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remove roads near houses & bridge ownership

Started by asaphxiix, February 01, 2013, 02:14:20 PM

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asaphxiix

Hello,

After playing with it for some while, I've decided to protest the inability to disconnect city houses from roads: I find that most times, when a player wishes to remove a road near a house (for terraforming purposes mostly), they also plan on rebuilding it, or another road nearby it. I think it's a good idea to enforce not leaving houses disconnected from road (although not entirely 100% realistic), on a public server for instance, as a rule perhaps - "city houses must stay connected to roads on adjacent tiles (incl. diagonal and height difference)". To help abide this, perhaps a configurable warning can be used whenever a city house is left with no road "house left with no road" - so the player may not ignore the alert but rather ensure reconnection.

In the present state, however, this creates a major, yet not very necessary hindrance on improving city as well as general transportation and layout. The same goal can be achieved with just a warning, assuming players are interested/obligated to heed it.

Another matter - here the issue where city bridges are created as public was fixed in standard. Could this at some point be changed in experimental as well?



AP


wlindley

I hesitate to point out a loophole to the restriction:  The remove road tool lets you remove roads without objection. 

AP

Quote from: wlindley on February 01, 2013, 08:07:00 PM
I hesitate to point out a loophole to the restriction:  The remove road tool lets you remove roads without objection. 
:D

jamespetts

Hmm - I shall have to look into that anomaly with the road remove tool. But, may I ask, can anyone give some examples of where it is necessary to be able to leave buildings disconnected? Is it not usually possible to build the road that you plan to replace the one that you are bulldozing before you bulldoze the old road? Players are of course free to demolish the buildings themselves; but, just as in reality, it should not be too easy (or inexpensive) to build through a city. Without this rule, for example, players could just strip out city roads and replace them with railway lines, building a railway through a densely populated area without having to pay for demolition.
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ӔO

I've noticed a few instances where road connection is not detected correctly, but it's really not a huge issue.
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sdog

Quote from: jamespetts on February 01, 2013, 09:43:22 PM
Hmm - I shall have to look into that anomaly with the road remove tool. But, may I ask, can anyone give some examples of where it is necessary to be able to leave buildings disconnected? Is it not usually possible to build the road that you plan to replace the one that you are bulldozing before you bulldoze the old road? Players are of course free to demolish the buildings themselves; but, just as in reality, it should not be too easy (or inexpensive) to build through a city.

sometimes city roads are stuck at terrain features. to fix terrain below one has to demolish and rebuild over the same part.

second scenario, building an underground railway by digging and covering with elevated way.


Quote
Without this rule, for example, players could just strip out city roads and replace them with railway lines, building a railway through a densely populated area without having to pay for demolition.
my favourite way for large cities :-)

o_O

Cities sometimes need a convenient river crossing, and the only way to make one is invasive surgery on public roads.  I guess its not unreasonable to disallow that, however.  I'm almost certain that cities around where I live intentionally design their roads to be windy with poor conectivity, for the exact purpose of discouraging people from taking shortcuts through side streets or residential areas and encouraging them to drive through commercial areas. 

Which reminds me, would it be possible to allow diagonal bridges or even oddly angled ways like you could place in some of the sim city 4 mods?  I assume no but it would be nice if that were possible. 

jamespetts

Sadly, diagonal bridges would require quite a major code overhaul. Can you give me a screenshot example of the scenario that you described above?
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ӔO

diagonal is possible with elevated ways already. Only catch is that you may need to stack them if you want to span a valley.
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dustNbone

One example I can think of is when I'd like to move the hill section of a road (or an entire intersection) over one tile to make clearance for an elevated track.  In the end the road will still run along the same path, just some tiles will be at a different height, so building the new road first involves demolishing the existing road.  I've also run into the road tile being protected despite not having any building adjacent, on the server game, but it eventually did clear up and allow it, perhaps after a save/load, but I'm not certain.

Dustin

ӔO

If you can't demolish some roads, you can check ownership of roads with ctrl+O.
only unowned roads and your own can be demolished. When a city expands, it may overwrite public owned roads and turn them into unowned.
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greenling

Hello
i have sometimes problems to remove cityroads.
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AP

I think a key problem is that it introduces so much micromanagement. If city editing goes from being a few clicks to a detailed keyhole surgery procedure, just so Mrs Goggins' cottage is never without a road connection during the roadworks, that's a lot of time that might be better spend on more exciting aspects of transport simulation.

Also - preformed roads have a habit of hogging the "best" terrain. Railways in particular (but in future, perhaps canals also) are very altitude/gradient sensitive. Wanting to adjust (and pay for) the realignment of public roads, to enable a level railway, is not unreasonable, but in server games can be very difficult /time consuming if prohibitions are in place (and the public player controlled by others).

I also dispute the notion that every house needs a road connection. In pre-industrial cities, there are often alleys and pedestrian streets leading to houses behind houses. i aim for 4 tiles of houses between each pair of cityroads, whereas the game aims for 2.

VS

What about some liberal application of dynamite to Mrs. Goggins and her neighbours, simulating socially unjust behaviour of transit planners?

