Sugestions to make a mappers life easyer

[one billion daleks]

One of the current "ingame-goals" is to help the town-growth of a city.
If you could just build the houses you want, the challenge has gone.
Maybe as a cheat/patch setting though...

Well yes, city-builders use OTTD too, and it's likely more of them will migrate to OTTD in the future, now that SimCity is essentially abandonware. (and the recently released SimCity Societies is just a game for kids, not a simulator at all ... it's pissed-off most of the hardcore SimCity community, and it's already in the bargain bin at my local games store!)

One example ... by using your Scenario Editor patch I was able to create a typical UK coal-mining town featuring row upon row of terraced houses ... that's very satisfying from a city-building perspective.

Mind you, I suppose that within OTTD it would be necessary to configure any player-placed buildings as "owned" by that player (the same as road and rail elements), to prevent the game engine from removing them again.

But yes, if you'd consider creating a cheat or patch setting within the game, that would surely make you a legend to the city-builders who are likely to sign-up to OTTD in the future.

By the way, the cheat window already permanently occupies a corner of my OTTD games anyway!

[Bilbo]

By the way, the cheat window already permanently occupies a corner of my OTTD games anyway! :)

Too bad you can't make that window sticky ... :)

[one billion daleks]

Now that would be darned handy ...!
... or else add it to the [?] drop-down menu.

At the moment, my most frequently used key-combination is <shift><del> followed by <ctrl><alt><c> ...
*sigh*

[Bilbo]

Now that would be darned handy ...!
... or else add it to the [?] drop-down menu.

That would also solve the problem with ctrl-alt-c not working :)
Or perhaps make console command to invoke the menu too :)

[Frostregen]

the recently released SimCity Societies is just a game for kids, not a simulator at all ... it's pissed-off most of the hardcore SimCity community

Yes, this "game" was strange.
I did not find any challenge at all within this game.
Was there anything you could do wrong in this game?

One example ... by using your Scenario Editor patch I was able to create a typical UK coal-mining town featuring row upon row of terraced houses ... that's very satisfying from a city-building perspective.

Images please

Mind you, I suppose that within OTTD it would be necessary to configure any player-placed buildings as "owned" by that player (the same as road and rail elements), to prevent the game engine from removing them again.

But yes, if you'd consider creating a cheat or patch setting within the game, that would surely make you a legend to the city-builders who are likely to sign-up to OTTD in the future.

By the way, the cheat window already permanently occupies a corner of my OTTD games anyway!

Hmm,
if you manage to develop some concept for "player-owned buildings" and/or "players able to build houses",
it could move from cheat to patchsetting.
But maybe this should be discussed in its own topic.

[one billion daleks]

OK then, here's an image as requested ... a bit embarrassing, it's not exactly a work of art I'm afraid ... I was only mucking about with your patch, honest!

But hopefully, you can get an idea of what I was trying to do ...

It's meant to be a coalmining town, with a small seaside resort nearby ...

But with so many different buildings available, there's absolutely heaps of things people could do with this patch ... and then we could say "Hooray!" and "Yippee!", and goodbye to the days where every city looks identical to every other city!

[Wolf01]

really really really nice, good work frostregen for the patch and one billion daleks for the screen
i hope this idea will be made into trunk

just 2 questions: are the houses placed with this patch static during game? are the houses like the standard ones, so all players can demolish them?

[Bilbo]

The houses are like any other houses, so they can be demolished by players or replaced by towns. There is currently no way in OpenTTD to buikld some "permanent" houses AFAIK.

[one billion daleks]

Yes, that's right Bilbo ... at present, either the game engine or an AI player will demolish anything handbuilt in a scenario.

I admit, I know absolutely nothing about the innards of OTTD ... so I may be talking through a hole in my head here but ...

... seeing as how road stations and depots can be built and left untouched, then maybe there's a flag of some kind within each graphics dataset - that gets set - when the tile is "owned" by Player 1. And if such a parameter exists, then it may be defined for all graphical components, and is simply uninitialised in city buildings ...?

