Changed stop generation to use streetnames before naming scheme

[cousjath]

This changes behaviour to match Standard. Extended behaviour before the PR generates stops like Affcot mezzo stop, Affcot axis stop, Affcot east stop, Affcot village south stop etc. This changes to the streetlist instead, which especially when combined with regions gives a greater variety to stop names.

PR is at https://github.com/jamespetts/simutrans-extended/pull/678

[Matthew]

I have never fetched a PR as fast as this one!

OK, that's mainly because I was already on the forum for other reasons, but I am also very bored with the default stop names, especially since some of the magic ones (north/south/east/west) rarely if ever appear, so I end up with every town having X Bridge (even if there isn't a bridge), X Green (even if there isn't any green), etc.

I think it's a matter of preference, rather than right or wrong, but I prefer this patch's behaviour.

BTW there are also changes to the indenting on dozens of other lines in simhalt.cc as well. Was this intentional or was it some kind of IDE feature or linter? It means 'Git Blame' and tools that depend upon on it show this commit as having made the last changes to these lines, which seems suboptimal. I often use such tools to try to search for information here about parts of the code that I don't understand.

[cousjath]

The changes to lots of indentation was unintentional, I told eclipse to reset indentation when a I moved the code, but did it for the whole file instead of just that bit. I've redone the commit with just those lines changed.

[jamespetts]

Hello - thank you very much for your contribution and apologies for not having had time to respond earlier: I have been preoccupied with other matters lately. It is always very good to see new contributions.

The behaviour of using general names first is intentional as it matches reality. The first (or only) railway station in a town is not called "Bigtown Pied Pigeon Street". It's just called "Bigtown". The second station is similarly likely to have a generic name ("Bigtown Central", "Bigtown Road", etc.). Only when the town has lots of different stops and stations do people start having to be more creative with the names (typically using the names of the roads or other nearby features). 

If there were to be a feature like this, it would have to be optional (and off by default). An optional feature would need to write a save state, so the file format would need to be updated. This would need to be verified to work without loss of synchronisation in network mode and be fully compatible with the 15.x branch. I suspect, however, that it may not be worth this effort.

Thank you again for your contribution, however - people taking the time and effort to contribute code is always welcome.

[cousjath]

My reasoning was that bus stops are all named with something as well as the name of the place, even if it is the only stop in the village; i.e. Upperbackwatersthwaite Red Lion, Lowerbackwatersthwaite Post Office. Since I create more bus stops than train stations I prefer the default behaviour being like that, it is easier for me to decide to delete part of a name than stick a street name in later. Even train stations in large cities got extra description when first built, i.e. Manchester Liverpool Road.

[Matthew]

My reasoning was that bus stops are all named with something as well as the name of the place, even if it is the only stop in the village; i.e. Upperbackwatersthwaite Red Lion, Lowerbackwatersthwaite Post Office. Since I create more bus stops than train stations I prefer the default behaviour being like that, it is easier for me to decide to delete part of a name than stick a street name in later. Even train stations in large cities got extra description when first built, i.e. Manchester Liverpool Road.

I agree with this reasoning. In Extended, railway stations are usually built after road and water halts.

That's partly a chronological necessity: if you start from 1750 you can't build passenger railways for another 57 years anyway. And a name like "Bigtown Central" doesn't really fit an 18th century waggonway halt.

And even if you start at a later date, building a railway line without a(n omni)bus or stagecoach network to feed it passengers is a very risky endeavour in Extended's paksets, so experienced players almost invariably build a road network first and that's what they tell newbies to do.

The first (or only) railway station in a town is not called "Bigtown Pied Pigeon Street". It's just called "Bigtown". The second station is similarly likely to have a generic name ("Bigtown Central", "Bigtown Road", etc.). Only when the town has lots of different stops and stations do people start having to be more creative with the names (typically using the names of the roads or other nearby features).

This would have been rational and it's how stations are named today, but it wasn't what happened in 19th century Britain. Look at the very first announcement of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first ever scheduled, inter-city passenger railway (open in a new tab if it's too small to read here):



In the very first paragraph, the termini are immediately identified by street names, "Crown-street" and "Liverpool-road". That's repeated in the Omnibus timetables: the Manchester routes don't terminate at "Manchester station" but at "Liverpool-road station". In the railway timetable proper, the minor stops include "Bury Lane", "Top of Sutton Incline", and other very specific halts.

And this quickly passed into wider usage.E.g. this is from Thomas Roscoe's Book of the Grand Junction Railway, published in 1839:



You can see that Lime Street station, opened only three years before, is already referred to using that name. The only time the book uses "Liverpool Station" rather than Lime Street station is in the label of an illustration, and the index uses "Lime Street Station", not "Liverpool Station". In this screenshot, you can also see a mention of Wavertree Lane, a halt which opened right from the start of the line.

I wonder whether perhaps this pattern of using street names is because the railway stations weren't seen in isolation, but in the context of the existing networks of stagecoach and omnibus stations, which is exactly the same behaviour that would take place in Simutrans if this pull request is accepted.

[jamespetts]

That is some very interesting research - thank you for that. I am wondering in the circumstances how the general names might work in the circumstances - what was the behaviour in the patch for when these would be selected?

[cousjath]

The general names would be used in the same way as in Standard - if there are no streetnames available then it will use the general names.