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New building type: park

Started by jk271, May 21, 2012, 09:20:09 PM

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jk271

Current cities have parks / gardens as places, where citizen can spend their leasure time. Parks consists of trees casting shadow, paths for walking and jogging and  bend where people used to sit down for a while.

There are some buildings that look like a park now. But they are usually marked as residential ("res") or commercial ("com").
Marking park as type="res" causes population increase if park is built.
Marking park as type="com" decreases number of unemployed citizen so less "normal" commercial building will be built.
Both types (ind and res) causes, that park receives mail.

Marking park as monument or curiosity denies player to remove it without usage of "public service" player.

So I suggest an addition of the new building type "park" as a new city building type (among res, ind and com). If city grows, new parks will be created in the same way as residential, commercial and industrial buildings are created now.

Fabio

Not only I totally support this request, but I must confess I was about to suggest it myself several times...

IgorEliezer

I agree. Once I had talked about it before:

Quote from: IgorEliezer on March 28, 2012, 12:42:55 AM
And "A little fountain" (RES_00_06) is not a "Residential house".

The thing is, according to the DAT parameters, citybuildings can be one of these types:

res    residental building
com    commercial building
ind    industrial building
tow    city hall
mon    monument
cur    curiousity buildings
hq    company's headquarter

So, what type, among these, would a park be? Technically, none of these.

Parks, churches, sport fields, leisure clubs, balloon launch fields and other places of public interest are considered "institutional use". Well, at least that was what my Urban Planning teacher told me in Architecture School.

To solve this issue properly, Simutrans should have institutional citybuilding type (perhaps, INS) to be used in DAT files, since parks are not residential nor commercial use buildings.

Ters

I believe parks actually do have people working in them, and sometimes, maybe more often than we like to admit, even living in them. They don't receive much mail, though.

Carl

In Pak64.Experimental I simply made all these buildings curiosities. This allows for control over when they appear (in terms of what size the city has to be in order to get one). The only disadvantage of this is that they're "not really attractions". But that seems like a pretty small downside.

mEGa

I'm agree too because I think park are near reality and also want create them for pak128. So as  jk271 said, I didn't want put them in "cur" objects list.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

jamespetts

In Pak128.Britain, parks are "cur" type buildings, which seems to work.
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jk271

Thank you IgorEliezer for posting link to another thread. I had not considered title "wrong description" to have something common to parks when I was creating this thread.
Institutional buildings should be considered too. There is a lack of building like schools, hospitals etc. in the game.
Both "park" and "ins" should be removable in the same way as residential, commercial and industrial building are. Having parameter built_time will be usefull.
Ther is a problem with "cur" buildings as they can be removed by public player only.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

If this is accepted, could it be possible to make high-end buildings build parks/plazas next to themselves somehow?

Fabio

Maybe overhauling and tweaking city rules...

kierongreen

QuoteMaybe overhauling and tweaking city rules...
This is something I'm thinking of maybe looking at after I've finished current project.

Fabio

#11
You're the man, Kieron! You came back to coding digging much unfinished business... Going on like this I could expect you trying a go also with double tracks ;)

ӔO

I have a question. If one were to increase the number of building types, what other types would be desirable?
Of course, I'm not sure how hard it is to add more than one, but it never hurts to plan for the future.
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various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

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Fabio

I would split res and com in downtown and suburbs.
I would also change that ind which end up in the middle of a city get upgraded to com and res, and new ind are built on outskirts.

Other types could be institutional, and maybe car parks.

Mixed com + res would be nice too, thinking of those buildings with shops on ground floor and flats upstairs (these would add to both households and jobs).

Another nice type would be square, surrounded by roads like the monuments.

It would also be nice to have sparse houses/cottages in the countryside.

And I always dreamt of beach resorts, built without foundations so that they are level with the body of water.

