Bored programmer

[Markohs]

 I'm just bored and I fancy coding, for some time.

Simutrans player, what new feature whould you like to be in the game? It can be a small detail, or a big one.

Let's talk about it. I promise coding and incorporaing it into the game as long as prissi and the rest of developers allow me to got into our game.

This can be some aspect of the game you find disgusting, or boring, or limited. Something you don't like on the game and you feel like it needs to be improved or added.  Our current coders do an excelent job in keeping our game stable and working, I'm asking you for something new. I'm not an artist, just a coder, ask me for something our pak creators/mantainers can't do.

Go ahead. Discuss. Or it's the game perfect as it is?

[colonyan]

EDIT: Most of thing here can circumvented or not so important as current game mechanism is mostly working fine. But I see what it could be better and
          potentially opens up new possibilities.

Well, first of all, industry chain placement handling. Often, they can be too high densely positioned. I want to see some better way to handle that.

Second. Game got residential, commercial and industrial city building but they are purely aesthetic. They surely have different pass/mail distribution but
I firmly believe no one actually care about it and treat them as same city building. Game could use some new mechanism on that.

Third. I want to cities to behave, that means grows different manner one from another. They ALL share same rules.

Fourth. Game mechanism wise consistent city car. What about them being more seriously have meaning and treated as something to be respected in stead of
some clash-able bug?

I hurried an enumerated few but those are my current urges about simutrans.

[Markohs]

Ellaborate more, please.I'd love to see your ideas. Abouth fourth it's hard to adress that if we don't have mechanisms like Simcity has related to way density.

EDIT: Third is iinteresting, I see it is a growth factor, how whould you model than? I see it as multiplier  (100% is normal growth rate), how whould you'd decide wich cities grow faster that that rate and wich ones grow slower?

EDIT2: Abuth first suggestion, whound't it be better fo focus it on not just a city industrial demand, but a global zone industrial demand? To spread intustiries more, and to have a cap on how much a "world" needs. Why can't multiple small cities spawn industry chains? Why does a big city spawn so many industries?

[colonyan]

Ellaborate more, please.I'd love to see your ideas. Abouth fourth it's hard to adress that if we don't have mechanisms like Simcity has related to way density.

I'm currently trying to wrap up my ideas. It's been nearly two years since last time I posted anything here... (minecraft, simcity2013, rts, turnbased games)
and yet I came back... I will be posting within next few hours.

[Markohs]

I'm currently trying to wrap up my ideas. It's been nearly two years since last time I posted anything here... (minecraft, simcity2013, rts, turnbased games)
and yet I came back... I will be posting within next few hours.

It's a shame Simcity 2013 is limited to so small zones, I bought that game too, to test it. It's very interesting, but it's bad, compared to Cimcity 4, imho. Graphics are *REALLY* cool, imho. I really love that modular buildings too. And the agent idea is pretty cool too, in the game engine, but looks like it's not scaling  good enough. It's a shame Simutrans is so different to that game, the only aspect of the game I can see applicable to that, it's tree forests.

[colonyan]

More and more I play simutrans, more and more I believe that simutrans is ultimate simcity.
Simutransians build them selves. In simcity, you had to manage fire, police, health and education but those were all illusion of governance.
In any non direct construction game (simcity: zoning and road network, simutrans: transportation) all it matter is
SIZE and Freedom of Map. Freedom is how much you can freely interact with things you can not control directly such as actual development)

Maybe this is from because of my perception but when I really enjoy is... current look of development of the map I'm playing on.
Combination of what I've done directly(network size/shape/function/efficiency) and what's done indirectly (city rule city development).
As long as game kept providing new scenery, it kept amuse me.
Similar to minecraft. Minecraft first provides player with (world, block types, tools, items, etc) and achieve directly (buildings and construct also wealth accumulation).

well simcity2013 all it was wrong about is maxis didn't understood what people really found fun. No perfect simulation was
really necessary. or it was less important than player can create city scape in large scale. Other than that, it was city tycoon.

Ok, back to brain storming...

[colonyan]

EDIT2: Abuth first suggestion, whound't it be better fo focus it on not just a city industrial demand, but a global zone industrial demand? To spread intustiries more, and to have a cap on how much a "world" needs. Why can't multiple small cities spawn industry chains? Why does a big city spawn so many industries?

This could be more like originating from pak setting and config setting. It could be also very subjective to determine if it feel odd/clamped about the positioning of the industry. But I can say that industry buildings shouldn't spawn like bubble manner. Its really.... not natural. Feels very artificial to me. All industry chain should use map space fully.

=Frame of Idea=
In any country, some place is more affluent than other. Wealth is not distributed equally. Some cities end up being mediocre, some will grow , not only large but wealthy.
In certain city group, certain cities will be more like residential suburb, other will be industrial power house. Cities will be different and thus the how player should serve them.
But game will provide hint on what they will become based on historical building such as palace, cathedral, school, temple, lord castle/mansion, craftsman guild and surrounding environment.

