North American City Set v0.1c [2 Jan 2008] - ** Bug Fix **

[Aegir]

That's one problem that plagued me while I was developing NABS, once the Chicago School buildings come out, they absolutely swamp towns, and populations as a result go berserk.

Not sure entirely how I combated it (or if I even did...), but you should still have access to the old code for it.

[Toni Babelony]

Hm, I actually like the town boom. Gives another excuse to build a profitable commuter circle-line around the city as trams are too slow and have a too low capacity

[XeryusTC]

I must say that I like it too, this way I get to transport more passengers which otherwise would take ages to be available as the town would need to grow quite A LOT. It is _so_ much better for profits.

[OzTrans]

... population explosion ...

I've used population creation values pretty much similiar to TTD 'original' buildings, but it could be the number and concentration of NACity office blocks compared to a TTD 'original' game that is much higher. Then some TTD 'original' city tiles, like parks, fountains, that have zero population may be lacking in a NACity city.

I actually like the town boom ...

May be we can accommodate both camps, but by the time we add more building types the population numbers will settle back a bit anyway.

I've just looked at one of my cities, Winnipeg had a population of 6,900 in 1939 prior to the NACity building boom. In 1945 the population was 13,650 but the city didn't (couldn't) grow much in size; the reason for the increase is NACity. But turning NACity off gives me a population of 17,600, even more !!. It's probably not the population creation but number of passengers created that is the issue too. Also for the year of the game, the NACity buildings have replaced TTD buildings that are a touch too modern.

We shall find a more balanced solution ...

[wallyweb]

Before revising any of the growth factors in the NACities buildings, I recommend waiting until a goodly number of the early buildings and modern buildings have been added to the set. As mentioned above, these will probably affect the numbers some more. In the meanwhile, for TTDPatch users (Maybe OTTD too but I can't say for sure), there exists an extensive range of Town Growth Rate switches in the configuration file which can be adjusted to your respective tastes.

[Ar4i]

At the third screenshot I see lots of modern buildings that don't really belong to 1944, thats + the fact there are no 0 population buildings is most probable source of the high population you have (17,578) on your third screenshot. I suppose that you allow too high population office buildings too early in the game to appear and maybe too much of them do appear.
My cities for sure have grown more than 2 times for just 2-3 years after activating the set, also passengers have grown maybe even more. I have lots of save games and might be able to get some screens from a real game (I actually have cities that cannot spread anymore so we can see the real impact of population).

[Ar4i]

Here you go:
Town 1 before activation of US SET

Town 1 before activation of US SET

Town1 BEFORE US SET1972.png (164.26 KiB) Viewed 741 times

Town 1, few years after activation of the US SET

Town 1, few years after activation of the US SET

Town1 AFTER US SET 1976.png (213.87 KiB) Viewed 767 times

Note that the population has increased by a factor of 2.1! While the max passangers have increased by an even grater factor 2.50! Meanwhile the max mail has actually gone down.

To make the test more real, I've disabled the OpenTTD building replacement GRF and run the game with the original buildings from the starting 1972 to the resulting 1976 and here is the result:

Town 1 with original buildings 1976

Town1 original buildings 1976.png (166.7 KiB) Viewed 675 times

[Ar4i]

So finally the result from the test would show a town growth of ~42% above the normal growth (7800 compared to 5487), but the real disbalance seems to come from the very different amount of passangers produced by the town 2409 compared to 685, which is the wooping 3 times increase! Also note that the mail dropped to less than half the original buildings.

Summary

test compare.png (88.99 KiB) Viewed 6814 times

[George]

Bug report

[Ameecher]

Bug report

You of all people should know what accompanies a bug report, George.

[OzTrans]

Before revising any of the growth factors in the NACities buildings, I recommend waiting until a goodly number of the early buildings and modern buildings have been added to the set. ...

That is my intention.

At the third screenshot I see lots of modern buildings that don't really belong to 1944, ...

Yes, they are too modern. This is not a problem, because you are not supposed to see those buildings anyway and the data for NACity buildings is not taken from them.

