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Started by Spike, January 26, 2012, 11:44:15 PM

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prissi

One could indeed remove the city and factory stuff from the sarting window and just have a setting like dense map, normal map, sparsely populated, and lave those numbers to extended settings)

Same could be a flat, hilly, mountanious setting.

build river (number probably similar to no of towns)

Many forest, some trees, no trees

Old versions had a city density settings, but this confused even more players.



jamespetts

I'm not sure that removing options entirely from the in-game GUI is a good idea, as this would stop players from being able to make changes to the games that will be saved with them at all. Rather, and I think that this was the intention of the original topic, it would be better, if possible, were these settings to be labelled more clearly. Plain language names for the settings would help, perhaps with tooltips saying something like, "'some_or_other_setting' in simuconf.tab" to show players the correlation between settings files and the advanced settings.

Additionally, it would be sensible if the "settings" button were re-labelled "advanced" as suggested by Carl and others.
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wlindley

For the number of cities and rivers and things, one numeric setting.  This corresponds to the _area_ (number of tiles) per object..  That would be simple for the program to compute based on map size, and simple for the user.  But what to call it?

Fabio

Industry_density, river_density, cities_density, etc in simuconf and in advanced.
Instead of current absolute values, we set it as a proportion of map area.

For new world dialog there would be a further multiplier Urbanization level (with a slider) by which cities number and size, chains number and attractions number is multiplied.


prissi

Those density we had in the past and it caused the most frequent questions (together with why is my electric train not finding a route). Thus not going back to that.

sdog

i remember it took me quite a while to get an idea what numbers fit a medium sized map well.

Prissi, was the density itself the difficulty, or the way it was transported? Do you think something as outlined below would cause a similar confusion?

At the world generation screen there would be a few settings only, named as you suggested "dense map, normal map, sparsely populated". Changing those or map dimensions would change the number of cities and median city size (which are accessible in a landscape settings menu, and could be overridden by the player.)

sdog

#41
accidental double posting

prissi

If you would have read my post before than this was exactly my suggestion.

An_dz

stop_pedestrians & random_pedestrians are in Video Options.

stop_pedestrians show pedestrians when a pax vehicle get in a stop and passengers get out of the vehicle.
random_pedestrians show pedestrians walking in the city. Randomly, anywhere in the city.

I'll check this dialog and might give some ideas.

sdog

Quote from: prissi on February 02, 2012, 09:54:52 AM
If you would have read my post before than this was exactly my suggestion.

I did, i quoted you from there. It was not clear however, if the subsequent post where you said that density was confusing refered only to using density and writing it in the dialogue or if density is always problematic even when transported with simple terms. That's why i asked for clarification.

prissi

Ok, sorry, apart from heightmap size, i would imagine some comboboxes to choose from:

densely populated|medium populated*|rural population|no cities|custom

dense nodustries|few industries*|industry when growing|no industries|custom

tropical|temperate*|arctic|custom (the last will keep previous settings)

mountanious|hilly*|netherlads|flat|custom

dense forests|few forests|sparse trees|no trees|custom

river checkbox (number of rivers would be close to the nubmer of towns)

beginner mode

"custom" will be shown whenever the default values were changed. Do you get my idea?

Combuijs

Comboboxes sound good to me. Two remarks about it (apart from missing starting money  :) ):

1) with "netherlads" you probably mean "netherlands", and while I feel honoured, I think "lowlands" is the correct english word

2) "dense nodustries|few industries*|industry when growing|no industries|custom". What will be the initial industry density when you have "industry when growing"? I have the feeling these are really two settings:

"dense industries|few industries*|no industries|custom" and
"extra industries when growing | no extra industries when growing|custom"

But maybe I'm making things complicated already?
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Fabio

VERY nice idea!

But I honestly don't get the relation between number of cities and number of rivers.

Rivers should IMHO be related to map size.

E.g. default now is IIRC
map size: 640x640
rivers number: 16
16/640=0.025

Take the smallest from either map height or map width and multiply it for 0.025


number_of_rivers=round(min(height,width)*k)

The option could read:
dense rivers|medium rivers|few rivers*|no rivers|custom

Dense would be 0.1
Medium would be 0.05
Few would be 0.025

So on a 640x640 map
Dense would be 64 rivers
Medium would be 32 rivers
Few would be 16 rivers

On a 384*384 map
Dense would be 38 rivers
Medium would be 19 rivers
Few would be 10 rivers

On a 1024*1024 map
Dense would be 102 rivers
Medium would be 51 rivers
Few would be 26 rivers

prissi

I my experiements the same number of rivers than cities (i.e. sqrt(x*y)/16) ) gave reasonable looking rivers also on larger maps.

Fabio

I get it.
The problem is: IMHO rivers are nicer and more important in countriside (so, less cities), less in a densely urbanized area. And I might want a map with no cities: would I get no rivers as well?

So, giving your sqrt(x*y)/16 formula, could at least be chosen if I want that number (few rivers) or double that (dense rivers)?
And might the formula be something like max(16,number of cities)? At least also with no cities I would still have my 16 rivers.

sdog

256 cities for a 1024**2 map seems quite a good number


Fabio

Ah, NOW I get it... It's not rivers the same number as cities, but using the same algorithm!

Still I would keep the choice dense (double), medium (=) and few (half) that number.

prissi

When sizing a map in 5242 or higher, it will also increase the number of cities, industries and attractions. You can still alter them though. (As a first step towards more newby firendliness.)

sdog