Well, this is a long dream list...

jk271

#14
Following types come currently on my mind:
"park" (parks/gardens ans  squares/plazas)
"institutional" (  schools, hospitals, theatres, fire stations, police stations)
I consider to include parking for cars as another type but it could be to detailed. Take this list as a suggestion for discussion. I expect others to add their suggestions.

I have an another suggestion -  new parameter "number_of_inhabitants" or "inhabitants" to be added to buildings. It would describe maximal number of people, who can live there.
Edit:It would be used with number of inhabitant of city to make a decision to build new building. Secondly today there is now way how to find ou population decrease if you are going to remove some buildings.
Edit 2:

isidoro

Yes.  Parking lots would be very nice to have.  In Pak128-Britain, they are coded as ind.  I like to manually build those around Football Stadiums, but unfortunately they get replaced by other industrial buildings...


Small (related) OT:

Some days ago, when looking at the way vehicles are built in the depot (sometimes you can only add certain types of vehicles to a convoy and not others), I wondered if that is not a very similar problem as city rules, but in two dimensions instead of one dimension.

I'll explain: now buildings (res com ind) are 1x1 tile.  Why not make them nxm tiles with constraints just like vehicles have?  And if we add chances, we have a very flexible mean of doing things like this, for instance:

       
  • A row of identical semi-detached houses
  • A variable shape/variable size park
  • Clusters of skyscrapers
  • Parking lots,...
  • Big squares...
The only (small  :P ) problem I can see is that the logic to place new buildings would be much more complicated, a kind of AI.  But, you know, everything has a price...

Fabio

I just love Isidoro's idea...

colonyan

This is certainly interesting subject matter for me too.

I see clearly that there are certain portion of ST community member have interest in behavior of city growth and its composition/structure.

I think this kind of matter has things to do with many different aspects.
It would be better to share the grand and long term vision and discuss what would be the best way to sort things out.
(Well of course if main coders have any interest or ending up by promoting enough interest for them...)

I will attempt to come up with some idea.
Its interesting how I thought I was thinking about these things usually but when it comes the time to present it,
it is very difficult. Need to think more critically I think haha.




Isaac Eiland-Hall

So... maybe there can be some sort of weighting depending on how central a tile is in the city limits? :-)

mEGa

As Fabio said, I like too this idea.

May be parks and any attractions could get some satisfaction for citizens... So they want to take transportation more..And the city will grow up (As a little philosophy of old Simcity...).
So in fact the player will have to build more transportation network.

Note I have a lot of park projects in my sketches repository ;-)
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

greenling

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Roads

Just a suggestion as it will undoubtedly be a long time before I can be of any help but would y'all think about taking the terrain type in consideration?  It bothers me to see deciduous trees in the desert...

Combuijs

Quote from: Roads on May 25, 2012, 09:34:01 AM
Just a suggestion as it will undoubtedly be a long time before I can be of any help but would y'all think about taking the terrain type in consideration?  It bothers me to see deciduous trees in the desert...

For all buildings a set of climates can (and will) already be specified, so when the pak-maker does his job right, you won't have any nightmares...
Bob Marley: No woman, no cry

Programmer: No user, no bugs



Roads

*laughing*  Combuijs, I dunno if a big old oak tree standing near a cactus is enough to give me nightmares but it is enough to make me destroy the park.  Thanks for the info about the climates.

jk271

I came up to another new type - artificial water area.
A first example of artificial water area: I am not talking about small lakes built in city park but I am talking about a little bigger ones. Such a "artificial lakes" served as a source of water in case of fire and were built usually in the center of village.
Image will be probably more descriptive: http://pruvodce.pod.cvut.cz/pages/kde_co/prehled/p_prehled4.jpg It is NOT a swimming pool.
Second example of artificial water area in the city is a pond where swans and ducks live. Water is deep there. People are walkink or jogging around or sitting on benches and watching birds on the water-table.

colonyan

Ok, I got my thoughts more sorted out.

