Scenario Editor - New Building Tools to deal with the Enormous Map Sizes

[Ben_Robbins_]

Hello All!

With the height levels and the enormous map sizes the game is at a point that I really dreamt of back in the day and I am immeasurable grateful to all who have got it to where it is, and the size it is; so thank you! It has actually reached the promised land! However with the enormous map sizes and enormous mountains, comes an enormous task of creating high quality scenarios. Most of the tools in there are 'hand crafting tools' rather than 'god like' tools, with a few exceptions such as the heightmap loading ability which is the life saver here. Tools like this get a scenario a long way, however the sheer scale of the map has now left a lot of the scenario editing tools a little bit overwhelmed. I spent a good portion of yesterday carving out valleys and laying rivers to discover that I have barely left a freckle on the 2,500km2 landscape. I'm therefore starting this discussion on a brain storm of which scenario features I believe are required to make stunning maps stunningly fast. It's quick to ask, and possibly a large task to produce some of these features however this is the direct feedback from hours of scenario editing recently and in the past, and hopefully the ideas are of value. If features already exist I haven't found them in game, in wiki or in forum so do show me.

Landscaping

[1] Increase the maximum size of the 'raise' and 'lower' tools by ten times
[2] An option for the 'raise' or 'lower' and 'level' tool to effect everything on the same level which is directly connected. I.e. a large valley level is selected and clicked, the valley all raises by 1.
[3] Make an option for the 'level' tool to only effect everything within x height difference of itself. I.e. dragging through a valley will get the floor to level without flattening mountains
[4] Having the 'raise' and 'lower' tool have an amount it raises or lowers on each click (e.g. 1-50)
[5] Smooth out steps for world or for selected area.
[6] Smooth out steps for world or for selected areas while holding onto key features (Peaks/Valleys/Water/Rivers etc.)
[7] Add Roughness for world or for selected area again while holding onto key features (water/rivers/roads etc.). This adds noise to smooth areas breaks up any continuous chain of the same sprite. (Variable)
[8] Add a Valleys option. Select start point and end point and it gradients a direct line between the two points.
[9] Height Map Option to 'filter drops at the edges' where the gradient map doesn't match the size exactly, but it prevents the steep edging around the edge which take a huge amount of time to fix
[10] Adjust Snowline after Scenario Creation

Rivers/Lakes

[11] Rivers - Auto bleed (Separate tool) - Clicking a 'bleeding river' creates a new river from that point downwards, same as the auto create.
[12] Lakes - Auto bleed (Separate tool again) - Clicking a 'Bleed Lake' floods out like the sea tiles and flows downhill. (May require pause option)
[13] Rivers - Expand/Contract Option - Clicking on an existing river or lake with this tool expands/contracts the width/diameter by +1 -1.
[14] Rivers - Make 'Add rivers' as a separate option after scenario creation
[15] Rivers - Have rocky+none rocky options for slopes/flat which is created by dragging over river not automatically on all slopes. (Navigable and none Navigable river parts)
[16] Rivers - When selecting a large area for water, where some of the tiles in the area are not suitable, fill the suitable tiles.
[17] Rivers/Lakes - Option for filling only at 'route-tiles' hieght. When dragging over a large area, only fill tiles at the same height as the original selection tile.
[18] Rivers - Ctrl select for diagonal placement

Trees

[19] Trees - Have options for soft edging for 'fill area' rather than creating unnatural squares
[20] Trees - Have options for Density rather than having every square in a selection filled.
[21] Trees - Have options to pick height range (x to y height) for random creation

Roads

[22] Big Ask - Auto link 2 selected objects (Points)
[23] Have a setting for having path of lease resitence (no up/downs)/moderate resistance/winding path/straightest path
[24] Have a setting for allowing terrain modifications and impact on landscape when auto routing (Heavy/Moderate/Low/None)

Landscape Features

[25] Rocks and Masts - Add Random
[26] Rocks - Density Option for Random or Drag over area - Heavy Clusters/Clusters/Spread/Freckled
[27] Rocks and Masts - Frequency Option for Random or Drag over area- (Many, Some, Few)
[28] Rocks - Locations Options (only effects) for Random or Drag over area - (Mountain/Hill/Rolling Hills/Flat/All)

Towns and Cities

[29] An Option to select an area to apply any of the below rules to only, rather than effecting the 'whole map'.
[30] Random Town and/or Many Random Town effected by the below settings:
[31] Option for frequency above many random (Many, Some, Few)
[32] Options for setting high levels they appear in (Lowest % - Highest %)
[33] Options for setting distance from water source (Tile Distance)
[34] Options for setting distance from sea (Tile Distance)
[35] Options for setting average gradient to be built on (mountainous/hilly/rolling hills/flat/All)

Industries and Towns

[36] An Option to select an area to apply any of the below rules to only, rather than effecting the 'whole map'.
[37] Build many of the same type of industry (Random industries becomes 'random scattering', and 'random' is a seperate option.
[38] Option for frequence of random (Many, Some, Few)
[39] Option for selecting the height levels they appear in (Lowest % - Highest %)
[40] Option for setting distance from water source (Tile Distance)
[41] Options for setting distance from sea (Tile Distance)
[42] Options for selecting ease of access (takes average of surrounding terrain x by y tiles hieght variation) - (Very Hard/Hard/Moderate/Easy/Very Easy)

Deleting Objects

[43] Make the delete/dynamite option effective/ineffective on different objects such as trees only, or on everything except rivers for example (in a similar way to ctrl-x transparency options)
[44] Delete All options for any of the above. Delete all Trees for example.

