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Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

anselm, I know your random building placement more or less works, but generally in cities lots are fairly orderly and similar sized. What might work better is if instead of randomly growing, buildings preferred to grow next to existing buildings. so the first building in an area would trigger a row of buildings until there was no more room.

Or I guess even if we had more potential sizes for lots, getting away from an optimal size. So at first buildings randomly pop up within an optimal lot size, but once there's no more room for optimal sized buildings the simulation starts to look at all those little slivers of land to see if it can jam some non-optimal sized buildings in there. So that 6m wide gap between two 15m wide lots gets a building.

Another idea: "Fill lots". If the simulation detects an area is more or less done (for now) building up it creates empty lots in all those tiny little 1-2m wide space between buildings. These lots are then joined to the nearest smallest lot, so instead of it just being an unrealistic void space, someone's yard becomes a little bigger. Houses and buildings should be worth a tiny bit more or a little bit more happy when they have a bigger lot. A 200sqm house on a 10x30 lot would pay more taxes than a 200sqm house on a 10x25 lot. Not much more, but it should count for something. Don't forget, taxes are a combo of both the building value and the land value. This is a big reason why density upgrades happen, the land starts to become worth more and more vs the value of the building. In commercial and industrial area these strips could become extra parking lots, or what ever the area needs.

Just any system that saw no such thing as "wasted" land. Jam it with a tiny building, automatically count it as "green space" which makes its neighbours happy, or add it to the nearest lot so that everyone's yards are touching.

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anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Baronjutter: I read your post & I will reply soon!

For now I will just announce:

Next Livestream: Today aka. 8/23 at 4PM UTC

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
New update!



The Road to Alpha, Week 25 - Imperfect Knowledge

Jamfrost
Jul 20, 2013

I'm too busy thinkin' about my baby. Oh I ain't got time for nothin' else.
Slime TrainerS
Those are some crazy looking residential structures for a city sim game (in my experience). It's as if they're trying to spell out a message.

Seeing the game at this stage, I'm curious to know if you can simulate a suburbia or will residential zones end up becoming high density residential buildings depending on demands? I guess I'm asking whether the game will be able to simulate urban, suburbia, and rural residential settings in one city.

Or I'm crazy. Anyway, it's looking good. I'll play some SimCity 4 in the meantime.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'm almost certain we will be getting pretty nice zoning controls so if you want a vast sea of single family homes you can have it. The apartments are just there because he finally made the mechanism for buildings replacing other buildings but hasn't had time to really get into zoning control.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co

Baronjutter posted:

I'm almost certain we will be getting pretty nice zoning controls so if you want a vast sea of single family homes you can have it. The apartments are just there because he finally made the mechanism for buildings replacing other buildings but hasn't had time to really get into zoning control.

Exactly.

Also: Livestream 8/28 1PM UTC

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
People in this thread most likely are interested, since we had a Train Fever discussion in here many pages back. Anselms work has constantly reminded me of Train Fever, so here is a thread about it.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3661095

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


I was working during the stream, so I missed it live. When I went to watch the recording, it was gone. :(

Edit: It's back! :neckbeard:

KillHour fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Aug 28, 2014

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
New update!



The Road to Alpha, Week 26 - Commute & Competition

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Livestream today (9/4/14) at 1PM UTC!
Countdown & Info

Hermsgervørden
Apr 23, 2004
Møøse Trainer
I am really impressed with the economic system that's beginning to take shape. The idea of imperfect knowledge introducing 'phantom' fluctuations in various demands is in my opinion a stroke of genius. I'm not sure if it's been tried before, but my early impression is that imperfect knowledge has the potential to give a path out of an otherwise stagnating city. I like the way neighboring cities feed and drive city development. I do wonder how these cities look as they develop. They can grow, but can they add zones and roads? Will players be able to visit them, and build in them? Or are they forever off-screen, off the edge of the map, over the horizon, as it were?

Also, I've noticed in the videos that every example city is strictly trunk and branches. I'd like to see some grids and more complex street layouts. I'm guessing this is intentional because of buggy/unimplemented pathfinding? Another thing I've noticed is intentionally painting zones with frontage to only one street, always stopping just shy of the branch the street joins.

To be clear, I'm not complaining or implying that things are broken and bad, it seems more likely that Anselm is building this way in his videos because he is showcasing the system he's working on. And that is fine and correct. But sometimes when designing things, we look at design problems from the angles where understand how its working, make all our decisions from that perspective and end up blind to the parts we don't understand fully.

Can't wait for a switch in gears in the development to terrain generation and editing, whenever that may be. Seeing a new landscape always incites my imagination. If not hills and rivers anytime soon, a stand of trees here and there would be nice.

