TaI - introducing the scrabble board

PikkaBird · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:28 pm

Hi Folks,

This thread is introducing TaI - Town and Industry, the successor to both Suburban Renewal and Pikka's Basic Industries. This is a house set (and will later have an associated industry set) for all three climates.

The differences this set has from most existing house sets are;

A zoning ID system, rather than lots of buildings each with their own statistics. Actual buildings will be done as graphic variations only.
Inbuilt limits on town growth.
6 different town "personalities", with different growth limits and zoning balances.
More 2x2 buildings, leading to more spread out "rural" communities, and more opportunity to place secondary industries within towns.

There are no proper graphics yet, and indeed I'll be looking for contributions from others to fill out the set. More on that later, but for now, here's the "scrabble board" for the houses, which people can play with and provide feedback if they wish.

Certain features and callbacks in the set may be OTTD only; the set has not been tested with TTDPatch.

Ameecher · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:50 pm

Hmm, I like the SimCity style approach to it. What do the R and U stand for on the squares? I assumed Urban and Rural but that doesn't really make much sense.

CommanderZ · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:52 pm

That sounds like a great idea

Could you please post what means what? I had a little trouble decrypting the shorthands.

I found there are residential/commercial/industrial zones. But what are the L/U/R modifiers? "zone intensity"? And what is the city skyline icon with little number? And what is CH?

EDIT: Never mind, just found Query tool answers my questions.

Industries will be passive or will accept and produce cargos?

EDIT: I really like the scrabble-board style. IMO it should stay to be available in the transparency mode.

PikkaBird · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:57 pm

Indeed, U and R are urban and rural, and the ? tool reveals all. The skyline with the little number is the town/city hall, which reveals the "personality" or class of the town. I'll post some more information on my wiki shortly.

The "Industrial" buildings are town light industrial; they produce a fair bit of mail, but no special cargos. However the intention is that there will eventually be a number of small secondary "heavy" industries built in the towns that will be coded as industries and will indeed accept, stockpile and produce cargos.

CommanderZ · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:01 pm

One question: Why do you keep the "highrise" buildings 1x1? The large buildings would look much better if not downscaled so much as in TTRS3.

EDIT: Are you aware, that your set seems to have much lower population density than original buildings - in my guess 2-4x? In original GRFs town with 500 inhabitans has barely few houses, in your set such town covers 50 or so tiles.

Attachment:

demo.png [ 190.34 KiB | Viewed 11929 times ]

PikkaBird · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:13 pm

TaI has much more variable density of population; yes, early in the game when you have mostly rural buildings, towns will be quite spread out. But the urban and particularly city buildings in TaI have quite high populations, so you'll get a much more compact "core" in the middle of the town.

wallyweb · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:58 pm

"scrabble board" - Will there be some tiles offering double and triple Local Authority approval ratings? :lol:

Just kidding. :wink:

Excellent new concept. I shall be monitoring the progress. It'll be interesting to see how you blend in the industries all in one set.

Badger · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:35 pm

Looks interesting. I'm a watchin' this.

Dave · PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:07 pm

You're a hero.

This is my name · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 4:24 am

Looks more like Monopoly to me than Scrabble

.

PikkaBird · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 7:37 am

I've posted a little more technical information on the town and building types here.

Hyronymus · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 9:20 am

Dave Worley wrote:

You're a hero.

What he said, Pikka :bow:

.

Toni Babelony · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:11 am

Holy cow! That's surely making OTTD even more fun!

I really like the idea of having small industries in town and to have rural villages without buildings that are higher than, say, three floors. It will make it more realistic and at the same time more logical and eye-pleasing. I'll give it a go when I'm back home again.

It looks very ambitious by the way, but you've produced more huge .grfs we all love

XeryusTC · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:21 am

The idea of town personalities certainly sounds great

secretly I've always wanted towns to develop in their own little way and not all just become huge cities with only high rise

DanMacK · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 3:08 pm

Dude, I'm liking it! Excellent work on all fronts. Can't wait to see more.

Circeus · **Joined:** Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:26 pm **Posts:** 181

PikkaBird wrote:

TaI has much more variable density of population; yes, early in the game when you have mostly rural buildings, towns will be quite spread out. But the urban and particularly city buildings in TaI have quite high populations, so you'll get a much more compact "core" in the middle of the town.

This is IMHO a very flawed and counterintuitive understanding (which irritates me a great lot in Simutrans). Rurale areas have many times less buildings spread over a large area, aside from the villages themselves. A larger city has many, many times more buildings that will be more concentrated. Yes, there are buildings with more people on a smaller size, but these will only appear if the citty is already very large, they will never reduce the city's ground size.

Dave · PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 7:00 pm

I think you're missing a point here, Circeus. You seem to be saying what Pikka has said. Or at least that's how it reads :S

Circeus · **Joined:** Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:26 pm **Posts:** 181

What I'm saying it that it sounds like towns with larger populations might end up looking smaller than rural towns. Of course, with the lack of screenshots comparing towns of very different populations, it's quite possible I'm jumping to conclusions (which I can do from pretty far away). It's been nagging me about Simutrans and I might have let it get out at an inopportune time. Sorry.

I do appreciate the idea that towns in the smaller sizes (50-200) might become more visible on the map, though.

ostlandr · PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:17 am

Looks awesome so far. Looking forward to seeing your plans for the industries, seeing as how I always play with PBI. Are you thinking in terms of having (physically) smaller industries (2x2, 3x3) pop up in towns on their own?

Are you thinking of splitting the farms and factories up? Instead of one generic farm, have grain farms (demand fertilizer, produce grain) cattle farms (demand grain, produce cattle) and dairy farms (demand grain, produce milk.)
Instead of one generic factory, have a tool & die (demands steel, produces goods), a furniture factory (demands lumber, produces goods) and a toy factory (demands plastic, produces goods.)

Just tossing out random ideas, that's what I do. . .

Toni Babelony · PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 9:54 pm

Maybe just a (stupid) thought, but why not get together with the FIRS developers? viewtopic.php?f=36&t=41607&start=460 I think if these two sets are to be combined it would make a world of difference and will change the gameplay of OTTD radically.

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