Railroad Tycoon 2 on Windows 7

Tested: windows 7 32 bit, windows 7 64 bit, windows vista 32 bit, windows vista 64 bit

Railroad Tycoon 2 has a few known issues with running on Windows 7 especially 64bit. The most common problem with running Railroad Tycoon 2 on Windows 7 is a compatibility error when trying to run the setup from disk. It may look something like this:

"The program or feature ...\setup.exe cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows"

If you happen encounter this error the only known solution is pretty low tech and tedious:

Install the game on another computer with a 32bit operating system. This can be anything from Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows ME etc. The setup.exe is not compatible with 64 bit operating systems and must be run on a 32bit or lower operating system.
Copy installed files to your Windows 7 64bit machine.
Set your game executable to run in Windows XP compatibility. In your newly copied installation directory right click on your RT2_PLAT.EXE or RT2_TSC.EXE file (depending on which on you have) and select properties. Select the compatibility tab and run the program under Windows XP compatibility.
Insert the CD and start the game via the RT2_PLAT.EXE or RT2_TSC.EXE file. One of these two files should be available in the installation directory you copied over. It is important you use this exe and not one on the CD as that will fail.

Railroad Tycoon 2 maps

Railroad Tycoon 2 has had many custom scenarios created for it. In the efforts of making these scenarios easily available in a central, stable location I created the following GitHub project: RRT2Maps. This project contains many of the Railroad Tycoon 2 maps hosted on sites like The Terminal and Hawk and Badger. Huge thanks to the guys at the Terminal for providing support on this project.

To install the scenarios:

Download the project zip from here. If you’re familiar with git you can also clone the repo via:
git clone git@github.com:oseparovic/RRT2Maps.git
Install the map files. Look through the repo and find the .MAP/.MP2 files of the scenarios you’re interested in and copy paste them into Railroad Tycoon 2/Maps.

If you’re lazy like me and just want to add ALL the maps at once, I’ve created some scripts for you:

Windows:
1. Double click the zip_all_maps.bat file to create the all_maps.zip file
2. Extract the contents of the generated all_maps.zip file into Railroad Tycoon 2/Maps
Mac/Linux:
1. Open a terminal window and navigate to your RRT2Maps directory and run the following command:
  sh zip_all_maps.sh
2. Extract the contents of the generated all_maps.zip file into Railroad Tycoon 2/Maps

For full details see the GitHub page and have a look at the readme. If you have any questions about the repo, have trouble installing scenarios, or would like to contribute please post in the comments below!

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Railroad Tycoon 2 windowed mode

On newer operating systems (Windows 7) making Railroad Tycoon 2 run in windowed mode doesn’t work unless you follow a few extra steps:

Change your color quality to 16bit. Right click on you desktop, select properties and go to the settings tab. Here set your color quality to 16bit.
Change your screen resolution to larger than 1152 x 864. The game requires your screen resolution to be larger than 1152 x 864 in order for game to switch to windowed mode. To change your screen resolution right click on you desktop, select properties and go to the settings tab, then slide the resolution until it is larger than 1152 x 864.
Deselect fullscreen in the in-game settings. Start Railroad Tycoon 2 and start a new map or load an old save file (doesn’t matter which one). On the left, above the mini map and the save menu icons, click on the icon with the sliders (settings) and deselect full screen.

If you follow these steps you should get the game to switch to windowed mode. From what I’ve seen using -w or -windowed command line switches does not work, you must lower the color quality. If you have trouble getting this to work, or have found other solutions, especially for Windows 8, please post in the comments below!

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Railroad Tycoon 2 over Hamachi

Railroad Tycoon 2 can be played over Hamachi by following two basic steps will be required for this to work:

Install Hamachi and join a network with your friend(s). Follow the steps on the Hamachi setup page, on how to install Hamachi and create and join networks.
Join a game through TCP/IP. With all of your friends in the same Hamachi network and online, start up Railroad Tycoon. Click on multiplayer and then TCP/IP. If you’ve installed hamachi properly the IP in the “Your IP” box should be your Hamachi IP. Now one player should host, and if your firewall is configured correctly their game should appear for the other players. If not you can try entering their Hamachi IP or letting other players host.
Make sure TCP/UDP 7242 ports are open, and that Hamachi and Railroad Tycoon 2 are unblocked on your firewall. Hamachi can confuse your firewall because it is recognized as a connection to an outside network on some operating systems, especially Windows 7. Try adding Hamachi as an exception to your firewall settings, but if that still doesn’t work you can turn off firewall for Public Networks in Control Panel/Windows Firewall. MAKE SURE that this doesn’t open your system up to outside threats. Do this at your own risk!

There are a few related posts you can read on the subject:

If nothing here helped you play Railroad Tycoon 2 over Hamachi, please post the issue that you’re having and describe the steps you followed in as much detail as possible.

*NOTE* A few users have mentioned that they have issues joining games over Hamachi on Windows 7 and I have found the same to be true. If you know of any other solutions or possible steps to follow please post them!

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Railroad Tycoon 2 on Linux

Tested: mandriva 2008.1, ubuntu 10.10

Railroad Tycoon 2 can be run on linux using the Wine windows emulator. There are three basic steps to this:

Install the latest version of wine – Open your Ubuntu Software Center (Ubuntu), or Install & Remove Software window (KDE) search for wine, and install your desired package.
Install the game – If you are copying the game folder from a windows box you can skip this step, but if you are installing from an iso start by opening up a root terminal. After entering your password create a directory where you will be mounting the disc using:
mkdir name_of_your_dir
Then run:
mount -o loop your_disk.iso /name_of_your_dir
replacing , “name_of_your_dir” with the directory name you wish to use for your mount folder, and “your_disk.iso” for the name of your iso file. If this works you will see the disk contents in your mount folder. In this folder run wine setup.exe (make sure to set this file as executable by right clicking on it -> properties -> compatibility tab) and install as you would on a windows machine. For more info on mounting see http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-mount-iso-image-under-linux.html
Start the game – Navigate to your Railroad Tycoon II – Platinum directory and run RT2_PLAT.EXE (make sure to set this file as executable by right clicking on it -> properties -> compatibility tab). *Note* – do not change the resolution for the game as this will make it unplayable and require a reinstall. If this doesn’t work you can try running the game from terminal by navigating to your Railroad Tycoon II – Platinum directory directory and entering the command:
wine RT2_PLAT.EXE
For more info see: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=7039

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