General Map

[45] Anti-Aliasing on the main map. i.e. Currently when zoomed out large rivers are still too small to show, but would show up subtly with anti-aliasing.

In particular the Landscaping, Rivers and Deleting Object requests would be the greatest timesavers, and therefore most valued. I shall now return to scenario editing!

Thanks

[kamnet]

Three things for creating rivers:

1) Option to plot a river via point-to-point selection
2) Option to create rivers wider than one tile
3) Option to lower the ground level the river is on by one tile, to create slopes

[GarryG]

Like you ideas Ben. I not at a computer at moment to test my idea see if work. But if the tools where linked to the ctrl, alt and shift keys to increase and decrease what the tools do. Or may up an down page keys to increase the size of tools action.

Cheers

[Wolf01]

Hello, Wolf01 here, maybe you remember me for some really old patches or because I sit in the IRC channel since... always.
I'm working at some features for the scenario editor, mainly the ability to "paint" the terrain with a brush instead of click-click-click-clicking, with the brush size adjustable (shares the same controls of the raise/lower land tools).
I would like to do put there a full set of tools once I'll get rid of some problems I found working on this patch and many of the tools I want to add are suggested in this topic.

Many features are really simple to draft, but everything will require a bit of work to be bug free.
If you want to cheer me up while I swear... ehm... work at this, you can find me in the IRC channel

[luxtram]

If you want to cheer me up while I swear... ehm... work at this, you can find me in the IRC channel

I haven't become hardcore enough to run an IRC client, but I understand that you are doing an important work, so please keep it up.

[Ben_Robbins_]

Hi Wolf01,

I remember you well and it's good to see your still active.

Keep us posted on the progress on your project as it sounds like it will address many of the points in the Landscaping section of the opening post!

Ben

[Wolf01]

About landscaping I think that the "smoothing" already covers a lot of cases, but I'll give a look on "fill to height" to avoid touching the mountains while filling a valley, and the other way around, the ability to truncate mountains without filling a valley, it should be just a check to add in the function.

At the moment I've done the smoothing feature, which works like a paintbrush on drawing softwares, while the "level brush" levels everything in the defined area, the "raise/lower brushes" level 1 tile at time, the only problem is that is really fast and in less than 1 second you get to max height, I need to limit a bit this behaviour while keeping the tool working as intended

As I'm not a fan of the CTRL modifier, I think you'll find a lot of buttons in the Editor Terraform Toolbar, one for every function

Edit: I attached a preview patch, it works only on scenario editor (and there is its place, I don't want such powerful tools in game), you will find 5 more buttons in the Terraform Toolbar with the features I wrote about
Edit2: Fixed the patch, was corrupted because of line endings

[RA3236]

...

If you don't mind, can you put this in an OpenTTD 1.6.1 installation? My MinGW seems to not want to use the command 'patch' and my computer crashed when compiling the game anyway.

[Wolf01]

...

If you don't mind, can you put this in an OpenTTD 1.6.1 installation? My MinGW seems to not want to use the command 'patch' and my computer crashed when compiling the game anyway.

I could compile for you a trunk version, maybe even a 1.6.1, but you won't be able to use it for multiplayer anyway

[GarryG]

Hi Wolf01,

Sounds like what you have made be excellent for scenario I like to make.

Been trying to make a scenario between Sydney and Newcastle Austrailia including all the suburbs to a scale of 25 squares equals 1000m as this will make it close to the scales of a train. Passenger carriages averaged about 21 metres and a diesel locomotive around 18 metres. 2 vehicles fit in one tile, so close enough that 1 squares equals 40 meters. Hence the scale I trying to work too.

Distance between towns heading westward, south of Sydney and north of Newcastle since so far apart, and 25 to 1 makes them way too far apart, work on these at a reduced scale of maybe 10 to 1.

Anyway what I asking how do I add your work to OpenTTD so can benefit from what your achieved? I don't place multi-player games .. I just one of those who like to control it all.

Hope can help

Cheers Garry

[RA3236]

...

If you don't mind, can you put this in an OpenTTD 1.6.1 installation? My MinGW seems to not want to use the command 'patch' and my computer crashed when compiling the game anyway.

I could compile for you a trunk version, maybe even a 1.6.1, but you won't be able to use it for multiplayer anyway

I don't care about multiplayer, but I want to be able to test these tools. Thanks.

[Ben_Robbins_]

Wolf01: Great to see that you are addressing the issues, and writing patches for the scenario editor. I completely agree with your point that these tools would be exclusivly for scenario editor and not for the game, as (as I refered to them as in my initial post) these are 'god like' tools, not business tools as per the game logic.

If possible could someone create and .exe for this patch for the purpose of testing for the none programming types such as myself. I will happily contribute to testing and suggesting. Alternatively video and/or screen shots would open up the doors to a lot of opinions which may otherwise might not be heard if only the patch file is attached.

Thanks wolf, and keep up the good work,