Trees spreading patch

[MagicBuzz]

Hello,

I used to play Transport Tycoon from its first version in 1994.

In the original game (TT and TTD) the trees were growing slowly and randomly. But I Don't remember they were covering the whole map so fast.

Now, with OTTD, the tree algorithm was changed, and after some years, the whole map is covered with a dense forest.

While in the original game, trees were mostly eye candy (and a little construction cost challenging), now they pollute the screen, and I play all the time with transparency options enabled for the trees.

This “bug” (or “feature”?) is known for a few years now, and I wonder if someone already tried to fix it.

Today I started to write a small patch to make the tree spreading a little bit more realistic.

In real life, trees mostly grow in forest, and never spread in the middle of meadows without being planted.

Consequently, my patch simply checks before planting a new tree if it’s already at least 6 planted tiles in a radius of 2 tiles.
It also prevent planting alone trees during map generation.
This is a new tree algorithm “Forest”.

New game :

1830.png

New game with the new algortithm

(830.05 KiB) Not downloaded yet

After 6 years :

1836.png

Same game after 6 years

(1.45 MiB) Not downloaded yet

See branch on GitHub : https://github.com/SylvainDevidal/OpenT ... eSpreading

[Dalnok]

Hi MagicBuzz!

I ran into your patch while searching for tree deployment solutions for scenarios. What I'm looking for is how to deploy realistic forests on a scenario. Realistic means that trees growing in clusters not alone and mostly on mountainous areas. Maybe your patch could be used somehow in the scenario editor for this purpose? Or do you know any other tools?

Thanks!