Possible, Park and Public building type would be better appear on larger cities and town only, considering the size of the tile.
Ideally, good size such as 1X2 or 2X2and up could placed near city central. To do so, cities should have functional central zone area where
larger commercial buildings, noticeable tourist attractions, monuments and main park will be placed. All near city hall.

If we go further we could categorize in
Central Park : near city hall, in the center of the city [large passenger rate]
Residential zone community park : smaller but more numerous [almost no passenger rate]
Green Belt : Authority could designate non development area
Natural preserve(national/provincial park): Current tourist attraction can take care of this.

ӔO

Wouldn't anything larger than 1x1 being placed inside built up areas of the city require a rewrite of the city object placement code?


Greenbelt is interesting. It might also contain archeological dig sites and could probably just reuse the cluster attraction code. If not, it would be simpler just to consider them as an unattractive attraction.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

colonyan

Quote from: ӔO on May 26, 2012, 12:42:57 AM
Wouldn't anything larger than 1x1 being placed inside built up areas of the city require a rewrite of the city object placement code?

Exactly. I had few idea
A. Historical authority/royalty residing city. Has already a castle or palace. Later transform into something else. Prone to attract more population growth and final consumer.
or more
B. Make citybuilding get replaced anyway. Make count the amount of population, got it displaced somewhere else in town.

Ters

Quote from: ӔO on May 26, 2012, 12:42:57 AM
Wouldn't anything larger than 1x1 being placed inside built up areas of the city require a rewrite of the city object placement code?

When cities grow, their city halls can increase in size. From whay I have observed, the city halls try to expand at their present location, but if something other than normal city buildings are in the way, they relocate some place else. Should be possible to reuse some code there.

mEGa

Hi,

I understand and I have already had the same thought.
In my one of game I realized a artificial dam with basic element of Simutrans :
- water river tool to artificial lake
- elevated piece for retaining wall
- solar pond kraftwerk for power generation plant.

so result is not so bad :


But it will better if we design a specific power plant.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Roads

mEGa, this is a terrific screenshot!  I absolutely love the idea of placing a dam on rivers and producing hydro power.  As much as I hate building power lines I might even do that for a dam. :)

prissi

Buildings larger than 1x1 would reuire cityrules searchnig for spaces, i.e. a 1x2 set of cityrules. This is in priciple possible. However, the chances that a 1x2 spot is empty in the middle of a city is almost zero. To have such 1x2/2x1 building feasible, there must be a 1x2 building from the start which is then also renovated appropriately.

One could reuse a lot of code, but this is the only way I would see within the current city expansion code.

jamespetts

I don't know whether a topic split or rename might be a idea here, as we seem to have moved on from simply the question of parks. In any event, if city rules are to be reconstituted, two things might be considerred: firstly, a system wherey develpoment is more likely to occur within the catchment area of good transport links (the better the transport links,the more the development), and secondly, a means of preventing cities from growing out on diagonal roads, then superimposing their grid structures onto those roads, causing a great deal of messy redundancy in the road system (I am not sure whether, and if so how this can be achieved by tweaking existing city rules parameters)
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prissi

IN pak64 standard the cityrules have been tweaked in such a way to prevent outgrowing on diagonal roads mostly (only one of 9 rules with low probabilty at all).

jamespetts

Hmm - but isn't that a somewhat unsatisfactory solution? It's seriously odd for a city to   grow on lateral ut not diagonal roads. Far preferable would be a system of allowing a city to grow on diagonal roads without causing trouble, would it not?
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prissi

The problem is within 3x3 city rule a corner (highly desirable) and a diagonal road are the same. with 5x5 rule you can alleviate this. You just need proper rules for it. (As said, in pak64 [or pak64.german] this was dealt with.)

jamespetts

Hmm, interesting.But is there a way of preserving the diagonal roads and enabling building in the vicinity?
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kierongreen

