RCT Discussion / How to install OpenRCT?

What is OpenRCT

It's a thing that enhances your game with all kinds of new functions, like built in trainer functions (now called 'cheats', rather than the traditional 'hacks', multiplayer, and bug fixes. In the future, it will become possible to have new track pieces and ride types in the game, as well as having no more scenery limit among other things. There are only few drawbacks: peep AI is different, sometimes with some ugly results. Most trainer functions are adopted by OpenRCT, but there are still a few (mostly niche) hacks OpenRCT can't perform.

What do I need

To work, OpenRCT needs to use the games files. For this, you need to have RCT2 installed on your computer. As far as I know it doesn't matter what version you have, as long as it comes with all the default game files. This shouldn't be a problem.

What do I download

You can download OpenRCT on their official website. It comes in two versions: 'develop' and 'release'. The release versions come out every few weeks or months, and it's largely bug free. The develop releases come out several times a day (?). It's constantly updated with small modifications and bug fixes, usually unnoticable. The release version is recommended by the OpenRCT team.

BUT WAIT

There's also a 'launcher', which is a little program that you use to start the game, that automatically checks for updates and updates your game, which only takes a few seconds! This way your game is never outdated. This is what you really want. The neat thing is that the launcher also lets you chose if you want to use the latest release or develop version. Sometimes a new develop version is broken, and the launcher makes it easy to switch back to a stable version. Download it here; scroll down and pick the version you need for your computer.

tl;dr

Get the launcher and it will make your life easy.

I'm just improvising this tutorial (if you can even call it that) so please suggest improvements. Consider my post a wikipedia style open source tutorial.