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Railroad Tycoon 3

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railroad Tycoon 3 cover
Developers
PopTop Software
macOS (OS X) Beenox Shift
Publishers
Gathering of Developers
OS X MacSoft
2K Games
Re-release Sold Out Software
Release dates
Windows October 27, 2003
macOS (OS X) September 13, 2004
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view
Controls Point and select
Genres Building, Business
Vehicles Train
Series Railroad Tycoon
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Railroad Tycoon 3 on HowLongToBeat
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Railroad Tycoon 3 guide on StrategyWiki
Railroad Tycoon 3 on MobyGames
Railroad Tycoon 3 on Wikipedia
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Railroad Tycoon
Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon 1990
Railroad Tycoon II 1998
Railroad Tycoon 3 2003
Sid Meier's Railroads! 2006

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Railroad Tycoon 3 is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view building and business game in the Railroad Tycoon series.

General information

Hawk & Badger Railroad - A fansite and file database for the game
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
 SecuROM DRM disc check
Windows
Retail
DRM details are not known
macOS (OS X)
Gamesplanet logo.svg
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Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
Steam
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 Can only be purchased in USA, Canada, UK, EU countries except Croatia, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Vietnam
Windows
A free demo is available in several languages from GameFront.

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Coast to Coast Free download; distributed within the 1.04 patch
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

1.05 patch is the latest official version; requires the 1.04 patch.
The Sold Out Software release needs to be patched with the patch installer on the disc, otherwise the DRM will malfunction.
1.06 patch is the latest fan-made patch with bugfixes and extra engines; requires the 1.05 patch. It is possible to have multiple installations with different versions; see instructions.

Maps, mods and more

All of the official downloads and user created fixes for the game can be found here.

Game data

In-game general settings.
In-game general settings.
In-game miscellaneous settings.
In-game miscellaneous settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Data\Configuration[Note 1]
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/7610/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Saved Games[Note 1]
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/7610/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game general video settings.
In-game general video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
 
 The resolution dropdown menu does not show all possible options. Use F11 and F12 to cycle between all possible resolutions. Alternatively, use the widescreen fix.
Widescreen resolutions will stretch the interface and cause Vert- behavior.[citation needed]
Multi-monitor
 
Ultra-widescreen
 
4K Ultra HD
 
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Unplayable if forced - causes clicks to register at incorrect locations.[citation needed]
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Color blind mode
Under the Miscellaneous menu as Color Adjustment.

  • In-game advanced video settings (1/4).

  • In-game advanced video settings (2/4).

  • In-game advanced video settings (3/4).

  • In-game advanced video settings (4/4).

Input

In-game key map settings.
In-game key map settings.
In-game mouse settings.
In-game mouse settings.
In-game camera settings.
In-game camera settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Uses system cursor.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, Sound, Voice. Train arrival "Ching" volume found under Miscellaneous settings.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Affects cutscenes/campaign screen. In-game messages are text-only.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 3[1]
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Retail and Steam only.
German
Retail and Steam only.
Italian
Retail and Steam only.
Japanese
Retail only.
Polish
Retail only.
Russian
Retail only.
Spanish
Retail and Steam only.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
4 Versus
Online play
4 Versus
Use OpenSpy

Connection types

Type Native Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Ports

Protocol Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP 6073, 6500, 9000
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.

Issues fixed

Game crashes on startup

The game crashes when running Windows Vista and newer if using the default configuration. The only way to play the game is to disable the game's hardware T&L setting:
Disable Hardware T&L[2]
  1. Make sure that the game has the latest patch installed (v1.05).
  2. Download the Vista/Win 7/Win 8 Fix from here.
  3. Extract the contents of the ZIP file.
  4. Move the engine.cfg file to <path-to-game>\Data\Configuration.
  5. Confirm the file overwrite.
  6. Launch the game.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8.1
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer GameSpy

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98 ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU) 400 MHz Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB 256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.2 GB
Video card (GPU) 16 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible 		32 MB of VRAM
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.2.8
Processor (CPU) 400 MHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.2 GB
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/7610/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (7610) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References