Improved Town Layouts

[2TallTyler]

Very interesting. I set a parameter this time but will file this away for the future... Thanks!

[2TallTyler]

Version 1.1.0, "More Junk Mail," is released. It includes a lot of bugfixes, some additional buildings, and a significant (but optional, via parameters) change to mail generation: residential buildings produce almost no mail, while commercial buildings produce slightly more.

Read the full changelog on GitHub.

[Monty_Montana]

Hi!

I answer to your post:

[C]an this set be used with TTRS (Total Town Replacement Set) or are they incompatible? I have loaded it into the game and it says it is incompatible with any house set, but to what extent? TTRS buildings look pretty good. It would be nice to be able to use the mechanics of this set with the buildings of the other set (as I understand that your NewGRF doesn't change the appearance of the buildings, other than combining those from different climates)

I don't know if TTRS replaces sprites or buildings, but assume it's the latter, which means they are most likely incompatible. Improved Town Layout is actually a house set, which just happens to use graphics from the base game. Each house has an ID and town sets which use the same house IDs will be incompatible.

I know it is not recommended, but if I have time, i would like to force-test it... Maybe if a set keeps original houses on, they could be combined.

Great suggestion. I'll add it to the 1.02 release, which is already in the works to improve stadium generation.

Glad to provide ideas for improving!!

I would also like to know how this NewGRF can affect city growth scripts. If you can think of anything right away that would prevent you from using it, please let me know. Otherwise, it's all trial and error; nothing happens.

I added a hotfix this morning after someone on Reddit pointed out that some scripts require food or goods to be delivered to a town in order for it to grow. High-rise commercial buildings in this set only grow when passenger service is provided, creating a chicken-and-egg problem until I added a low-density shop which will appear in nearly every town to accept food and goods and allow town growth to begin. Test it with your favorite script and let me know any problems.

Well, the scripts we have been using (Renewd city growth) seems to run ok with the script; we have not that problem since using FIRS we have industries for receiving that cargos. However, i dont know if it is the expected results (town zoning, buildings distribution, etc). Seems ok (realistic, natural), but if you can watch the game, enter ttdistas #4 server. It have been running with your GRF since 1840 and currently it is 2383, so you have long-term game if you want to check the behaviour of the GRF.

Regards,
Montana

[2TallTyler]

I know it is not recommended, but if I have time, i would like to force-test it... Maybe if a set keeps original houses on, they could be combined.

I did some testing and it turns out TTRS buildings do spawn alongside buildings from this set. It negates most of the responsiveness of the set to your transit service, but if your goal is simply adding more visual variety, it works fine for that!

Well, the scripts we have been using (Renewd city growth) seems to run ok with the script; we have not that problem since using FIRS we have industries for receiving that cargos. However, i dont know if it is the expected results (town zoning, buildings distribution, etc). Seems ok (realistic, natural), but if you can watch the game, enter ttdistas #4 server. It have been running with your GRF since 1840 and currently it is 2383, so you have long-term game if you want to check the behaviour of the GRF.

Thanks! I checked it out and it looks as I expected.

[speeder]

I plan in using this, and wonder if your set would work (maybe replacing something on my list)

FIRS, TTRS "early mod" version, Swedish Houses "early mod", UK houses "early mod", and the script Renewed Village Growth: viewtopic.php?f=65&t=87052

[supermop]

I plan in using this, and wonder if your set would work (maybe replacing something on my list)

FIRS, TTRS "early mod" version, Swedish Houses "early mod", UK houses "early mod", and the script Renewed Village Growth: viewtopic.php?f=65&t=87052

This set works great with FIRS and most gamescripts (I am using it with Firs Steeltown and Think Locally.... now, and it works great). However, I feel it would not work as expected with other house sets loaded, as it draws from the base set houses to place per its layout methods. If you wanted this NewGRF's logic but Swedish house sprites, you could make a quick Baseset / static grf that replaced the default houses with those from Swedish Houses (this would also be nice if you wanted a bit of flare in vanilla MP games).

[jrook1445]

I'm really enjoying this town set, especially the mechanics around building placement and population controls.

I'd not been interested in coding houses (until I did some minor things in Wannaroo Basic Industries) but this set makes we want to try out a few ideas.

If you decide you want to include construction stages and/or snow-aware sprites, give me a shout, happy to contribute.

Kind regards

[andythenorth]

I played a game, this grf smashes it out the park, nice work

[gravelpit]

I cant wait for play

[2TallTyler]

Thanks for the kind words, all!

If you decide you want to include construction stages and/or snow-aware sprites, give me a shout, happy to contribute.

