Restricting the number of skyscrapers?

[Wheelbarrow]

Hello,

I am relatively new to this site (sort of), and I hope I've posted this on a right forum category.

Well basically, I have been playing Transport Tycoon (and Locomotion) since I was a little kid however I have not played OTTD or Locomotion for about four or five years now. Only until recently I decided to install OTTD again onto my new Macbook to bring back my childhood memories, and I have played a couple of scenarios lately.

I found something slightly annoying about OTTD, and have searched everywhere (Google, OTTD website and other modding sites) but I cannot seem to find a clear and direct answer to my, well, probably a very specific question. The question is that, is there any mods or town replacement packs that entirely restricts skyscrapers and medium-rise buildings from ever being built in the game?

I am a freak in building a realistic passenger services and intercity networks and these random skyscrapers popping up ruins the "atmosphere" of realistic towns and cities of its size. I am pretty sure there is a town replacement mod that actually replaces all skyscrapers with newGRF houses and low-rise buildings thus it wouldn't be possible to build skyscrapers at all - but I can't seem to find it.

EDIT: I am aware of the Swedish town replacement pack, and am using it at the moment, it does not have any skyscrapers but more of low and medium rise buildings. But unfortunately Swedish architecture and design isn't exactly my favourite, I am trying to find some town replacement packs that doesn't have skyscrapers or medium rise buildings at all uses some sort of British or American buildings.

I'd appreciate it a lot if you know some sources or answers to this question.

Thank you!
-Wheel

[Gremnon]

On the ingame content download you should be able to find several UK/British house newgrf's that I don't believe go into high-rises. iirc you can also set the parameters of the Total Town Replacement Set so that it won't use late-era buildings, which include skyscrapers, and the Japanset Buildings newgrf also has a skyscraper prohibition shrine that prevents it's ones from being built (Although, I've never actually used or tried to figure out how to use it, so that might not be completely helpful).

[kamnet]

Polish Building set, W2W (Wall to Wall), rearl Arcade Set doesn't include skyscrapers, either.

[Baldy's Boss]

The game would be the poorer for lacking skyscrapers.I do wish cities had more logical progressive development of their skylines,and I wish the Headquarters had more stages of growth so that larger companies could have really big buildings that outshone other skyscrapers in their cities.

[Wheelbarrow]

@Baldy's Boss, I can understand that. Skyscrapers are great if we have individual towns and cities across the scenario, but I have a different approach to the game - I tend to grow each cities into each other to create a metropolis with its own suburban passenger network. It doesn't look good at all if we have suburbs with skyscrapers everywhere instead of the city centre itself. So that's the reason why I don't like skyscrapers in this case.

@Kamnet, thank you! I'll have a look at that.

@Gremmon, I have the UK town replacement set, although as much as I love it but it does have a number of crazily tall Art Deco buildings which appear after 1950. I'll also try the Japanese set, thanks

EDIT (I didn't want to double comment): I can't seem to find any town replacement packs that actually does not have medium to high rise buildings at all. Is it easier to actually remove default med to high rise buildings from OTTD system files so there will be no way for towns to develop a such building because it doesn't exist so they will be forced to develop only houses and low rise buildings? This is something I would love to have.

[Sylf]

Modifying a newgrf isn't as simple as adding/removing some files within the newgrf set - you'll have to modify the code (if the source code is available), and recompiling it. It's not a rocket science, but there is some learning curve to get started.

That said, I think Japan Set 3's building set does close to what you want - Cities will get the sky scrapers, but non-cities don't by default. If you enable the sky scraper prohibition shrine (the shrine that Gremnon mentioned) via the grf's parameters, then you can control exactly which non-cities are allowed to build sky scrapers.

[Wheelbarrow]

@Slyf, I have just opened parameter editing page in the game, all I can see is Parameters: 0. Have I missed something?

http://www.tt-forums.net/search.php?key ... mit=Search - I've also searched for the prohibition you both mentioned here as well on Google, I can't find anything?

I'm sorry but I'm really slow with this thing for the game!

Thank you,
-Wheel

[Gremnon]

You may need to update your Japanset Buildings grf to the latest. The content downloader should have a button for marking all updates, which will handle that. If that's not the case (or it doesn't report any update) you may need to update your OpenTTD version to one supported by Japanset 3.

[Alberth]

"0 parameters" just means OpenTTD does not know what parameters the grf has. Look in the readme file of the newgrf (or it's website, or so) for a discussion of the parameters, and follow that, adding as many parameters as you need.

[Wheelbarrow]

@Alberth, thank you! For a while I was wondering what to do with the parameters.

@Gremnon, I haven't downloaded the Japanese building set just yet but when I do, I'll follow that.

After a while, I thought that my question may be too specific so I decided to broaden it a little bit more. I've just googled 'Restrict the town growth ottd', and I've found so many solutions that does not require mods. I am currently trying out this setting (check attachment). Hopefully this setting may work, maybe it will completely prevent towns to grow/develop?

Town Growth Speed: None.
Proportion of towns that will become cities: 1 in 255
Towns allowed to build roads: Off

Thoughts?

-Wheel

[Sylf]

japanset3buildings.png (12.33 KiB) Viewed 2297 times

Make sure you're using Japane Set 3 version of Buildings. Then you'll see the parameters as shown.

As for the game settings you provided:
Proportion of towns that will become cities: I find this pretty irrelevant. The towns don't grow to become the OpenTTD definition of "city" over time. The tows that are defined as cities are identical to towns, except they start out being bigger than towns, and they grow faster. If you grow towns big enough, they'll look just like cities. Japan Set 3 buildings is the only set I know that make distinct difference between towns and cities.
Town growth speed: if set to none, then the city won't build any new buildings. Ever. The only way the tows will build anything new is when you fund new buildings yourself.
Towns allowed to build roads: If this is off, and if town growth speed is something other than none, then the towns will continue to build/replace buildings where it can, but won't expand any bigger than where there are roads. So, you'll be control of how big the road will be.
Of course, you'll have to play with the settings and see if you like it at all.

[Wheelbarrow]

@Sylf, it worked! The scenario with Japanese prohibition shrine was just okay but it still worked, thank you!

I've been looking around for "ploppable individual buildings" for scenario, and can't seem to find the download link. I remember seeing one thread about it and they had a specific name for this kind of mod but I forgot, do you know one?

-Wheel

[Baldy's Boss]

@Baldy's Boss, I can understand that. Skyscrapers are great if we have individual towns and cities across the scenario, but I have a different approach to the game - I tend to grow each cities into each other to create a metropolis with its own suburban passenger network. It doesn't look good at all if we have suburbs with skyscrapers everywhere instead of the city centre itself. So that's the reason why I don't like skyscrapers in this case.

But with NO skyscrapers you have no city center at all.Just suburban sprawl wasting space.

[Wheelbarrow]

@Baldy, even though I am a town planning student at a uni and I don't agree with urban sprawl... but for games like Transport Tycoon, it can be fun to build cities with excessive suburban sprawl. It just gives off a sense of realism I reckon, hey?

EDIT: I now know a way to make sure that city centre is more dense and built up than the fringes, suburbs and outskirts so I would still have a city centre anyway. Plus my city centres normally have a couple of main stations with all of the public transport services connecting to the main centre.