wallyweb wrote:DanMack's challenge here would be finding the right combination for sharing IDs between engines, something that is done at the moment to very good effect, but another twenty years worth?
That would be my challenge too, and we've already
worked it out, back to 1850 at least (although I think Dan may have drawn a
grasshopper too, which we may include for the real masochists.
). TTD by default is abundant with rail and road vehicle IDs, because it has multiple generations of vehicles for every cargo, whereas new sets can have one vehicle that carries many cargos. The only IDs that are problematically limited are ships.
How often does "1921" appear in the code? If its just a simple matter of running a "search and replace" before compilation, then maybe it is very do-able.
Patchman is on record as saying that longer format dates would be "tedious, rather than difficult" to code.
My vote is for 1900.
If earlier dates are made possible, they'll probably be in the same long format as OTTD; thus, the earliest possible start date will be 1 Jan, 1 BC.