is one of the best strategy games I have played.)

I put three videos in Downloads section. Two are short interviews with Tropico's creator Phil Steinmeyer. The third is probably taken at the E3 computer games expo. Nothing groundbreaking, but at least I have something to download!

Here is some infomation I found over at Railroad Express (formerly Theme-world.net). It was taken from information given by PopTop employee Franz Felsl on a chat:

The game has slipped to February 2001 "We wanted to make Christmas but the game wouldn't be ready. Unfortunate but rather have it right"

Tropico will support Windows 2000.

Disasters can include weather, rebellion, accidents and foreign intervention. You don't really deal with other countries besides the USA and USSR.

It will be an open ended game, but there will also be a scenarios

You can be tossed out of power by a rebellion or military coup. It's based on your popularity. If your people hate you they will rebel. IF your MILITARY hates you they will stage a coup.

There will be a map editor

Feeding your people is a land use issue. The land will have generated usefulness qualities for certain crops. If it is suited for a cash crop (Coffee or Tobacco) then you'll get good production for that crop but not necessarily for say wheat, which can be eaten OR shipped for money.

Tropico uses a new generation of the S3D engine (S3D is Railroad Tycoon II's graphic engine). The trucks, planes and ships will use full 3D sprites. Mind you, this is not a Transport game though it does come into play. It's a political builder and social sim.

Tropico will support 800x600 to 1600x1280 and potentially 640x480.

Time is rather ambiguous as it's not true time. However it's supposed to be 1950-1970 or so.

Computer Games magazine will have a large story on Tropico this month.We'll be showing them everything that we've got so far. The Computer Games Magazine article cover much of it and the rest we'll be able to show someday soon

No playable demo coming in next few months

Tropico works like this. You're given an environment with a small population of thinking, feeling and motivated people. You introduce things into their environment to get them to act.

Tropico has Gems, Gold, Silver, Iron and Tin for natural minerals. These can be used to ship out of country for cash in native state or can be brought to a forge for refining and then shipped for more money or a Jewelry factory for more money.

I don't know if we'll be optimizing for AMD 3DNOW

Not a ton of changes to report.

Gameplex posted recently posted a Tropico preview. Unfortionately, the text is in German. If you speak German, head over to Gameplex and check it out.

I have also added an interview with Phil Steinmeyer, creator of Tropico. The interview, published by Checkout.com, is one of the best I've seen as far as providing palpable information on the game.

I also added the athlete to my Characters page.

You may have noticed I changed my titlebar. It isn't my best work, but it is better than what I had. Today, I posted three new characters in the character pages.

I also have some EXCLUSIVE information from David Deen, one of the employees at PopTop Software.

Q: Since Tropico uses the Railroad Tycoon 2 engine, will there be scenarios?

A: There will be scenarios, but no campaign. There also wont be as many stand-alone scenarios as there were in RT2. However, in their place, we are making the random-scenario generator much more robust.

Q: Will there be a map editor?

A:Yes indeedy, the map editor will still be in place. It will work differently than the one in RT2 to some extent, though it is still being created, so the extent of the changes are not certain yet.

Q: Also, I haven't read anything about multiplayer.

A: With good reason. =) We decided early in the project that Tropico would not have multiplayer, again in order to make the single-player aspect more robust.

Here is some information from Franz Felsl, one of the employees at PopTop Software.   It was originally posted HERE on Sept. 22, 2000.

I'm not sure where the URL is for the club, maybe I'm losing my mind?

Tropico is still very much on time for gold master in February, so in stores by March. There will LIKELY be a DEMO unless Phil changes his mind? As for an open Beta it's not likely as we don't really have the staff to handle that kind of paperwork effectively, sorry. I'm not sure about a movie? I'll bring that up with Phil next Monday. I can say that the character artwork is actually going to be done slightly ahead of predictions and building art is starting to pick up, so we're hoping for a little extra time (God willing) for balance and game play issues. Tropico is finally at a stage where one can play the basic builder game when using place holder art and such. The political smarts of the game are not fully implemented as politics effects the people uniquely and thus requires a great deal of coding. The edict animations are looking good and we have probably 65% of those in now too. We're fixing a lighting bug within the renders of the building which is going to require a lot of rerendering of the buildings, but they'll look significantly better.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. I hope that helps?

~Franz

I added five characters to the characters. Also some information on the characters. New screenshots will be added soon, as well as a forum.

WELCOME TO TROPICO PARADISE!!

I never really thought that I would be creating a fan site for a computer game. However, I have never really anticipated the release of a game as much as I am anticipating Tropico. Having spent countless hours playing PopTop's brilliant Railroad Tycoon II, I know that Tropico will be an excellent game.

This website is in the early stages of development. I haven't tested it with Netscape Navigator yet, but it looks okay using Explorer. Feel free to email me suggestions of what you would like to see implemented into this website. It should grow as the release date (March 15, 2001) grows closer.

Kendahl J.