Topic: Map generation time

[AP]

Is map generation time in Simutrans-Ex the same as standard?  Or is it also 'extended'?

I ask because it seems that map generation times are very protracted nowadays, especially bigger maps with more industry.

I was wondering if there are some settings that are worth "turning off" to speed up the process (I usually turn off trees and intercity roads...)

[jamespetts]

The slowest parts of map generation are generating rivers and towns. If you reduce the initial size of most towns and reduce the number of rivers, you should be able to speed up map generation. Trees and inter-city roads are less significant in terms of time.

[zook2]

[Nightly build, just downloaded. Windows 10 64bit]
I'm just generating a new map of over 600x600 km, default settings for industries, rivers etc., just some adjustments to map height and water levels. I still have lots of free memory (~2GB), CPUs are hardly busy and it's been over 3/4 of an hour without any movement in  the progress bar. The blue bar is still at <5%. The process still seems to be alive, but I don't remember that kind of waiting time, even creating a 400x400km map on my old laptop (when max. map size was fixed at 4096² tiles I think). Are there any known problems with the map generator?

[jamespetts]

I am not aware of any known problems, but map generation can take a very long time with certain settings. For reference, I was able to generate a map of 7736 x 3496 tiles earlier to-day with 768 towns and 3,840 industries in less than half an hour (with 512 rivers). If you have many rivers or have more towns or industries than there is space for them, you might find map generation taking a long time.

[zook2]

Just as I'm reading your post, it's finally finished. Took a little over an hour, during which the progress bar didn't move once. Perhaps the game could display a message box with a warning when generating excessively large maps, like "This would be a good time to take a long walk around the block and get some fresh air."?

The music is still awful. Good Old Simutrans.

[jamespetts]

I do not have enough data at present to predict map generation times - but one might generally say that, when generating a large map, it is a good time to go for a walk/make a cup of tea/make dinner/go to bed for the night (depending on the size and complexity of the map).