Realistic town layout patch (planned)

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aberro
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Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

Realistic town layout is concentrated on building new realistic look to cities. I hate to see large round blobs of cities on map, and I hate when quickly growing cities constantly rebuilding it's houses, so visually smaller cities have larger population just because many houses in growing city is rebuilding. Besides, currently cities absolutely have no any road planning, so they doesn't only looks like blobs, they are just blob of houses with chaotic road network.
In this patch I'll try to fix that introducing something like city planning.
Planned features:
* Main four-lane roads from one end of the town to another.
* Unequal growth of city sides - some regions will grow faster, especially ones along main roads, some slower.
* Empty space inside towns - parks, maybe with artificial tiny lakes.
* Penalties of rivers, rails, mountains and industries - cities will avoid to grow across rivers and rails and regions in sloppy terrain or near industry will grow much slower.
* City planning - some regions of a city will have mostly living houses, some - business houses, some residential districts will have mostly large houses, some - small town houses.
* No constantly rebuilding houses - the nearer to city centre is, the less likely that a building will be rebuild.
* One-sided roads - sometimes some roads that doesn't dead-end will be rebuilded to one-sided roads.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

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Last edited by aberro on 21 Apr 2014 10:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by planetmaker »

Please mind that this is an English forum: so please keep it English.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by Pyoro »

I'm not sure about those four-line roads (perhaps only in "big cities"?), but everything else sounds interesting.
* Penalties of rivers, rails, mountains and industries - cities will avoid to grow across rivers and rails and regions in sloppy terrain or near industry will grow much slower.
I think you could debate on whether they really should grow slower around industry. I'd personally probably do the opposite.
And dunno if it's possible, but stations with high rating should probably also draw city growth around them.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

Pyoro wrote: I think you could debate on whether they really should grow slower around industry. I'd personally probably do the opposite.
And dunno if it's possible, but stations with high rating should probably also draw city growth around them.
Would you like to live near metallurgic complex? Or coal power plant? Or would you like to feel vibration from trains passing just in front of your windows?
In most real cities, industrial zones are growing slowly, because they aren't preferable by people.

Four-lane roads actually is planned to be in big cities. Actually, all main roads will start as two-laned and later with growth they should expand to be four-laned, so big city may have, say, two four-laned roads and tree-four two-laned main roads.
Last edited by aberro on 21 Apr 2014 08:27, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

planetmaker wrote:Please mind that this is an English forum: so please keep it English.
I know, but, as I said, it's only my work notes. Later I'll probably remove them, but for now I need it to keep my thoughts. Besides, I've placed it in comment, not in post.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by Pyoro »

aberro wrote:Would you like to live near metallurgic complex? Or coal power plant? Or would you like to feel vibration from trains passing just in front of your windows?
In most real cities, industrial zones are growing slowly, because they aren't preferable by people.
It's a bit difficult to generalize there imo. I'd say until maybe the 70s the big topics where "urbanization" around industry and infrastructure (people lived where they worked), nowadays with better public transportation, living standards and, well, more cars around the trends are (generally) towards suburbanization and industry outside cities.
Four-lane roads actually is planned to be in big cities. Actually, all main roads will start as two-laned and later with growth they should expand to be four-laned, so big city may have, say, two four-laned roads and tree-four two-laned main roads.
No complaints then, although I imagine this will be difficult to pull off properly (needs a lot of city razing and such ;) ).
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by beeurd »

aberro wrote:
Pyoro wrote: I think you could debate on whether they really should grow slower around industry. I'd personally probably do the opposite.
And dunno if it's possible, but stations with high rating should probably also draw city growth around them.
Would you like to live near metallurgic complex? Or coal power plant? Or would you like to feel vibration from trains passing just in front of your windows?
In most real cities, industrial zones are growing slowly, because they aren't preferable by people.


Perhaps this is true for modern times, but if it is possible to let industrial areas and locations close to transport systems to grow quicker in the early 20th century and before, when transport is slower and purple needed to live close to their workplace, that may be more realistic. :)

As an alternative to 4-lane roads through a city, how about a ring road around the outside of it? Maybe a chance for one or the other to be constructed, with only the largest cities having both.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

Pyoro wrote:No complaints then, although I imagine this will be difficult to pull off properly (needs a lot of city razing and such ;) ).
Nothing so difficult - main roads are mostly very straight with one, maximum three turns, because they are guide through town and they aims to keep expanding in same direction. So only buildings in one side should be demolished. Besides, with realistic layout towns will grow in breadth, having much more town-like small houses than current cities, so demolishing some of them will not strike as much to population.
beeurd wrote:As an alternative to 4-lane roads through a city, how about a ring road around the outside of it? Maybe a chance for one or the other to be constructed, with only the largest cities having both.
No, TTD doesn't offering curves) And squares of main roads around city will looks quite unnatural and ugly, such cities will look too templated, besides, such combined logic will be unnecessary work for me.
beeurd wrote:Perhaps this is true for modern times, but if it is possible to let industrial areas and locations close to transport systems to grow quicker in the early 20th century and before, when transport is slower and purple needed to live close to their workplace, that may be more realistic. :)
Locations with transport systems aren't necessary ones with rails passing nearby) Rail lanes and mountains is obvious penalty. But, well, maybe I'll try to make districts with high effectiveness transportation system prioritized.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by Eddi »

