More city buildings

[Bear789]

We could then have a set of 1x1 halls for villages, 1x2 for towns and 2x2 for cities.

No, please. This is exactly what I hate about other paksets. It screws up your network as it moves one of the largest passengers attractors outside the catchment area of the existing stations and creates unrealistic situations with the grand town hall in the middle of nowhere. Windley's solution, with the smaller hall building sorrounded by either empty space or other props (maybe city square tiles instead of grass, if you don't like it?), is the best.

[greenling]

I think that better it to Reserved a big place for a cityhall how than the cityhall long time can be stay.

[wlindley]

Yes, there will be four rotations, and snow.  In phase 3, the pool will move to between the two wings before it is replaced by the rotunda in phase 4. Phase 5 will probably have the second storey added to the wings.  And yes, the octagonal rotunda building alone makes an excellent early library, and shall be coded as such.

[jamespetts]

I would like to see a differentiation in game between cities, towns and villages (i.e. how fast they grow...

This is already a feature of Simutrans.

[The Hood]

This is already a feature of Simutrans.

How does it work? Is it purely based on population or are different settlements classified as such for the duration of the game?

No, please. This is exactly what I hate about other paksets. It screws up your network as it moves one of the largest passengers attractors outside the catchment area of the existing stations and creates unrealistic situations with the grand town hall in the middle of nowhere. Windley's solution, with the smaller hall building sorrounded by either empty space or other props (maybe city square tiles instead of grass, if you don't like it?), is the best.

I agree with what you are saying - what I meant before was an extension request to create three classes of settlement which would have the different town hall sizes and grow at different rates. Essentially cities would dominate the local transport but have a range of towns and villages around them with commuter patterns etc. It is somewhat arbitrary however. In any case that would need a code change rather than a pak change, and unless something like that happened, I'm sticking with 2x2 for all town halls.

Yes, there will be four rotations, and snow.  In phase 3, the pool will move to between the two wings before it is replaced by the rotunda in phase 4. Phase 5 will probably have the second storey added to the wings.  And yes, the octagonal rotunda building alone makes an excellent early library, and shall be coded as such.

Are you planning on recreating the existing series of townhalls on your modular approach? If so I'm not quite sure of the benefit unless of course we ever get to rewriting the pakfile format to just count images once rather than for each instance. Can I also suggest having the unfilled squares on the smaller town halls as being pavement or park tiles? I'm thinking town square...

[jamespetts]

How does it work? Is it purely based on population or are different settlements classified as such for the duration of the game?

It is based on population, and affects only growth rate. In Standard, I think, the population thresholds are fixed, but they can be set in simuconf.tab in Experimental. One problem of this system is that, as all towns on the map grow over time, there become more "cities" and fewer "towns" and "villages", distorting the relative patterns.

I plan to abolish this distinction in Experimental (except for the purpose of road types on map generation), and replace it with a system of growth based on transport success rates from particular buildings, which should have the emergent property that larger towns grow faster, as they are more likely to generate passengers that want to make more local (and therefore achievable, within any given time tolerance) journeys.

[greenling]

Hello all
Have the cityhalls in pak128.britain a timeline?

[Bear789]

I agree with what you are saying - what I meant before was an extension request to create three classes of settlement which would have the different town hall sizes and grow at different rates. Essentially cities would dominate the local transport but have a range of towns and villages around them with commuter patterns etc. It is somewhat arbitrary however. In any case that would need a code change rather than a pak change, and unless something like that happened, I'm sticking with 2x2 for all town halls.

Oh, now I understand, sorry. I suppose that that would require some changes in the game code, however. It would indeed be nice if the game could handle towns in a different way, so that some of them are destined to become large metropolis (and maybe have a different range of city attractions and industries too), and other to remain small countryside villages.