Iunnrais
Jul 25, 2007

It's gaelic.
I didn't fully understand the "competition" part of that update. Is it just some random bonus demand when things are in balance? I don't quite get it.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
(I'll reply to you guys soon!)

New update!



The Road to Alpha, Week 27 - Front Lawn Freeway

Subyng
May 4, 2013
I'm glad you mentioned building footprints because ever since you showed us the zoning system I was wondering if and how you plan on showing the player how much space a zone has for buildings. For example, where I live, suburbs are often arranged so that rows of houses are back(yard) to back(yard) with minimal empty spaces in between houses. If I wanted to recreate this, I would need to know exactly how big of a residential zone equals 2 house widths. Another situation is if I have a small unzoned lot in my city and decide I want to fill it with something, but I'm unsure whether or not any building will actually fit in that space.

SolidSnakesBandana
Jul 1, 2007

Infinite ammo

I just got this weird sense of deja vu when looking at the screengrab for that video. It reminds me of a street in the neighborhood where I grew up. I'm not really sure what that means but I thought it was interesting.

Shanakin
Mar 26, 2010

The whole point of stats are lost if you keep it a secret. Why Didn't you tell the world eh?

That merging was really slick. Did you end up using that flood-fill idea posted earlier? Either way it looked good. What happens if the next lane over is full of cars already?

Also I have to say that little town demonstration really looked great. One thing that often bothers me is these great huge empty spaces where there is no road access and to see it all bunched up, in non-linear shapes really brought it up a step from what I would normally consider fairly lifeless looking demonstration cities.

Finally. Stop showing off your nice mountains. You're making me jealous.:argh:

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Shanakin posted:

That merging was really slick. Did you end up using that flood-fill idea posted earlier? Either way it looked good. What happens if the next lane over is full of cars already?

Also I have to say that little town demonstration really looked great. One thing that often bothers me is these great huge empty spaces where there is no road access and to see it all bunched up, in non-linear shapes really brought it up a step from what I would normally consider fairly lifeless looking demonstration cities.

Finally. Stop showing off your nice mountains. You're making me jealous.:argh:

Something I did notice from that particular video is that the residential area had a tiny gap between itself and the road (in the back, on the curve). Does the residential area need to be directly adjacent to the road, or is it ok for it to be just close enough?

pistolshit
May 15, 2004

I don't remember this being mentioned, but is it possible to have a planning layer or a system of laying down proposed roads, zones or buildings. That's the one thing that always bugged me about Sim City is that you couldn't really play around with geometries without paying for something. It would be nice if you could choose to say a new road is just "proposed", lay it down for free and then if you decide you don't like it you can move it or delete it or make it wider, etc. And then eventually when you're happy with the layout or when the city expands enough you click on it and change it from proposed to real and it builds out. Everything proposed could just be like 30% opacity or something.

Probably just my planner/urban designer instinct, but I think it would be a lot of fun to mess with the proposed stuff as the city evolves.

AMISH FRIED PIES
Mar 6, 2009

by Nyc_Tattoo

pistolshit posted:

I don't remember this being mentioned, but is it possible to have a planning layer or a system of laying down proposed roads, zones or buildings. That's the one thing that always bugged me about Sim City is that you couldn't really play around with geometries without paying for something. It would be nice if you could choose to say a new road is just "proposed", lay it down for free and then if you decide you don't like it you can move it or delete it or make it wider, etc. And then eventually when you're happy with the layout or when the city expands enough you click on it and change it from proposed to real and it builds out. Everything proposed could just be like 30% opacity or something.

Probably just my planner/urban designer instinct, but I think it would be a lot of fun to mess with the proposed stuff as the city evolves.

This is something I tried to explain/propose on the subreddit but you worded it much better than I did. :shobon:

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






pistolshit posted:

I don't remember this being mentioned, but is it possible to have a planning layer or a system of laying down proposed roads, zones or buildings. That's the one thing that always bugged me about Sim City is that you couldn't really play around with geometries without paying for something. It would be nice if you could choose to say a new road is just "proposed", lay it down for free and then if you decide you don't like it you can move it or delete it or make it wider, etc. And then eventually when you're happy with the layout or when the city expands enough you click on it and change it from proposed to real and it builds out. Everything proposed could just be like 30% opacity or something.

Probably just my planner/urban designer instinct, but I think it would be a lot of fun to mess with the proposed stuff as the city evolves.

that'd be a cool feature, because i always waste most of my startup money on roads

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Announcement:

Livestream today (9/11) 1PM UTC!

---

Finally some replies:

Hermsgervørden posted:

Or are [neighboring cities] forever off-screen, off the edge of the map, over the horizon, as it were?

Yes, they are merely abstract neighbors.

