Square cities

[Winter01]

Hello everyone,
I got back to Simutrans Extended after a few years' hiatus and I got surprised by one interesting thing - cities are all square! If the map is opened and the mode that allows one to see the city boundary set on, one can clearly see that the squareness is caused by the boundary. However, this has never been a problem in Standard are a bit more on the rounder side. Any idea why this happens and if there's a way to get cities to stop looking like something from US Midwest?

[Matthew]

This is one of those things that you get used to after a while and you forget how odd it is!

I don't know why it happens though.

[jamespetts]

Welcome back!

I do plan to overhaul the city growth system at some point, which should include de-squaring the cities, but this will be a major project, and will have to wait for other major projects to be completed before work can commence.

[Mariculous]

However, I thought it was the same in standard, so I tried it out, but it's not.
So it must be an ugly sideffect of some changes to citygrowth in extended.

Any idea why this happens and if there's a way to get cities to stop looking like something from US Midwest?

Nobody knows, maybe using the legacy city growth from standard will help. Setting quick_city_growth=1 in simuconf should enable this. See the notes to this in the simuconf.

[prissi]

Are the cityrules the same? The city size should be largely influende by them (and the house density settings).

[jamespetts]

The actual issue was caused I believe by some changes made to the city borders some years ago by Neroden as part of a(n incomplete) refurbishment of town growth: the town borders in Extended are strictly confined to the area with buildings, and will not be expanded until no more growth can fit into the town borders (if I recall the algorithm correctly). Some significant work would be required to change this, which is intended to be undertaken when the full town growth re-working takes place.