NewGRF: Grassy Knolls and Green Parks

[Mchl]

Best thing (IMO) would be to use company coloured fences (just like those along rail tracks). This would probably require a patch apart from the grf though.

[electricmonk]

Would it be possible to create the ability to plant trees on purchased land? If we combine this with the patch to disable tree growth, some interesting parks could be created - especially if the trees and other eye-candy objects from Rollercoaster Tycoon were 'borrowed'.

AE.

[one billion daleks]

Mchl ... yes, fences would be quite good, plus you could turn them off via the toolbar if you wanted to.
electricmonk ... likewise trees, for creating parklands that wouldn't get bulldozed by the game engine. You would need trees that were colour-coded in some way though, to indicate company ownership.

Still, both these approaches would involve a patch, and can't be done via a GRF except maybe to replace the sign with a tree with coloured flowers. But then a lot of company trees together would tend to look too regimented and unrealistic.

As I mentioned in post #1, this is just a simple landscaping tool, and there isn't much scope for enhancing it unfortunately - oh well!

[LordAzamath]

One Billion Daleks.. I might have an idea for you how to bring back construction phase first sprite..
make the sign and terrain one sprite.. Although then you would lose selector on that sprite...

[FooBar]

That wouldn't work either. There's only one sign for all slopes...

[Gonozal_VIII]

Patch is here http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=36024

[hectobar]

This GRF is mainly intended for single-player games, and for players with a 'city-building' approach to the game, but it can also be used in multiplayer games. At the moment it only works in Temperate, but I am happy to modify it to include other climates if there is a demand. In the option where the "Purchase Land" sign is completely removed, I may in the future add some coloured-coded flowers to represent company ownership ... they'll just be a few pixels scattered about, made to look like daisies or something. And lastly, I might replace the gridline pixels, so that multiple tiles look more like a continuous expanse of grass and flowers ...

What this GRF does ...
This GRF increases the usefulness of the 'Purchase Land' button, by enabling it to function as a simple landscaping tool, as detailed under Benefits below. Eyecandy is also enhanced by removing all the brown tiles from the game. The "Purchase Land" sign can be left on, or switched off completely. If the sign is retained, it will be displayed on a more attractive green tile. But whether you choose to keep the sign switched on, or switched off, any land tile that you apply this button to will still become 'owned' by the player.

Benefits
This GRF enables you to 'open up' your cities so that you can see what's going on, without having to make the buildings transparent. If your view is obstructed by a few skyscrapers, just replace them with a nice green park! I particularly wanted to do this so I could see my motorways and intersections working within cities (see image below).

Similarly, you can add grass to the end of your airport runways, to create a more realistic approach-path for aircraft ... instead of them supposedly dodging skyscrapers as they come in to land!

And if you're fed up with the game building surplus bridges across rivers every couple of tiles, then just delete them and plant a patch of grass ... no more unwanted bridges on that spot! (Note though that on coastline tiles you'll lose the beach).

And those large distracting 'landslides' caused by AI players, when they're mucking about with the landscape, become far less noticeable, as they will now be green instead of brown.

Another thing you can do is control the shape of cityblocks, because you'll own the land ... so you can create more varied city layouts with green tiles.

Other ideas ... you could enhance your parks a little by adding a one-tile canal at the center of a 3x3 park, to repesent a pleasant water feature. Or you could perhaps individualise your cities a bit, by replacing say - all the pyramid-shaped skyscrapers - with a green tile, or a canal-tile.

Another possible use of this GRF is to control town growth. From what I've seen in the game, town growth proceeds one row / column at a time - it doesn't seem able to jump over two rows / columns of 'obstruction'. So if you were to place two parallel lines of this 'owned' grass along say, the western boundary of a city, it should halt any further expansion in that direction. I haven't actually tested this yet, but if it works it'll be useful for stopping buildings from appearing all over my intersections outside of cities!

Note: When you demolish something, or raise some land - you won't see any more brown tiles. These actions will now remain green. When new construction begins though, you'll still see the animations from brown building site through to completed building.

Minor side-effect
A very minor side-effect that I haven't managed to fix, is that the toolbar button for "Purchase Land" gets blanked if the sign is switched off - no image of the sign on the button anymore. As far as I can tell this is controlled by program code, so isn't something that can be addressed by a GRF.

Parameters
1 = no brown tiles, sign on.
None (default) = no brown tiles, sign off.

The attached image file shows an ingame screen with the 'standard' game, grassyknoll-signon, and grassyknoll-signoff.

hey thanks thats really usefull and i like it thumbs up 10/10 100% yay!!!

[richk67]

mega snip

hey thanks thats really usefull and i like it thumbs up 10/10 100% yay!!!

hectobar: please do not quote a lengthy post just to add one sentence. If you have to do a "me too" post, then please do a quote-snip as shown above.

[hectobar]

mega snip

snip

hectobar: please do not quote a lengthy post just to add one sentence. If you have to do a "me too" post, then please do a quote-snip as shown above.

thanks

[DaleStan]

You still fail at snipping properly.

[AlexW]

He does, however, succeed at digging up an old thread to thank a user who was left the forums...

[Ammler]

Sorry for bumping this thread up.

I like the this GRF and specially the idea. It seems the author has left a unfinished grf so I like to ask if someone else could continue this GRF. It should have support for other ground tiles, like arctic/tropic/snow

Greets
Ammler

[Zutty]

I had an idea on this topic. I don't think it could be done with a GRF, but I still think it would be worth it.

When land is purchased it remains as it is, trees and all, but a rail-style fence is drawn around the tile. If two tiles are adjacent the fences would link up such that the fence is only show at the boundary between owned and non-owned land, again like rail. Ideally the fences would also merge with rail fences too.

That way you could reserve large plots of land without it looking ugly, but still see what is owned and to whom. You could have a railway cutting with trees running all the way along its length, safe in the knowledge that any town authority or AI isn't going to pave through it and ruin the aesthetics.

[FooBar]

How's this?

Naamloos-2.png (9.21 KiB) Viewed 3460 times

Please note that this works only on level land and glitches heavily otherwise. Only supporting temperate OpenGFX at the moment, but other terrain types should be possible as well. The biggest problem with this kind of buy land replacement things is that one has exactly one sprite to work with.

On a 1 by 1 hill it looks like this

Naamloos-1.png (6.85 KiB) Viewed 3460 times

Anyways, for the ones interested, here it's: