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Flat coasts

Started by Dwachs, September 02, 2013, 08:26:46 PM

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Dwachs

New map generation generates flat coasts, see screenshot. Verified with pak64 and r6670.

Is this intended?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

Yona-TYT


It just me or these lakes do not look good? ???


rounded edges would be much better in my humble opinion ;)

TurfIt

IIRC the existing paks are missing some transition textures that improve the look.
And I still wonder why the automatic creation can create such lakes, but you have to jump through hoops when using the waterlevel tools to manually do the same...

kierongreen

Yes it is intended - if you don't have flat sides to lakes then lakes can never have a river leaving them.

One downside to flat coasts is that you cannot build docks next to them (as there is no slope). I'm still thinking of a way round this.

QuoteAnd I still wonder why the automatic creation can create such lakes, but you have to jump through hoops when using the waterlevel tools to manually do the same...
On my list to do... Got it working for the auto generation, didn't have time to get the tools working quite yet.

Markohs

Quote from: kierongreen on September 02, 2013, 10:13:18 PM
One downside to flat coasts is that you cannot build docks next to them (as there is no slope). I'm still thinking of a way round this.

I noticed this playing the other day, it's a big issue, but can't think of a fix either.

Ters

The lakes only need a flat side where the river is leaving it. It has been a while since I generated a new map now, but back then rivers were usually sunken below the landscape.

IgorEliezer

Quote from: Yona-TYT on September 02, 2013, 08:44:46 PM
It just me or these lakes do not look good? ???
Because it needs flat-shore graphics... maybe. ;)

kierongreen

Rivers are always sunk into the landscape on map generation yes. However it's not as simple as only have a flat side where rivers leave lakes. At the moment rivers don't even actually leave lakes on map generation (since they are always built from hills to water).

Forcing lakes to fill all flat ground next to them would mean that lakes would only be built in very exceptional cases (basically, the way the lake generation algorithm worked until I changed it a few weeks ago). Everyone was then commenting about how they had never seen one on a map. There's also nothing stopping people just setting climate on certain tiles to water and creating their own flat shore lakes.

As to the look of pak64 - slopes and transitions look better in different paks in different circumstances. pak64 looks better than pak128(.Britain) when you have many slopes next to each other. pak128(.Britain) has more rounded transitions which look better in isolation but not so good together.

Ters

I was thinking that lakes should still support flat shores, but that they somehow are sunken into the landscape like rivers, perhaps as a post-processing step. It is meant to solve the problem of building docks, not the visual aspect of the original post.

kierongreen

It should be noted that docks have an issue regardless as current code assumes slope are all the same gradient, whereas now they can be steep or shallow...

Ters

I think it is best if docks require shallow slopes. Normal slopes seem a bit too high, at least in pak64. That's a bit of a break for pak sets that want to use double-height for shallower slopes than they already have, though.

Sarlock

#11
Perhaps the best solution is to allow existing docks to use steep slopes and add the ability to design shallow slope docks with a field in the .DAT file to specify (shallow_slope=1 or whatever).  That way all existing docks are compatible and then paksets can retrofit existing docks as they have time to use a shallow slope configuration instead (which would look awesome).

[EDIT] For pak128 the docks are mostly ready to go actually, just need the back part of the dock redrawn to mesh with half height tiles instead of full height.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Leartin

Why not allow docks on flat shores as well? It should be possible to create them with dims similar to city buildings, always facing the water instead of the street. Which might work for other docks as well, enabeling docks on corners - why not? (except for, you know, someone would have to code it, obviously)

Ters

Quote from: Sarlock on September 04, 2013, 06:07:50 PM
Perhaps the best solution is to allow existing docks to use steep slopes and add the ability to design shallow slope docks with a field in the .DAT file to specify (shallow_slope=1 or whatever).  That way all existing docks are compatible and then paksets can retrofit existing docks as they have time to use a shallow slope configuration instead (which would look awesome).

[EDIT] For pak128 the docks are mostly ready to go actually, just need the back part of the dock redrawn to mesh with half height tiles instead of full height.

I just wanted to discourage double-height docks. Compatibility is needed, but shallow slope should be the default, at least for pak sets which choose to use double height for steeper slopes rather than shallower slopes. Most pak64 docks are also easy to convert.

Quote from: Leartin on September 04, 2013, 06:30:37 PM
Why not allow docks on flat shores as well? It should be possible to create them with dims similar to city buildings, always facing the water instead of the street. Which might work for other docks as well, enabeling docks on corners - why not? (except for, you know, someone would have to code it, obviously)

When building on slopes, the slope dictates the direction. Without any slope, Simutrans might have nothing indicating direction. If there is just one neighboring water tile, there is no problem, but there can be up to four, although three is the realistic limit.

sdog

#14
Quote from: Ters on September 04, 2013, 08:41:17 PM
When building on slopes, the slope dictates the direction. Without any slope, Simutrans might have nothing indicating direction. If there is just one neighboring water tile, there is no problem, but there can be up to four, although three is the realistic limit.
Just have the quay side on all four sides of a tile. And do it on standard platform height. an adjoining platform tile would just cover the side not used.

This could be slope independent like the base of buildings. Such that if it is built on a flat tile, it looks like a typical empty concrete slab. If extended it uses it's own base image, seamlessly blending with the side of its tiles. Artists could create something like in the image below (without the step for double height):



from the thread: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=11531.50


empty station extension building from pak128, just a concrete slab with height of a platform tile.

[edit] replaced first image with one showing only what i tried to point out

Ters

I was thinking of docks with piers or ferry ramps. They won't look good four sided, and for the former there is also a matter of cost.

sdog

For pak128 there seemed to be a consensus to move away from piers that protrude into the ocean in favour of docks that align with the coastline. This is mostly due to ships being at right angles to the piers and clipping into them The other reason might have been size, with ships exceeding the tile length in pak128.

The requirements are of course completely different for other pak-sets.

But perhaps it might be enough to provide the piers and ramps for slope tiles, and allow for flat beaches only the type comming into fashion with pak128. That would be an easy sollution that would only slightly inconvenience the traditional pier like dock style while it would be easy to implement. (just graphically)

kierongreen

Providing 3 images for the first tile of the dock for each of the 4 rotations is probably the way to go I think. Some of these could be optional to disable building on that slope type.

At the moment for docks dat entries are:
BackImage[rotation][ x ][y][height][animation][season]

number of rotations can be either 4 or 16 to give docks with graphics dependent on neighbours. x (I think maybe y) controls how many tiles a pier extends into the water. y is unused. height and animation may be used by various paks

What I would suggest would be to have 4, 8, 12, 16, 32 or 48 rotations for each dock. I don't suggest to use y because this would complicate hausbauer.
4 or 16 rotations would only allow docks to start on single height slopes
8 or 32 rotations would allow docks to start on single or double height slopes
12 or 48 rotations would allow docks to start on flat tiles, or single or double height slopes

While 12 or 48 rotations sounds like a lot, graphics for tiles other than the start would be identical for different slopes most likely, and the graphics for flat/single/double slopes would likely be very similar.

Dwachs

Tbh I do not like these flat shores. Too late to complain, of course.

Would it hard to change the map generation to generated sloped shores as we are used to ? Maybe with a configuration setting, to help old non-double-height aware paksets.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

prissi

I am very much with Dwachs. Also for pak64 I will go for double heights actually twice the height and single heighs as before. So steep shore, but higher mountains. Still it would not require a double height harbour.

kierongreen

Fine alter the code however you want.

TurfIt

Unless manually created, the flat shores are only adjacent to lakes. Would it make sense to just flood the lakes one less? The you'd still have sloped shores, and rivers are created one level lower than the surrounding terrain anyways, so they could join the lake flat.

kierongreen

So half of people say one thing, half of people say another. I do one thing, one group complains. I do another, other group complains. Really can't be bothered with this.

INJMVO

If you don't want the lake "flat" flat how about making the edges of the lake a different tile with a 3 pixel border like the channels?
On the topic of the harbors you could use the channel stop (they have a 3 pixel height) maybe for 3/4 of a tile instead of only the side?
PS if your working on the harbor code we have some ideas in the harbor thread (which died because of the same reason kieron green :P )

Carl

The flat lakes will surely look fine once transition textures are added to the paksets.

Sarlock

I like the flat lake edge look, personally.  I think it could be easily improved graphically by the paksets, as Carl suggests.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Ters

For the record, I believe in the idea of flat lakes myself, especially for pak sets that don't have shallow slopes. I'm just thinking about the nature of different types of shores, as well as the interface for building on them.

Sarlock

Docks/harbours could be restricted to being built on slopes only, as they are now, until an eloquent solution is devised.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

walsjona

I tend to agree with Sarlock and others, flat shores are not uncommon in real life and impose very real restrictions on what can and can't be built. I'm thinking of places like Morecambe Bay and the Wash and perhaps the Bristol Channel for instance. While I appreciate that these places are tidal, there are many areas allong the shore that are simply too flat and shallow to make any form of Harbour (particularly for large ships) fessible regardless of Tide. Even around much of the british coast line there is a flat beach of some description seperating the main land from the sea and which has neccesitated the construction of Piers in most coastal towns. In general (and this is a very very broad sweeping rule) if the coast drops straight into sea then a ship probably can come right up to shore but if the beach drops gradually (flat coast) then certainly large ships can't get very close at all.

INJMVO

But then you would have the problem of explaining to new players, why they cant build stops on the lake near the lumber mill but can build on the small river that's next to it

Sarlock

The tool already gives a "docks must be built on a single-sloped tile" error when tried to be built anywhere but a slope, this error message would just pop up in the case of someone putting a dock on a flat shoreline.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Leartin

What about docks that don't have a fixed length but are variable, and have to be buildt by click&drag, like it is possible with bridges? A length parameter could state how many tiles any given dock might reach into the sea, where length=0 defines a single-tile dock. This would give a lot of freedom to the user, where docks could be buildt on corners, too. However, it wouldn't be exactly compatible with older versions... (well... but they are incompatible with flat shores and half heigths as well, so it shouldn't be too bad)