Thanks for the offer. I plan to re-code this set using Python templating over the summer, which will make future updates (including construction sprites and some changes to the office building logic) much easier to make. Essentially, the data will be organized in a spreadsheet rather than written out over two thousand lines of code. This will also make the logic somewhat modular if others wish to use it with other house graphics. Once I've learned templating and migrated everything, I could definitely use help tracking down construction sprite numbers for each building!

[Captain_Pronin]

If you integrated your set with the 1000 buildings project viewtopic.php?t=75250, you would be a force to be reckoned with for building replacement sets.

[2TallTyler]

If you integrated your set with the 1000 buildings project viewtopic.php?t=75250, you would be a force to be reckoned with for building replacement sets.

Improved Town Layout only uses base game sprites to be compatible with all base graphics sets, but I will certainly consider the graphics from 1000 building set and/or the California City Sets if I ever do a set with new graphics. It's a pity the revitalized North American Building Set doesn't have a clear license for reuse of sprites.

[2TallTyler]

1.1.1 is now released with a couple bugfixes and a rework of the behind-the-scenes file structure. The only noticeable change to the player is that you can once again lower land under parks, statues, and fountains. This is savegame-compatible. Players attempting to load the NewGRF using an old game version (before OpenTTD 1.10.0 or JGR 0.34) will get a descriptive error message rather than gobbledygook about an Action0 property that didn't exist before 1.10.0.

If you decide you want to include construction stages and/or snow-aware sprites, give me a shout, happy to contribute.

The project is now as organized as I feel like making it right now. If you want to fork the project, add construction sprites, and submit a pull request, please feel free.

[wallyweb]

It's a pity the revitalized North American Building Set doesn't have a clear license for reuse of sprites.

The North American Building Set by Aegir (aka reldred) predates the Canadian set. The website link in the content downloader points to Aegir's readme on his git-hub page which suggests his license as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. It doesn't get any clearer than that.

[2TallTyler]

It doesn't get any clearer than that.

My concern is the preceding disclaimer and the rumors I’ve heard about this set’s history. Or was this predecessor totally separate from the bad blood?

License/Permissions: I don't really feel comfortable attaching anything to this as I've not been able to get ahold of Oz (who's been out of touch for 7years) or Lifeblood (10 years) but lets for the sake of sanity just declare it as the following:

[wallyweb]

My concern is the preceding disclaimer and the rumors I’ve heard about this set’s history. Or was this predecessor totally separate from the bad blood?

Aegir's set is the predecessor. The Canadian set version was inspired by Aegir's set. OzTrans' concerns were a separate issue.

License/Permissions: I don't really feel comfortable attaching anything to this as I've not been able to get ahold of Oz (who's been out of touch for 7years) or Lifeblood (10 years) but lets for the sake of sanity just declare it as the following:

Both Oz (Who is not OzTrans) and Lifeblood have made their intentions known in other parts of this forum and have freely allowed their work to be used elsewhere in a period when this gpl stuff was not such a big issue. You should be safe to use their sprites as long as you do not alter them. Simply cite your source as Aegir's North American Building Set CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

[2TallTyler]

Both Oz (Who is not OzTrans) and Lifeblood have made their intentions known in other parts of this forum and have freely allowed their work to be used elsewhere in a period when this gpl stuff was not such a big issue. You should be safe to use their sprites as long as you do not alter them. Simply cite your source as Aegir's North American Building Set CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Thanks for the clarification!

[andythenorth]

I dug through forums to see if I could find any more about licensing from Oz and Lifeblood.

I found a DM from Oz to me, permission to include or modify any Oz sprites in FIRS under GPL v2. Think that's a fair basis for reusing Oz sprites in other GPL sets.

Can't find anything explicit from lifeblood. The intent to share seems pretty clear from lifeblood forum posts, but nothing in black and white.

CC-BY-NC-SA isn't GPL compatible.

No-one's going to court over this, it's not a legal risk.

The push to GPL was about avoiding community dramas around sprite re-use

CC-BY-SA *is* one-way compatible with GPL v3 but that's no help here See https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/ ... ith-gplv3/ if you're interested.

The natural concern of some authors has been to avoid commercial exploitation of their work. In practice that's turned out to be much less of a risk than the work dying, starved of life by a bad license, but eh, we are where we are

[Master Trams]

Would I just be able to ask, what need I search in the OpenTTD UI check online content search box to find this in OpenTTD, or, in other words, what is its name?

[2TallTyler]

Would I just be able to ask, what need I search in the OpenTTD UI check online content search box to find this in OpenTTD, or, in other words, what is its name?

It’s called Improved Town Layouts. That should find it.