This was an example. But in generally I want chain industry and city RCI buildings to interact more closely together to create more varied behavior instead of a series of same cities of
different initial population. I will come back again and post more concrete ideas.

[Ters]

Industrial placement is also something I find lacking. There is a long discussion on this topic somewhere on this board.

[Spenk009]

Something like http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10235.0?

Industry placement is too random. Naturally some industries are placed strategically (higher skilled factories in cities, power stations near cities, lower skilled factories near rivers, etc.)

If the code would support industries to have flags set in terms of proximity to features like cities, forests (all the wood industry), water, and/or mountainous areas, we could have industries where they would be expected. Additionally, this can be expanded into the attractions when specific buildings want specific places.

[gauthier]

automatic spacing of convoys along a line or any mecanism to avoid stupid bunching ... this would be useful
It has been discussed in a thread about comparing ST and OTTD so you will find ideas there to implement a such idea.

[Leartin]

Second. Game got residential, commercial and industrial city building but they are purely aesthetic. They surely have different pass/mail distribution but
I firmly believe no one actually care about it and treat them as same city building. Game could use some new mechanism on that.

Third. I want to cities to behave, that means grows different manner one from another. They ALL share same rules.

How about linking the spawn of city industry and tourist attractions to the three areas, and vice versa? Some ideas how this could work:

• Place city industry next to industrial city buildings, tourist attractions next to commercial city buildings
• Allow the city industry/city attractions to specify where they spawn (which zone)
• If there is a city industry, build more industry building. If there is a city attraction, build more commercial.
• Allow attractions to be buildt based on number of inhabitants per zone, not total. Same for city industry (so a giant shopping mall won't appear in a small village)
• Decide which kind of building to build before the placement (I think right now a spot is chosen, then an appropriate building for that spot. This would not work with most ideas here)
• Link city building rules to zone, so different zones may behave differently when building the city.

About those who complain about too small simcity, ever heard of this? https://www.paradoxplaza.com/cities-skylines

[Ters]

automatic spacing of convoys along a line or any mecanism to avoid stupid bunching ... this would be useful
It has been discussed in a thread about comparing ST and OTTD so you will find ideas there to implement a such idea.

Might not be a good idea for a programming task, since there is no agreement on how such a thing should work. (Or maybe not even that it can work.)

[The Hood]

Here's another idea. Change the code for "civic" buildings like hospitals schools parks etc which are coded as attractions at present. In a real city the number if schools depends on population so bigger cities have more. In simutrans the city can build the attraction once per city as long as the population exceeds a minimum value. I'd like to assign each civic building to a type (like City building clusters now) and the City would build a new building from that type every so many people e.g. Every 5000 population. That way a large City could build more parks and schools than a small one.

[killwater]

There is a nice, old challenge awaiting - real two lane ways with working intersections. Just saying.

Other than that I second the better industry placing algorithm with a little addition of clustering raw materials industries like mines in some areas simulating mineral deposits locations as mentioned in other threads.

[gauthier]

Might not be a good idea for a programming task, since there is no agreement on how such a thing should work. (Or maybe not even that it can work.)

So let's find an agreement now

[jamespetts]

If you fancy a change from working on Standard, here is a list of outstanding projects for Experimental. Even one or two of those should keep you busy for the duration.

[wlindley]

How about a List of Monuments, or being able to see monuments in the List of Tourist Attractions.  Does anyone know why these are handled so differently in the code?

[Ters]

How about a List of Monuments, or being able to see monuments in the List of Tourist Attractions.  Does anyone know why these are handled so differently in the code?

Monuments are made to honor contributors, and are globally unique, probably so that they everyone will eventually be equally honored. Tourist attractions are just unique within a town, if even that.

[jamespetts]

One useful set of changes for Standard would be to alter the way in which road stops work to allow vehicles to overtake stationary vehicles waiting at the stops, and to allow terminal road stops to accommodate two vehicles at once, rather than only one as at present.

[IgorEliezer]

I'm just bored and I fancy coding, for some time.

This gonna be good.

* IgorEliezer grabs popcorn.

[DrSuperGood]

I would advise revising either growth or adding a convoy type list with planner.

[Markohs]

Wow lots of nice ideas! The two lane avenue... I forgot about that one! I think it ended in nothing, maybe it's time to see why it was abandoned. Industrial placement is also a nice task to improve, or even taking a feature from experimental to starndard. I'll think about all of this.

What I maybe see as more feasible is the industrial placement, and the item menctioned about monuments, let's see.

I also like james comment on vehicles at stops.

[Sarlock]

A bit different than the list provided so far:

Adding alpha channel to graphics.  It would give the graphics a light year advance and would make the game look amazing with an alpha channel enabled pakset.  Paksets like pak128.Britain could be very quickly converted to add the alpha channel as it is all 3D renders - just have to re-render each graphical item and compile as a 32 bit PNG = 24-bit+8-bit alpha.

