Infrastructure and city planning...

[SAC]

A recent pm mentioning a typical phrase which I've seen on many occassions, especially in my own TTDLX-threads, got me thinking that perhaps it should be discussed. I'm talking about the "I don't have the time nor the patience to sculpt cities like you do" phrase... And everytime I read this I get surprised and the reason is quite simple; City planning and city sculpting in TTDLX is a highly underrated part of the game.

Often one can read about players getting tired and bored of their games, and so they're starting new ones all the time to keep the interest on top. But why? My current map, as an example, have been in use since 2006. That is soon to be 6 years - although it should be noted that in between there has been the usual "real life committment", but still. Almost 6 years. Have I gone bored with it? Nope! Do I want to create a new map? Nope, (unless OTTD implements what's still missing compared with TTDP, then I'd love to create a huge map... )!

I think that many players only see the transportation part of the game, and misses out on all the rest TTDLX gameplay offers when it comes down to it. Pulling out a railroad track here and there, connecting industries with other industries or towns to transport goods or passengers, a bus route, a truck route, possibly an airport, play around for awhile, and then the boredom hits in... Time to start a new map! Such waste of time... Don't get me wrong, TTDLX is obviously all about transportation of goods and passengers, but with some imagination and some "real life" aspects, it can grow to become really interesting. Why else would I still be stuck with the same map since I created it in 2006? The creation, btw, can be viewed from day 1 if reading my Innovatia-thread from page 1. The answer is simple; Infrastructure, landscaping and city planning!

Like everyone else I build up railroads and roads in order to transport goods and passengers from point A to point B, but this is a work that is never completed - just as city planning. Take a close look at Olympia from the beginning and its current state, (although initially named Vasa);


Downtown Olympia in 2006:



Downtown Olympia later on;



Downtown Olympia in 2011;



Not much is the same. In fact, nothing is the same. And by that I'm not referring to graphics, but the way the city has evolved during the years. Someone wrote in a post that my roads and railroads in Olympia are almost lost within, and it's true. But it's important to realize it wasn't planned. It's a result of years of re-sculpting the city, making use of every single tile to its best capability. And while moving a road or a bridge, changing the height levels both here and there, eventually everything turns into a complex and complicated infrastructure - just as in real life. And even I have problems at times figuring out where roads and railroads are going in Olympia, which is why I have to use the transparency options quite often...

So, in between making sure transportation of goods and passengers runs as smooth as it can, I turn my focus to my cities. And it's not as easy to bring out the bulldozers and start re-modelling a part of the town. I need to plan carefully. And the reason spells local infrastructure, local transports. In Olympia, as an example, I have about 50 bus routes travelling NOT randomly but very well planned. Whiel I can use waypoints to control road vehicles on highways, I need to use busstops in cities. And each busstop isn't planned simply because it just fit in a spot. No, each busstop is put in its specific place by a reason. Partially to make sure passengers are attracted and want to use public services, and partially because my busstops also creates the foundation of each single route. There isn't a bus, (local bus, trunk bus, airport shuttle), that travels on a street by accident. It's directed there through the placement of a busstop, and each busstop also determines what a single bus will do at the next corner. Go straight, turn right or left!

And this is the reason I have to plan every step I take with the bulldozers. If a re-sculpting planned interfere with one or more bus routes, I need to make sure alternative roads can be used, and then I'm ready to go. And all this planning simply to develop cities in between making sure goods and passengers are transported as intended, is what makes this game soo much more interesting. In my opinion the city building part of TTDLX is very much underrated and very much a missing part amongst most players, thus most likely one of the reasons most players gets bored with their games/maps after awhile and need to start a new one...

Any opinions?

[ZxBiohazardZx]

try the same in OTTD, the main reason i cannot plan my cities like that is limits in OTTD (custom bridgeheads lack)), planning is good, the looks are just slightly less

[xxbillybones]

try the same in OTTD, the main reason i cannot plan my cities like that is limits in OTTD (custom bridgeheads lack)), planning is good, the looks are just slightly less

Limits ? Isn't OTTD supposed to allow MORE things than TTD ?

By the way, are the graphics on the screenshots the original ones ?

[wallyweb]

Limits ? Isn't OTTD supposed to allow MORE things than TTD ?

In many ways it does, but for city scapes it is often desired to be able to build a road directly along the shore of a river and then, as in real life, to be able to have the road connect to a bridge's ramp from the side rather than have to do a small loop to connect to the end of the ramp. This is only possible with custom bridgeheads which are not yet available under OpenTTD.

[xxbillybones]

Oh yeah, I've been there, it's an irritating waste of one tile
Why is that possible on TTD ? I thought OTTD was based on TTD, why whould they delete this option ?