aberro wrote:
Pyoro wrote: I think you could debate on whether they really should grow slower around industry. I'd personally probably do the opposite.
And dunno if it's possible, but stations with high rating should probably also draw city growth around them.
Would you like to live near metallurgic complex? Or coal power plant?
what about banks, water towers, hotels etc? they are also industries, some of them NewGRF supplied, so you can't even make special exceptions.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by Eddi »

aberro wrote:
planetmaker wrote:Please mind that this is an English forum: so please keep it English.
I know, but, as I said, it's only my work notes. Later I'll probably remove them, but for now I need it to keep my thoughts. Besides, I've placed it in comment, not in post.
you can't edit comments after a while. only the main post of the topic can be changed.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

Okay, okay, whatever... What a deal, one comment...
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

Eddi wrote:what about banks, water towers, hotels etc? they are also industries, some of them NewGRF supplied, so you can't even make special exceptions.
Ok, industries won't affect growth of districts.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by michael blunck »

A more "realistic town layout" could also be done by a house newGRF, at least to some degree. AFAIR, I´ve been working on a building set which configured town layout largely by use of CB 148 (watched cargo accepted) in connection with other house CBs.

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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

michael blunck wrote:A more "realistic town layout" could also be done by a house newGRF, at least to some degree. AFAIR, I´ve been working on a building set which configured town layout largely by use of CB 148 (watched cargo accepted) in connection with other house CBs.
Could you please tell me more about this? What is CB, why 148, how it could affect layout? Because I don't know any newgrf that could somehow modify town layout. And, as far as I can see it in existing source code, there is no way to do that. And if there is, I should consider such newgrf to avoid bugs.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by lukasz1985 »

You might want also consider my suggestion about cities growth:


http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... ty+modules
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by planetmaker »

aberro wrote:
michael blunck wrote:A more "realistic town layout" could also be done by a house newGRF, at least to some degree. AFAIR, I´ve been working on a building set which configured town layout largely by use of CB 148 (watched cargo accepted) in connection with other house CBs.
Could you please tell me more about this? What is CB, why 148, how it could affect layout? Because I don't know any newgrf that could somehow modify town layout. And, as far as I can see it in existing source code, there is no way to do that. And if there is, I should consider such newgrf to avoid bugs.
A NewGRF indeed cannot decide on town layout, that's partial and ill-informed "knowledge" about game mechanics. A NewGRF can only choose to deny building a house in certain places where the game actually explicitly asks for a suitable house. Thus a NewGRF can somewhat sabotage the game mechanics. But that doesn't mean that it decides where roads will be placed, thus cannot decide on the layout itself.

EDIT: See src/town_cmd.cpp:1392 and the preceeding functions on the exact mechanics.
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by michael blunck »

aberro wrote:
mb wrote: A more "realistic town layout" could also be done by a house newGRF, at least to some degree. [...]
Could you please tell me more about this? What is CB, why 148, how it could affect layout? Because I don't know any newgrf that could somehow modify town layout. And, as far as I can see it in existing source code, there is no way to do that. And if there is, I should consider such newgrf to avoid bugs.
From your list above "road building" is just one of the items of "town layout", all others dealing with allocation of buildings from different classes to certain regions of a town. Obviously, decisions on "road building" cannot be dealt with by a newGRF, but nearly all of the other items (and probably more) can be handled by a town set:

- some regions will grow faster
- provide empty space inside towns
- growing will avoid (or prefer) vicinity of rivers, rails, etc
- regions will favour certain classes of buildings (living, commerce, industrial, ..)
- limitations on rebuilding houses, depending on class or region
- etc

There´s already the TaI - Town and Industry set by PikkaBird which you might take a look into to get a first impression of what can be done already by a newGRF, without having to patch the game.

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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by Wahazar »

Insane crazy long bridges to nowhere and parallel to the coast - maybe it should be patched first, in term of "realistic town layout"?
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Re: Realistic town layout patch (planned)

Post by aberro »

lukasz1985, definitely, no. City growth is based on one-building-per-growth, besides, it's hard to account every case when building such blocks, like slopes and so on. My patch intended only to slightly organize city planning, making it more real-like on large scale, especially for huge cities, but still not too organized.

planetmaker, Ok, I've seen the code. Well, I guess I cannot avoid calling callback of houses without breaking existing buildings logic, so such newgrf could result in ugly half-empty city in worst case, but still I'm intended to make it as patch, because patch have much more flexibility in doing anything than newgrf. And it's faster.

McZapkie, yes, bridges and slopes will have penalty in city planning. Actually I've planned that bridges could be build only for main roads, and main roads will try to avoid to expand in directions with obstacles. Maybe later I will expand code to allow small 3-4 tiles bridges for other roads. So cities will expand mostly on one side of rivers, rail lains and lakes, and only as they will grow larger, they will build bridges and expand to other side.
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