Simutrans 25th Anniversary #8: An interview with himeshi, OTRP creator

Welcome to the last of interviews of the Simutrans Anniversary before the final event! Our special guest today has the honour of being the only other successful developer who has made a Simutrans fork: Simutrans OTRP. Let's explore the boundaries of Simutrans with the help of his creator, Himeshi!

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First of all, introduce yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What did you study? Where are you working or have worked on the past?

I am Himeshi. Himeshi is a handle which I use in the Japanese community. THLeaderH is my handle on the International Simutrans Forum and other international simutrans communities. I have lived in Tokyo for my whole life except for its very beginning.

I am a software engineer at a Japanese IT company, which provides a chat app for smartphones. My job is developing the company's chat app for iOS with Swift programming language, and the chat app is widely used in Japan and some east Asian countries. I am in the second year of my career since I graduated from the school in March of last year.

I studied computer science and electrical engineering in the University of Tokyo, and its graduate school. I have a master's degree, but do not have a doctor's degree. I enjoyed studying in the university, but was not so good at research. I studied electrical tactile display during my master's period, but it ended with submitting only a few papers to small conferences without paper review, and did not participate in any on-site academic meeting since the COVID era started during my master course.

When not programming in your daily job or in Simutrans, what do you like to do?

Aside from development, I love playing Simutrans. I usually play my local map with OTRP, and sometimes play a network game with my friends in the Japanese Simutrans community. Chatting and voice calling on Discord is my daily habit. There are a bunch of discord servers which are derived from the Japanese Simutrans community, and I am in multiple of them. The relationship is a kind of friendship, rather than the simutrans community members, and we talk about so many kinds of topics there.

Although the frequency has decreased recently due to COVID, I often go to the home party in the house of one of the core community members. I don't remember how many times I went there. At least, so many times since a few years ago. We spend a precious time there with beers and Japanese Sake. The house owner (We call him "Kumi-cho") could not drink alcohol at first, but recently, he started enjoying the Sake we brought with us.

And recently I bought a new Toyota car with a manual gearbox, so I frequently go driving in my holidays. The driving is often with my family and the friends in the Simutrans community.

Indeed, the Japanese Simutrans community seems very united, and it is without doubt the largest and most active community. Which is surprising, since traditionally the largest community has been the German one (being the early developers from Germany). Why do you think the Japanese community has become the most active?

It is a tough question. Personally, I think the offline meeting culture and Japanese characteristics to prefer crafting are the factors of Japanese simutrans community prosperity. However, it is only one aspect of the community. To understand how the community became as today, I have to summarize the history of the Japanese simutrans community.

Fortunately, three years ago, Peruri summarized the