... passenger, mail creation ...

This will be looked at too; we are probably to high with them as well.

... bug report ...

Yes, it is a bug, but I won't be able to do too much about it.

Why is it so obvious ? The sprites for the below snow sprites are cut badly and not the same as the above snow ones.

The real problems is this :
1) the block of flats is a multi tile building with one half built on a sloped tile.
2) for snowiness each half is on a different level; i.e. one half gets snow earlier.

To solve it, var 43 for houses should return a value based on the north tile for all tiles.

Of course, I could use landscape information to determine above/below snow level, but I'm reluctant to do that for performance reasons.

[George]

Bug report

You of all people should know what accompanies a bug report, George.

There is enough information to catch the bug here, imho. At least I understood it as soon as I decoded the grf.

To solve it, var 43 for houses should return a value based on the north tile for all tiles.

I think you can use var 62 instead. With this var you can have the same effect (just test 0F and F0 for southern tiles). For example, ECS town centres would look realy strange partly snowed. But they get snowed all tiles at once with var 60 (var 62 for houses)

[Aegir]

The partially snowy thing on multiple tile buildings is a fixable bug. Ask DanMacK, he's seen it plenty of times when I was initially developing NABS and he tested it. It can happen with construction stages as well for a similar reason.

Wish I could tell you exactly what causes it, as it frustrated the hell out of me for weeks on end, but it's been ages since I've looked at buildings NFO code.

[OzTrans]

... bug with multi tile buildings ...

Yes, I do know what causes it and how to fix it ...

The 2 tiles are considered NOT to be on the same level (altitude) for determination of snowiness, because one of them is on a sloped tile. As a result the north tile is considered below snow and the south tile above snow and the relevant sprites are shown accordingly. That's the mix up, but it is made worse due to the fact that the snowy and normal sprites are cut differently.

To fix that, I can use var 62 for houses to check for above snow, but because 60+ variables are computed on the fly (may be many times per second) I like to avoid using these variables, unless it is during construction or player initiated events. The game is already slow enough we don't want to add to it.

Because of all that, I'd like to see var 43 for houses to be the same for all tiles of a building.

[DaleStan]

To fix that, I can use var 62 for houses to check for above snow, but because 60+ variables are computed on the fly

And where does it say that 40+x variables aren't? (For houses, not vehicles.)

[andythenorth]

Is this town road layout likely to be a bug, intended behaviour, or a side-effect of some parameter settings?

NA_City.png (350.44 KiB) Viewed 5583 times

I'm using NA City Set v0.1c with OTTD r14013.
I have town layout set to '2x2 grid', and 'Remove absurd road elements' set to true.

Game time is 1903, I've been playing for about 70 years. I installed NA City set about 30 years ago, following the instructions to add it to an existing savegame.

cheers,

Andy

[Roujin]

Is there another town nearby that might have grown into this one with a 2x2 grid, but one tile offset compared to the grid of this town?

[andythenorth]

Is there another town nearby that might have grown into this one with a 2x2 grid, but one tile offset compared to the grid of this town?

Sadly not. Here's a screenshot from 6 years earlier than the previous one I posted.
Most of the towns on the map are filling the centre with roads, and spreading out quickly with very thinly populated suburbs.

Interestingly, Phoenix has lost 5,000 people from it's population between 1897-1903. Similarly, Seattle went from 4,900 to 2,000 with a similar pattern of buildings. (The large numbers accrued before I turned on NA City set).

It would seem reasonable that this is due to a combination of starting very early, and turning on the NA City grf set when the game is already underway. Plausible explanation?

cheers,

Andy

NA_City_2.png (362.4 KiB) Viewed 5362 times

[einsteinyh]

Does anybody know where may I find this GRF to download?
Thanks.

[wallyweb]

Does anybody know where may I find this GRF to download?
Thanks.

Unless it is on Bananas, it is no longer available for distribution. There was an earlier version (North American Building Set) coded by Aegir but I think even that one is no longer available.