[oberhümer]

Well, that feature is only in TTDPatch, not the original TTD.

[Axlrose]

Part of the problem with city planning is the randomness the game seems to have throughout a game's life. If you play a game with your own set of "house rules", then a layer of complexity can enter the mix that can have subtle, yet far reaching effects. While you might envision an ideal situation, that situation may never arrive. Thus part of the reason people get bored of a particular game and move on to another world to set up transportation routes is city planning can be difficult to start, maintain, and expand.

As an example, my current game is using George's ECS graphical enhancements. I am using a temperate map with some rolling hills and lakes throughout. I began with only fourteen towns total: one in isolation, two sets of two towns connected to each other, a set of three linked, and two sets of three towns connected to each other with one town of each of those sets connected. I started with the year as 1925 and no industries on the map. And I am using my current "house rules":

- Each town has one action performed: lay half a section of road or a full track piece down, raise or lower one section of land, or build a bridge or tunnel. With each action, I release the pause button until the price cost disappears before pausing once again - the only exception is I let one day click by on the date per one section of bridge or tunnel. That is, if a bridge was 5 tile lengths long, then I will let five days pass. I feel this is a bit of a realistic approach instead of *poof* instant bridge.

- My builders are on a nature kick so unless the tile has one (nearly) dead tree left, nothing can be done to that tile that has living trees growing on it.

- I will destroy buildings in town only if they are in the building stages and consider the action similar to one action per town rule.

- If a town has no potential action, then I will drift to neighboring industries and towns to help. But I will not have a town in the southwest corner of the map help the town in the far northeast with an action. I have an unwritten in actual squares distance, but again, a realistic approach to influencing one's neighbor.

- Being an American, I let fourteen days freely pass during Thanksgiving (usually starts on November 20) and Christmas with New Years (again around December 20) with no actions involved. Yes, one day per number of towns in the game.

Again, I started with no industries so as they enter the game, they affect how my game progresses. A forest without a lumber mill, two iron ore mines without a steel mill, and an oil refinery with not a drop of oil in sight: not the cash influx one needs for later expansions. The only connected industries that arrived in the game (so far) are two sand pits, a glass works factory, and a regular factory with a humongous amount of trees littering the tiles between them all. So while I have laid down partial sections of railroad tracks here and there on the grass tiles in an attempt to connect these industries, my towns follow a similar pursuit. One "goal" I play in every new game is to get all the towns connected by roads. As I wrote above, you can see my progress by how I have them grouped. One day enough trees will die that all the towns will be interconnected with pavement (I hope).

Then each town has its own layouts with streets with empty grass or tree filled tiles within. Granted the game did not start each town in a perfect grid layout, so some I have altered over time while others are too set to break so I work around it. It seems the game ~wants~ to have a building next to a street so to me a two by two square with roads circling around this allows the town to fill in the gaps nicely. A three by three square too often leaves the middle square open - even with odd shaped buildings popping into the game (a two by one dimension building as an example). And then there is the town center where the name of the town resides that seems to heavily influence which direction buildings enter the game. Instead of following the roads set out, it wants to have a circular pattern from the center - even if one particular direction is difficult or lacks anything to push in that direction ("Hmmm - all this open space with roads or head into these hills here...?).

After many real time weeks to months into this particular game, I found out that George's ECS set is not exactly compatible with TTDPatch, so some of the industries I was working towards are suddenly ~broken~. Add that while I am in the year of 1947, I have yet to build one train engine so my cash input trickles from numerous double decked buses and two ferry ships. So all those potential goods from industries are not influencing most of my towns like they should be doing! So the towns do not expand into all those pretty two by two squares I got outlined so I can then eventually building within town bus services instead of town to town at the moment. Plenty of pavement is set down, along with tracks all over the place - interesting note: while a company sign can hold a tile, a track can be a cheaper alternative - especially once you remove the track and get some money back. Short of the awkward angled tiles that require the TTDPatch aspect of building on slopes to set the tile and thus cost more, a track makes a good placeholder if one plays the game to wait for trees to die, especially on gentle hills where three sides are grass and one has trees growing.

So I have thought about stopping this game, especially when I found out some of the industries are ~broken~. Yet I have run some test games where I let the "house rules" cease to exist, lay everything out how I would want it (or probe around how I will proceed - usually with the money cheat), and let the clock run full tilt to see how things may expand, I then return to my regular game and proceed slowly, hoping things will turn out nicely in the long run under my "house rules".

So this game is not six years old yet, but one day it may get there!

Thanks for reading this long post!