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Max level of buildings

Started by Fabio, October 01, 2012, 10:24:48 AM

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Fabio

Currently all city buildings have a max level of 60.
I would change that according to the building type:

RES: 60
nothing changes, there is now a good variety of high level buildings.

COM: 80
so far nothing changes, but we might plan more downtown verticality for the future with a new set of highrises.

IND: 40
presently there are only 20 buildings with level > 40. This gives bad industrial areas in big and huge cities. Additionally, in real life industrial areas span a wider area and don't have many pax traffic apart from workers (which in Simutrans anyway go also to real factories).
Hence I suggest to downgrade those 20 buildings to levels 39 and 40 (10 each level). I could recode them if agreed.

greenling

Fabio
What want you exchange by the Buildings of Industries?
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Sarlock

#2
There is no technical limitation for having buildings set at a maximum of 60 is there?  I agree with lowering the industrial level, industrial areas are not dense vertically, only horizontally, and thus have a fairly low density per square km.  Even 40 is probably being generous.

With a standardized scale of ~15 +/- 1-2 pixels per story and a maximum building height of roughly 450 pixels high (512 pixels maximum height less 64 for the roof grid), our theoretical building height maximum is around 30 stories.

Since we've set a 10-12 story building to be a level 60 residential block, we could argue that 10-20 story buildings should be in the 60-80 range and 20-30 story buildings be in the 80-100 range.  How this impacts passenger and mail flow is for a different calculation, keeping it at 60 may be prudent for not overloading networks (I haven't played a game yet with a very dense level 60 residential zone).  We don't have any (at least to scale) 13+ story residential buildings at this point, so it's not that important, but good for future planning purposes.  There are some excellent looking highrises from the Japan Pak128 Addons site, but they are not to vertical scale as we have set it for Pak128.

I fully endorse the commercial increase and would really like to see some nice highrises in the 15-20 story range that properly fit the Pak128 scale.  One thing that is really missing from larger cities is a compact commercial core with high-rise office towers.  Commercial office towers are the tallest buildings in most cities' downtown cores.  How buildings that high would look in a concentrated area in the game is another consideration.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Fabio

Quote from: Sarlock on October 01, 2012, 07:38:11 PM
There is no technical limitation for having buildings set at a maximum of 60 is there? 

I reply to this and agree with the rest ;)

The technical reason to cap levels is that having few buildings in the top 1-2 levels will produce metropolis with ONLY those few buildings downtown, as any lower one gets upgraded. Hence, the top 2 levels for each building type must have at least 15-20 individual buildings. As I said I see 60 as a good cap for RES.
Commercial could go up to 80 (maybe even 100) provided we can paint at least:
20 level 100
20 level 90
20 level 80
20 level 70
for a total of 80 new buildings (going in steps of 10 levels).
I wish to see office towers as well.
For IND, I said 40 because it would affect only 20 existing buildings and be a conservative change.
Otherwise, maybe 25-30 would be even better.

Sarlock

I guess we can put painting 20+ level 70 commercial office buildings on the "to-do" list :)
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

Will it blend work? I mean...

1) Won't higher levels overwrite buildings of other type?

2) Apart from that, I have no problems with this proposal, but one has to understand that level ≠appearance ≠ height. Does it actually "do" anything?

3) There are two costs to this - buildings will have to be releveled & renamed, AND, there will be some work with translations since we want to keep them. (According to prissi, name must include level for some hardwired things, even if it has never been documented.)

If #1 and #2 are ok, no problem with #3 ;)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Fabio

I see 2 advantages with downgrading ind buildings:
A) appearance: there are few higher levels, lowering those will immediately give more variety.
B) gameplay: ind areas will produce less pax and will be cheaper to bulldoze, like in real world the player would be incentived to build infrastructural nodes there.

As for your doubts, I'm positive ind can only be upgraded with ind and so on, but I would like to hear it from some dev as well. If it weren't like this, anyway in real world often as the city grows industrial areas are converted to residential or commercial and industries are relocated elsewhere.

VS

Well... ok? (For some reason, writing this reminds me of Werner :) )

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

prissi

If industrial levels end much faster than com, all industrial areas in the expensive "high level" areas are replaced by coms. May be close to reality, but at least I would like to mentioned this. Thus any industrial areas will be in the outskirts.

Fabio

Thank you Prissi for pointing this out!  Actually IMHO it would be a very positive side effect, definitely worth the trouble of implementing this idea.

Sarlock

Thanks for the info, Prissi, good to know!

I'll think about this for a bit and see whether it's something that is desirable... actually, what might be best is to make a test model pak to see how this would actually look in a big city.  Shoving the IND to the outside might look good, allowing the city core to densify with RES and COM.  The same happens with most urban areas, except for maybe high tech industrial parks and things... but even those tend to be outside the main urban core.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Fabio

Plus some high tech laboratory could be coded as com, or even better as an attraction. Even as a factory, producing pharmaceuticals or bio engineered products requiring special nitrogen cooled vans for transport.

Factories will remain in place, ind warehouses will be relocated, this happens in most cities.

Till the 60s com and ind can share max level, then office towers and retail shopping centers will break the wall and replace older downtown industrial buildings.

Sarlock

#12
"high tech laboratory could be coded as com" "Till the 60s com and ind can share max level, then office towers and retail shopping centers will break the wall and replace older downtown industrial buildings."

I really like that idea... and high-tech factories as well.  I also like the idea of diversifying current goods options: Have a high-tech electronics factory consume some of the already existing goods types: electronics, piece goods, etc.  This doesn't require any more feedstock industries, just gives more options for the end consumer.

This could create a really nice urban effect through the 60's-90's as this transformation takes place.

[EDIT]

I made a modified industrial pakfile where I lowered everything to level 30 and below.  Then I ran two scenarios:

1) I ran with an open city and let it sprawl.  I got to over 2,000,000 citizens and the industrial areas would not be overcome by the commercial areas.  The city just grew and grew and grew until it was truly massive.  The core was all level 60 residential and commercial buildings but the industrial wasn't touched.
2) I confined a city to a set area that it couldn't grow past.  When it got to about 80,000 citizens and all res and com were maxed out around level 60, it then suddenly consumed the industrial area and made it in to commercial.

This concludes that commercial really only takes over lower level industrial when the city is really confined and can't grow outward.

If you want to play with my modified industrial set, just download this:

http://www.elvenorder.com/simutrans/tests/newind.pak

Remove all of your old industrial from the pakset (all the .pak files named building.IND_XX_YY) and use the newind.pak instead.  It has all of the same industrial buildings as before, just with the levels lowered (but the same original number so it'll run on a previous saved game)
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

greenling

I think that Lo tech factory not die out. it gives things they can not packing by a robot.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Sarlock

You're absolutely right, greenling.  It just gets displaced out of the modern urban dense areas and closer to the edges of the city where land is cheaper.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

greenling

Yes but it gives as well Lo tech factorys in high price areas.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Fabio

Quote from: VS on October 17, 2012, 05:54:01 PM
3) There are two costs to this - buildings will have to be releveled & renamed, AND, there will be some work with translations since we want to keep them. (According to prissi, name must include level for some hardwired things, even if it has never been documented.)

Quote from: Dwachs on November 10, 2012, 01:13:14 PM
It should be possible to rename objects, translations are kept iirc.

Quote from: Frank on November 22, 2012, 08:01:23 PM
yes, for Maintainter and Co-Maintainter ( 2 for set )



So, in the end, I think we can proceed downgrading industries to level 30.
One of the biggest issues has been properly addressed.