I dunno, like I say ... I'm ignorant on this stuff.

Anyway, here is a farm village I knocked up using the patch ... not a skyscraper in sight!
I started on this in 2007, and finished it in 2008 ... phew!

[one billion daleks]

Lastly, here's a quickly assembled - I know, it looks like it too - city to complete the village / town /city set.

The main advantages here are that you can see all your roads clearly, and you can have city blocks shaped and sized any way you want ...

Once an airport and a railstation is added, it should come to life rather nicely!

[Whopper]

Wow, that's really great what you did there Frostregen! Thanx a lot!

And nice pix daleks . If you release it in an official patch, it might be good to restrict the buildings placeble to the specific climate set. I hate to see ppl put toy land buildings in their towns

[doktorhonig]

Another feature would be great:
Some checkbox "ask for town name" in the town-placement-window.

So when I place a town at the map, I'm immediately asked for its name. Automatic town names are great for random maps, but I never use them in handmade maps anyway.

[Bilbo]

Wow, that's really great what you did there Frostregen! Thanx a lot!

And nice pix daleks ;). If you release it in an official patch, it might be good to restrict the buildings placeble to the specific climate set. I hate to see ppl put toy land buildings in their towns :P

Well, mixing toyland and normal climated des not make much sense, but few buildings from arctic and subtropical may be usable in temperate for example. But there should be some optional checking for proper climate, whether to show all buildings or only those from current climate.

[belugas]

The houses are like any other houses, so they can be demolished by players or replaced by towns. There is currently no way in OpenTTD to buikld some "permanent" houses AFAIK.

Indeed not. Even with newgrfs.
But, if requested, i guess a grf property can be added and watched in CanDeleteHouse, newgrf_house.cpp:452.
but it implies that this house will never evolve, and will stay as it is forever.

[Bilbo]

But if the property would not be simple property but instead some sort of callback, then perhaps the house can dictate some condition under which it can be deleted or not (like allow deletetion from year 2000, but not before it).

[belugas]

It would be a callback closely resembling one that already exists, apart from the fact that it will forbids too the user interaction.

Using that callback, though, with a few modifications, might be possible. One could add a new result (like 2) which means no one can delete the house. Problem, I can make the change on my side. but I would no be able to do it in TTDP, and i do not know if TTDP has the same protection against AI or town user before performing the callback itself.

That is why the property, in my view, seems the easier way. Unless, of course, a TTDP dev can perform the same change on his side.

[DaleStan]

It doesn't seem like that ought to be too hard to do, but I think George uses a different solution for preventing human removal, while (possibly) still allowing town removal: setting an unachievably high prop 10.

[Draakon]

With OpenTTD magic bulldozer, everything will be removable.

[ostlandr]

This is interesting. One of my ideas is to replicate the terrain of my home county in Western New York along with the industries that existed at the dawn of the railroad era. This would allow be to replicate the towns also as they actually existed.
Then I can actually build the railroads & canals and see if I can make a go where the originals failed. The PS&N, the BR&P, the BE&C, the B&S, the WA&G - gonna be cool.

[CARST]

Hi all!


The thread starter is definetly right, all you guys here on the forums putting so much work into the game, that is amazing, but it would really help to see some developments to the editor, too. (I know there were some developments already.)

One thing i can add which would make a lot of things easier is when you create a map and you create some hundreds of cities and you place them all by hand, the most annoying thing is to create the town, destroy it a bit, enhance it, destroy, enhance .............

What would be really helpful is if you could enter a size somewhere and a town in that size is created. Like when i enter 3700 a town with 3700 inhabitants is build. When i enter 8000000 a town with 8000000 inhabitants is built.
The should work with some logic so if this "helper" builds a town with 8000000 inhabitants most of the houses should be tall houses, not the small ones.


Additionally it would be great it you could mark the borders of the town first, then enter the size and then the town is created (and if you only mark some 15 tiles but enter a high value for inhabitants the helper says "not possible). But that is not so important, the first feature would be enough... ^^