Prissi has already said: by using 5x5 rules..

jamespetts

I asked because earlier he had written that Pak64 discouraged growing out on a diagonal, rather than allowed it but prevented the diagonal roads becoming messed up by lateral roads (which is what I consider a preferable solution).
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kierongreen

Well you can enable building of houses without enabling building of streets. Something like this rule might cover the case of extending off diagonals

# . . . . . . .
# . . . . . . s
# . . . S . s s
# . . S n s s .
# . . . s s . .
# . . s s . . .
# . s s . . . .

But disabling this completely wouldn't necessarily be desirable

jamespetts

Hmm - that's very interesting. I shall have to look into adapting this rule and the Pak64 rules for Pak128.Britain-Ex. I can't remember off the top of my head - does Pak128.Britain use 3x3, 5x5 or 7x7 rules?
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kierongreen

7x7 from the look of it. I'm giving no guarantee that rule works (and looking at it it might work just as well taking the central 3x3 or 5x5 region) - city rules is something I've never tinkered around with much.

Dwachs

Quote from: prissi on May 26, 2012, 08:07:32 PM
Buildings larger than 1x1 would reuire cityrules searchnig for spaces, i.e. a 1x2 set of cityrules. This is in priciple possible. However, the chances that a 1x2 spot is empty in the middle of a city is almost zero. To have such 1x2/2x1 building feasible, there must be a 1x2 building from the start which is then also renovated appropriately.
Larger buildings not necessarily need new city rules. Buildings larger than 1x1 can be build by upgrading smaller buildings. Just check whether there are smaller buildings in the spot, where the larger one is to be build.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

prissi

And neither of those buildings must be part of another building. Somehow one has to tell the hausbauer-selector what space would be there too for this. But indeed, that would be possible.

Fabio

Regular buildings being bigger than 1x1 would be a dream come true, I really hope to see it in the near future.

As for diagonal roads, I'm pretty pleased of the rules I devised for regular Pak 128. They are interrupted by side roads, but not in a bad way, and imho it's important they are, as you can't build stops on them, so the only way to serve those buildings is to use the lateral roads. All rules are 7x7.

Roads

For some buildings like an upgrade to city hall or a large park, etc., I would like it if the engine simply gave a message like the one for stations being crowded, show an icon for the availability and let the player place the new building on the map.  If the player chose a location that already had buildings, the new building would simply destroy the old.  If the player chose a location where the terrain was unacceptable, or it partially covered another building, he would get the same message as trying to build an industry on unacceptable terrain.

I can only see two problems with this:
Players might consider it too much micro management and you could possibly have many upgrades at one time.

For us who like determining how the city looks as it grows, the micro management is of no consequence.  As for having many upgrades at one time, couldn't they just be queued?

Ters

I don't want to mess with placing city buildings, and sometimes get annoyed by the messages of city hall upgrading, or rather city growth messages, we already got. (Especially the ones that come in a burst to simulate long lasting construction work in pak64.) Though I sometimes retouch cities and other stuff, I try to keep to my position as a transportation company rather than some allmighty god.

Roads

@Ters


I absolutely understand that many, maybe most people who play this game only want to do transportation related tasks.  It is the original intent of the game.  However, through design or accident, the game provides God like abilities for those of us who like that - and you know, it is fun being a God!  8)


Still, to maintain the original intent of the game and in the spirit of the way the game is developing, why not give both groups what they want?  This could be done by giving the engine the ability to auto build everything but with an option (maybe in simuconf) of letting the player decide where he wants the buildings.  Since strictly transportation people seem less concerned with the appearance of the city, perhaps the placement of new buildings would not have to conform to any specific guidelines, just drop them in wherever there is space available.  Some of the things you already do not like could be incorporated in this idea making the game almost or maybe completely non-intrusive to the user.  Just guessing but I'm thinking this would be especially good for internet play - that is, if playing in non-intrusive mode.