All Climates World

[richk67]

Hi. This is a sneak peak at something I am experimenting with. Ive always wanted to create a decent USA map with all 3 climates - so we can have nice arctic bits in the Rockies, desert in Arizona, tropical in Florida & Mississippi, temperate in New York state.

Using the 8bpp new land graphics, Zephyris has kindly put together a graphics set with the 3 major climates in. Using this, Ive rewritten the terrain drawing routines to allow maps with all 3 climates on at the same time. By default, I have it that snow appears in temperate 1 tile higher than in arctic. Still not sure whether to extend that into a tropical snow zone (Kilmanjaro). Also, you get completely shore shorelines by default.

The algorithm that places the climate zones has tropic as the outermost zone, then a temperate zone, then arctic. This prevents the oddity of arctic and tropic sitting next to each other.

There are further problems with this; the selected landscape option currently decides what your houses, road edges, rail edges, etc have as the base land. Sorting out the roads & rail wont be too bad. The houses is more of an issue, as all bits are currently taken in the landscape bitmap for houses. (Shows it was short-sighted to go to only m7, and not add m8 as well.)

Also note that at the moment, any .grf that requires a particular climate to work wont work. This is more a proof of concept experiment, and I know there are sizeable issues ahead.

I'd like to gauge reaction to this. Is it worth continuing? Arguably, it could make the other terrains redundant - or in effect single terrain selections within the range of all-climates.

I will only be playing with this for a while. I do not intend to release it as a patch until I am very very happy I have resolved almost all the major technical issues.

Anyone with ideas, and comments, greatly appreciated. Positive and negative - but if negative, please explain a good reason and offer an alternative that can provide all climates.

For once, newgrf is NOT the answer

[richk67]

placeholder for releases - if I do them!

[Trond]

Sounds very interesting!

[leno4]

Yeah...... ...sure does

[Rubidium]

The houses is more of an issue, as all bits are currently taken in the landscape bitmap for houses. (Shows it was short-sighted to go to only m7, and not add m8 as well.)

But then why "only" m8, why not m8 till m65536? or m8 to m16777216? Because we might need more memory in the future.

Anyhow... *if* you're a little inventive you can free at least 2 bits from the houses, which should be more than enough for an all climates world.

[richk67]

I only need 1 bit, so please tell.

re m7+: at the time m7 was needed, there was a debate on whether to add some extra spare space. Decision then (which at the time I thought was short sighted), was to only add "what you need for now". Really forward thinking.

[athanasios]

Thanks.
Seems transition is a bit abrupt in small maps. I would limit its usage in large maps (> 1024) and eventually add new "climates" and features to make transition more smooth.

Now why did you omit toyland?
No I am joking!

[Zephyris]

Seems transition is a bit abrupt in small maps.

If there is enough interest in this patch I will gladly make a graphics set to provide smoother transitions between climates by tweaking arctic/tropical colours and adding transition tiles...

[athanasios]

Go Ahead!!!

[el koeno]

Looks pretty cool, keep it up!

I can see this opening up all sorts of cool possibilities. But it might be best to get it working first.

[jacke]

This is very interesting, I would definitely play with it! I really hope you'll finish a patch!
Any plans how to handle the default industries and cargos? Whould all of them (well, except those from toyland) be available?

[richk67]

My idea is that all the standard industries would be available using an all-climate industries .grf, but I wouldnt know where to start coding it. Set restrictions for vehicle sets would need to be disabled to allow single climate .grfs in the multi-climate environment.

[zypa]

This is really interesting!
I'd really love to play in an all climates world.

I play temperate only...
The DB Trainset does not work in the desert and subarctic looks so "brown"...

If there'd be such a patch I'd always play in a multi-climate world.

[Daz]

Would this replace toyland?

[athanasios]

No!

[richk67]

Indeed no. At the moment it breaks toyland (and arguably breaks the other climates too). The intention is that it is a generation switch, and only available when one of the three classic climates is selected. The fourth climate would be unaffected.

However - that is for GENERATION only. In the scenario editor, I will let you paint in an area in toyland. Its then your own silly fault if you want to model Disneyworld.

PS. Nothing will happen on this patch for at least a week. I am going away on holiday to soak up some sunshine.

[cej123]

I've accually thought of this a wile ago. This would be a nice feature, if i made a map of the world, i could make it look realistic and have the different climates.

[Darkn1ght]

Love what u doing here i thought to myself that this would of been thought about before

Anyways i think 3 climates in 1 is more realistic and it going to be a massive hit

But i do have a few suggestion if you haven't thought about yet:

*Try and have all grass tiles the one colour type (e.g\temperate) ,cause snow & temperate tiles have been done witch leaves you to worry about deserts (if you know what i mean)

*With the trees i like how you were able to keep the tree with appropriate climate but i believe trees with snow should go with the snow and cactus should be in the deserts, the main thing that need to be improved is on the grass tiles that there should only one certain climate type of trees on the grass tiles or artic + temperate trees mixed together i think that would look cool to.

*What i love to see happen to Towns:

1. Have artic (Snow) towns located only in snow areas + (keep them the same style if town expand of the snow)
2. Have tropical (Deserts) towns located only in desert areas +( keep them the same style if town expand of the deserts)
3. Have temperate town located everywhere besides Desert, Snow areas

*Industries, Yes.

My idea is that all the standard industries would be available using an all-climate industries .grf,

But will the transition clash (meaning the ground tiles [e.g\ desert industry on snow climate and the industry having deserts tiles in the middle of the climate] ).

*Road , Railway Track, Canels , Airports etc, transition (e.g\ deserts around railway tracks & no fences for deserts, same for sonw )

*All Vechiles, Trains+carriages, Planes, Boats should be available from all climates + all cargo's if u plan to have all industry's

If you can add some of these suggestion i'll worship you lol

That my suggestion.

But i appropriate you going to all this work so far plus any work after this coment

Keep us posted if you do any changes
p.s im new here

Love what you doing

[jixor]

Great idea.

[Acerbus]

Wow, nice! This will certainly make for some interesting gameplay.

Is it also possible to change climates vertically? For example, 3 tiles from sea level, tropic transforms into temperate, 6 tiles from sea level, temperate turns into sub-arctic, 3 tiles on, sub-arctic turns into rock (like some of the screenshots SAC posted a long time ago), and finally 3 tiles from that, rock turns into snow.