Graphic tip: Two track railroad on one tile

[Alltaken]

yeah i agree, it would also be easier graphically to do 1/4 size squares (or everything is 2x bigger in relation to the squares)

however the terrain IMO would still be 2x2 squares, so that the rest are somewhat sub squares...... hmmmm

i do agree that buildings and towns... should be bigger and we are working on that with the new GFX people are making (real scale).

Alltaken

[peter1138]

Hmm, I guess that making buildings larger, i.e. so they take up more tiles, would require a lot less work than having two tracks on a single tile, and it would allow more variety of industry tiles.]

Along with requiring two tile height differences for bridges/tunnels, the scale would look pretty nice, I think.

Heading into Locomotion territory though...

[Alltaken]

Heading into Locomotion territory though...

i think we can do it well though...... i think the gameplay side of lomo (not that i have ever played it) was what made it weird. the scale differences arn't necisarily a bad thing.

Alltaken

[jungle]

* I'd suggest removing the "Local Authority Refuses..."-thing completely, TBH.

I second that, although you could reduce the need for this slightly through using smaller tiles too... if buildings were larger (in terms of tiles covered) the gardens or spaces between them could be tiles in themselves.

That would also allow a bit of variation in the density of building in the towns without multiplying the number of sprites massively. In the suburbs you could just stick more garden between the houses - in areas with big gardens fitting a track in would just be a matter of demolishing part of the gardens on two rows of houses - rather than entire houses.

Also it will become easier to shoehorn tracks into towns anyway when (if?) the new map allows building bridges over buildings.

The whole idea of having smaller tiles for tracks (or making buildings bigger) sounds good to me. It should also save on the number of sprites that would be required for treating double tracks as a single unit.

The fact that a tower block was the same width as a small road in TTD always struck me as a bit odd - probably the result of trying to shoehorn the game into the limited memory space available on an early 90s PC.

[thetzar]

* I'd suggest removing the "Local Authority Refuses..."-thing completely, TBH.

I second that, although you could reduce the need for this slightly through using smaller tiles too... if buildings were larger (in terms of tiles covered) the gardens or spaces between them could be tiles in themselves.

That would also allow a bit of variation in the density of building in the towns without multiplying the number of sprites massively. In the suburbs you could just stick more garden between the houses - in areas with big gardens fitting a track in would just be a matter of demolishing part of the gardens on two rows of houses - rather than entire houses.

Also it will become easier to shoehorn tracks into towns anyway when (if?) the new map allows building bridges over buildings.

The whole idea of having smaller tiles for tracks (or making buildings bigger) sounds good to me. It should also save on the number of sprites that would be required for treating double tracks as a single unit.

The fact that a tower block was the same width as a small road in TTD always struck me as a bit odd - probably the result of trying to shoehorn the game into the limited memory space available on an early 90s PC.

This sounds a lot like the 'lot' system that SimCity 4 uses. In that game, each property is broken up into a lot, props, and a building. The building is a 2d sprite prerendered from a 3d model. The lot is the land the building rests on. The same building sprite can live on lots of different sizes. The lot can be either mapped to the 3-d terrain below it, or flat and built on a foundation. If the lot is slopped, the building will then be on a foundation, similar to TTD. Then props are small sprites or object scattered around the lot to give it some visual distrinctiveness from other lots of the same type in the existing gameworld.

Now, this is a bit complex for a game like TTD, but the lot-building relationship could fit in well. This would allow you to drive trains through a city snipping off pieces of lots where the buildings are not, letting them stand.

[Alltaken]

That would also allow a bit of variation in the density of building in the towns without multiplying the number of sprites massively.

one way roads would be an entire tile themselves, a 4 lane road would be an entire 2 tiles wide (two lanes on each tile without footpaths)

you could have trams on 2 tile wide, with two lanes of road, or 4 lanes of road+trams (if you have no footpaths)

most houses would be 2x1 square, high density houses would be 1x1 square (without gardens) apartments would be 2x2 squares.....

you could then fit 2 train tracks on one (old tile) so 2x2 tiles.

fountains in cities could be small 1/4 of the old size tile

you could have small things like icecream stands, markets....

roadworks (road reconstruction) could effect one lane of traffic, and slow vehicles down lots. not necisarily 100% blocking them (more realistic)....

just some ideas and thinking of how a scale change like that could effect gameplay.

Alltaken

[JimboTG]

that would certainly create a more realistic game, imagine a large city with big wide main roads and smaller side streets and buses/trucks overtaking trams, towering buildings and little "props" scattered here and there, imagine downtown toronto, stamp the ottd style on it and youve got a winner IMO

[jungle]

fountains in cities could be small 1/4 of the old size tile

I like that idea... there's nothing more annoying in OTTD than when a town centre is decimated by the building of dozens of outsize fountains.

To shrink down the tracks like this would also allow more possibilities for station design - although it would make the old design of sandwiching two platforms and the track within the normal track width look far too cramped. Plus it could enable the introduction of a new type of track (not wider tracks, but a track with more space around it) for TGV-style fast trains.

All this would be a pretty fundamental change, though, going beyond just graphics. But then the new graphics would require some pretty fundamental changes anyway...