It is based on population, and affects only growth rate. In Standard, I think, the population thresholds are fixed, but they can be set in simuconf.tab in Experimental. One problem of this system is that, as all towns on the map grow over time, there become more "cities" and fewer "towns" and "villages", distorting the relative patterns.

Yes, in Standard you can only affect growth. By default, villages have the largest growth factor, capitals the smallest one and cities are somewhat in the middle.

Hello all
Have the cityhalls in pak128.britain a timeline?

This is an interesting observation. Cities founded in modern times could have an office building as city hall. This would however have the old problem that cities start with no historical buildings or attractions if the game start in the modern era.

[jamespetts]

I have to say, I rather favour the idea of having different town halls for different eras. The ones that we have would suit the 18th and early 19th centuries, but we could do with a new red brick edifice (think of Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow's town hall) for the mid/late 19th and early 20th centuries, a concrete monstrosity for the mid 20th century, and a glass and steel structure for the late 20th and 21st centuries.

[Bear789]

Forcing things a bit, modular pieces for a Manchester-like town hall can be reused for attractions and monuments such as the Westminster Palace. And maybe a couple of churches, abbeys and cathedrals older than the ones the pack courrently has.

[gustl]

What about the skyscrapers of London? That would be great

[The Hood]

What about the skyscrapers of London? That would be great

Yes. But of course finding the time to do them is hard. You could try yourself? It's usually quickest to draw something you want yourself rather than wait for me to get round to it  I'm always happy to help and encourage new contributors.

[kierongreen]

My thoughts were to not have skyscrapers in the pak. The reason is that they are so rare in real life, whereas if they were added they would pop up in every city in the game.

[jamespetts]

My thoughts were to not have skyscrapers in the pak. The reason is that they are so rare in real life, whereas if they were added they would pop up in every city in the game.

Unless we modify the city development code...

[Archon]

Ugly apartments looked so lonely so made friend for them:

plan is to make 3 more taller versions to match old apartments after some feedback.

[jamespetts]

Splendid! These look as though they should be introduced a few years earlier than the others:  they seem extra grim by comparison.

[kierongreen]

They do indeed seem (realistically) grim... At times I wish that buildings could graphically decay in Simutrans as surely they'd have looked nice for at least a few years after being built!

[Archon]

 here are taller versions


  --


--


ps. I forgot to remove special colors with shades

[Sarlock]

Those look really nice... I particularly like the balconies.

[jamespetts]

Splendid! Now all that we need is code to simulate them falling down when anybody accidentally leaves the gas on.

[Junna]

Building might need more brown façade for that authentic British atmosphere.

[Archon]

Next tower block
This time I even remembered remove special colors !


-- removed obsolete pic --

[jamespetts]

Splendid! One can almost smell the urine in the lifts.

[Archon]

I changed some textures and rendered last this one again. comes with 9 story version. 11 and 13 story ones will follow.


I really like how this one turned out.

-----------------------------

[wlindley]

Hmm, ...using Experimental's grouping codes, those flats could be accompanied by a matching car-park with a burnt Escort and Onslow's Cortina?

[Sarlock]

Those are wonderful... really nice design and the render came out really crisp.  Add a bit of colour and they might look nice for pak128 as well!

[jamespetts]

Excellent!

[Archon]

Finished 11 story version.

[kierongreen]

Very, very nice!

[Archon]

13 story version finished!

This was supposed to be last tower block but found cute one that I cant resist.

[jamespetts]

Impressive!

[Archon]

shortest version of next set. This turn out almost as good as last one.

[The Hood]

Wow - good to see you back Archon. All these tower blocks leave me thinking - perhaps we need to intersperse some gardens/parking lots of the same passenger level. After all tower blocks like these are never built immediately adjacent to one another but have some space around them. Unless we are now allowed 2X2 citybuildings?

[kierongreen]

Not yet (unfortunately).

[jamespetts]

That does look good. There are discussions about permitting multi-tiled city buildings in Experimental, but this is in the early stages and it might be quite a while before the work is done.