Add a box to Options to enable alpha channel (for those people who have systems that can't/won't handle the extra processor load) and then go nuts... you'd probably have to drop the low level assembly stuff with this option enabled, though I think it has been shown that it has little impact on modern processors anyhow.

Not sure how hard it is to implement, but it would be an amazing visual addition to the game.  Especially for road vehicles and trees.  I'm drooling just thinking about it

[Ters]

A bit different than the list provided so far:

Adding alpha channel to graphics.  It would give the graphics a light year advance and would make the game look amazing with an alpha channel enabled pakset.  Paksets like pak128.Britain could be very quickly converted to add the alpha channel as it is all 3D renders - just have to re-render each graphical item and compile as a 32 bit PNG = 24-bit+8-bit alpha.

It would kill performance unless Simutrans is pretty much remade from the beginning.

Add a box to Options to enable alpha channel (for those people who have systems that can't/won't handle the extra processor load) and then go nuts...

That won't work. Graphics made with alpha channel would look like crap without alpha blending. Even checking whether the switch is on or off can kill performance.

[Yona-TYT]

A bit different than the list provided so far:

Adding alpha channel to graphics.  It would give the graphics a light year advance and would make the game look amazing with an alpha channel enabled pakset.  Paksets like pak128.Britain could be very quickly converted to add the alpha channel as it is all 3D renders - just have to re-render each graphical item and compile as a 32 bit PNG = 24-bit+8-bit alpha.

Add a box to Options to enable alpha channel (for those people who have systems that can't/won't handle the extra processor load) and then go nuts... you'd probably have to drop the low level assembly stuff with this option enabled, though I think it has been shown that it has little impact on modern processors anyhow.

Not sure how hard it is to implement, but it would be an amazing visual addition to the game.  Especially for road vehicles and trees.  I'm drooling just thinking about it

I agree with you ... it's an excellent idea !!


But I believe that hardware acceleration is needed, right ?.

[jamespetts]

Won't anybody think of the pakset maintainers? It'd take months to re-render all of the Pak128.Britain .blends...

[colonyan]

"industry_increase_every ="
Instead of counting up for every single city, how about making it a global?
Increase industry (final consumer) every 2000 population as whole map? Also possibly add additional counter like X+nY.
2000, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2400.
_____
Also how about determine total map consumption from population base?
Let's suppose each 1k population consume 1point worth of freight every month.
Next determine how much this 1point would worth.
For example, 500t of coal consumption could be 1point. (Not counting power station)
Game will generate, for each 1k population increase, 1point worth of new consumption line.
1point can be determined by pak designer as anything. It could be 1000L wine or 10 vehicle.

EDIT-ADD:
Also allow more smaller increment per consuming freight type. If gas station sells fuel,
allow it to increase 100L increment. Up to pak designer's chosen building max capacity.

[jamespetts]

Something similar has been in Experimental since about 2010; look for "industry_density_proportion" in the code.

[colonyan]

Something similar has been in Experimental since about 2010; look for "industry_density_proportion" in the code.

Is this per population freight consumption? Is it helping controlling the build up of industries?

[jamespetts]

Is this per population freight consumption? Is it helping controlling the build up of industries?

It is population per 1/[industry density], where [industry density] is the sum of the distributionweight of all industries on the map.

[dschr]

Hey,

as James already stated: there are many open projects at simutrans experimental and i am sure that you could achieve a lot here. I did some testing in the past and would offer you to test your code as well as to introduce you to the current projects if you'd like to.

[Ters]

This just in: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=14247.msg40919

[Yona-TYT]

This just in: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=14247.msg40919

Hehe ... Maybe I should put this here. 

[An_dz]

There's a request everybody has made but nobody has done. Change transformers from special type to building. It's really simple but nobody has got the time for it, maybe you could do it now before going into those adventurous tasks.

If you fancy a change from working on Standard, here is a list of outstanding projects for Experimental. Even one or two of those should keep you busy for the duration.

Cleaver move James.

And the agent idea is pretty cool too, in the game engine, but looks like it's not scaling  good enough.

It's because it's broken, a guy has proven that the citizen agents don't have a true home or job, they simply go to the nearest non-full. This leads to impossible to solve traffic jams and completely inefficient public transportation.

[isidoro]

Not so large projects I would like to see (in no particular order):

   
• A spreadsheet-like view of the vehicle available in the depot when buying.  One row for each kind of vehicle, one column for each kind of property.  Sorting data available for any column
• A way to incorporate meta-data in height maps so that placement of cities, for instance, could be added from real place data.
• An option that allow buses not to stop in a stop if there are no people waiting there and there is no passenger in the bus waiting to leave the bus in that station.  That would mean that buses could be more competitive in urban lines.

Wow lots of nice ideas! The two lane avenue... I forgot about that one! I think it ended in nothing, maybe it's time to see why it was abandoned.
[...]

I was involved in that project and I thought and think that it is not as hard as it is believed to be.  However, I desisted when I got tired of fighting against the establishment.  Too much effort to risk, too much negative feedback, no constructive help, and a foreseeable small probability to get that work incorporated...