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VS

Can't you just destroy the house, if it stops you from reconstructing?

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jamespetts

I think that VS is right - traditionally, if ground level railways were to be built through urban areas, they were built through lower density (poorer) areas, and the buildings demolished. There are no examples so far as I am aware of a ground level railway simply taking the course of an existing road, or roads but not buildings being demolished. The solution if one wants to build a railway through a town is to demolish buildings that get in the way. If one ends up leaving road connected spaces, buildings will grow back. This will accurately simulate the high cost of building through urban areas. This is why most railways avoided built up areas where they could.  The same was true of canals.

The only examples of railways taking the course of roads are either underground or elevated railways (the latter being the American type, rather than the British type, of elevated railways: think of Chicago rather than South London). Cut and cover simulation was considered some time ago, but discarded on the basis that it was too tricky to implement, especially at corners. To simulate the early Underground railways, players should build ordinary rail tunnels, but put stations in a cutting.

The above applies to roads in cities. I have already changed the code so that roads between cities are not owned by the public player when generated, but are unowned and can be demolished by the player. There does need to be a rule for playing on the server, however, that the player must reconnect any road disconnected in such a fashion.

If, incidentally, there are bespoke conditions in which there is a compelling good cause to perform some surgery in a city and slightly alter the layout of the roads without demolishing buildings, a player can always request the public player to do the work. Genuinely good causes for such work are likely to be infrequent, however.
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wlindley

For the record: Several examples in the U.S.A. still exist for mainline railways in the middle of city streets: Jack London Square, Oakland Calif. being a prime example. Numerous others, such as in South Bend, Indiana, were common at one time.  But that is not necessarily something we should encourage in the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki3QCZhacHY

jamespetts

Ahh, but those are tram type ways, built on top of, rather than instead of, town roads. We used to have one in this country, too see this video. This can already be done in Simutrans-Experimental with Pak128.Britain with the heavyweight tramway option.
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waerth

Sometimes (not many) the game thinks wrongly that a house is disconnected from a road and refuses to have a road deleted even though the house will still be connected to a road.

I usually than switch player and delete the road anyways.

It is an irritating thing though. How about if you delete all road connections than the building will become a slum where no one lives after time?

W

ӔO

actually, speaking of railways on roads, I think there can be an earlier heavy tram track. That L&M Railway was built on and along a preexisting road.

From the looks of the pictures, the tracks are directly on the road, instead of having a dedicated path.
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jamespetts

AEO - interesting! Could you direct me to your source? It would not be hard to backdate the track.

Wearth - the system is designed to make sure that the road connecting the building is itself connected to something, which would explain why it is not always straightforward why the roads do not delete. There is no point in having a building "connected" to a single road tile.

Abandonment would require a very large amount of effort to encode, as that would be an entirely new abstraction for Simutrans, which would need coding from the ground up.
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AP

The trouble is, simutrans railway (because of the irresolvable no-double-track-on-a-single-tile issue) hogs a lot of land. And simutrans cities have a high ratio of road to buildings.  Put those two things together and it becomes desirable to demolish the redundant road and keep some buildings, rather than demolish all the buildings.

Railways being built along urban roads in the literal sense is unlikely to have happened because buildings front onto roads. However simutrans buildings do not, I seem to remember, represent a single building, but a cluster of buildings. Interestingly, I recall reading that the LBSCR line into Portsmouth was built on the former canal alignment (it was drained), that's the only precedent I can think of.

jamespetts

It was always rare for railways to be built in heavily urbanised areas - building a railway on a canal alignment happened more than once, however. Railways tended to skirt towns precisely because it would cost too much to buy up and demolish all the buildings.
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AP

And canals, presumably, had already chosen the best level routes, which were ripe for re-use.

jamespetts

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ӔO

Quote from: jamespetts on February 02, 2013, 08:25:25 PM
AEO - interesting! Could you direct me to your source? It would not be hard to backdate the track.

Well, taking a look at the pictures and paintings, it would most certainly seem like they are built on top of roads, despite the area not looking like a station.

In the early history of trains, there certainly are cases in countries, like japan, for trains to be considered 'tracked' road vehicles that ran on roads, much like a tram would.


Quote from: AP on February 27, 2013, 10:00:12 PM
And canals, presumably, had already chosen the best level routes, which were ripe for re-use.

The only thing I would suggest, is that players either remove the entire river/canal that's in their way, or bridge over or tunnel under them, since it's kind of odd that there is a 50~100 tile long river that's been cut off and has no alternate root to the sea or lake.
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jamespetts

AEO - to which pictures and paintings are you referring? Are you referring to tracks embedded in a road which continues in use (which is already possible with the "tramway tracks (heavyweight)" type of way), or are you referring to railways built in the place of a road by removing the road permanently?
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ӔO

I am talking about the tramway (heavy) type. Yes, it's already possible, but I think slight changes should be made, like weight and cost, for an earlier version.
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jamespetts

I see. May I ask - what specifically ought to be changed?
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ӔO

20km/h, 25t, same cost and maintenance as cast iron track would be good, I think.
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