Hermsgervørden posted:

Also, I've noticed in the videos that every example city is strictly trunk and branches. I'd like to see some grids and more complex street layouts. I'm guessing this is intentional because of buggy/unimplemented pathfinding? Another thing I've noticed is intentionally painting zones with frontage to only one street, always stopping just shy of the branch the street joins.

Good observation. The problem isn't pathfinding, but a few unimplemented situations in the road laying user interface which makes more complex street layouts not impossible, but a little tedious.
I hope to fix that soon. Often I make sure to zone with frontage to only one street to control where cars are going to exit.

Iunnrais posted:

I didn't fully understand the "competition" part of that update. Is it just some random bonus demand when things are in balance? I don't quite get it.

Basically before the competition update, if there was demand for 100 food, 2 shops might pop up, supplying exactly 50 each.
With competition, 2 bigger shops pop up, offering 60 each (they have an "overlap" that they compete for), requiring slightly more workers.
This is more realistic and leads to less stagnation.

Shanakin posted:

That merging was really slick. Did you end up using that flood-fill idea posted earlier? Either way it looked good. What happens if the next lane over is full of cars already?

Yes, in a way I implemented exactly the flood-fill idea. The cars don't react to cars on other lanes yet.


pistolshit posted:

I don't remember this being mentioned, but is it possible to have a planning layer or a system of laying down proposed roads, zones or buildings. That's the one thing that always bugged me about Sim City is that you couldn't really play around with geometries without paying for something. It would be nice if you could choose to say a new road is just "proposed", lay it down for free and then if you decide you don't like it you can move it or delete it or make it wider, etc. And then eventually when you're happy with the layout or when the city expands enough you click on it and change it from proposed to real and it builds out. Everything proposed could just be like 30% opacity or something.

Probably just my planner/urban designer instinct, but I think it would be a lot of fun to mess with the proposed stuff as the city evolves.

This has been suggested a lot of times and I have played with the idea, but for simplicities sake, it is not something that I will add to the core game (at least not now).
A mod should be able to implement that, though.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






what about adding a road that cost 0 dollars and has like 1 lane or something and causes a huge clusterfuck if you actually try to use it for anything other than just road planning?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Just build your roads properly the first time, every time. What next, a "jump planner" when playing Mario? Close your eyes, feel the needs of your city, and draw those roads!

Mandalay
Mar 16, 2007

WoW Forums Refugee

anselm_eickhoff posted:

This has been suggested a lot of times and I have played with the idea, but for simplicities sake, it is not something that I will add to the core game (at least not now).
A mod should be able to implement that, though.

For me this is not a core feature at all. I think your time is better spent on perfecting the core gameplay loop rather than neat UI features like this, if the enthusiasm for an imperfect Train Fever is any barometer of what gamers here like.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


crabrock posted:

what about adding a road that cost 0 dollars and has like 1 lane or something and causes a huge clusterfuck if you actually try to use it for anything other than just road planning?

Rural dirt road, cars are limited to a slow speed on it or something.

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

Definitely include dirt roads. That wouldn't be too hard to implement, right?

The Deadly Hume
May 26, 2004

Let's get a little crazy. Let's have some fun.
It's not quite the same thing but I found the label tool in SimCity 4 quite handy for defining where I wanted to plan alignments of roads and rail.

I agree that you don't have to make it a core function but a "draft mode" for planning would be interesting, particularly if you were designing an interchange or something that would be expensive to do via trial and error using "real" construction. Like, you'd go into draft mode, lay out everything, get the final cost, and when you're happy with it, hit "confirm" and it'll construct the thing for real.

(For added realism, have people start picketing if you plan to demolish any cultural heritage sites!)

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
This was something I thought of while watching the latest videos where you had the demand bars fluctuating. It'd be neat if you could click on that graph icon and get a time-series graph of the demand for the various goods and services, making a wave-form sort of shape. Then you could sort of monitor the progress of your city's growth and try to get to grips with the various cycles.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Next Livestream Saturday (9/13) 1PM GMT

---

Baronjutter posted:

Close your eyes, feel the needs of your city, and draw those roads!

I might steal that quote.

Shibawanko posted:

Definitely include dirt roads. That wouldn't be too hard to implement, right?

Dirt roads are not a problem and might indeed be used as cheap planning roads.
In fact it would mimic quite nicely the dirt paths that are created for construction vehicles when new real-life roads are created.

DrSunshine posted:

This was something I thought of while watching the latest videos where you had the demand bars fluctuating. It'd be neat if you could click on that graph icon and get a time-series graph of the demand for the various goods and services, making a wave-form sort of shape. Then you could sort of monitor the progress of your city's growth and try to get to grips with the various cycles.

Definitely something I want!

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
New update!



The Road to Alpha, Week 28 - You Cut Me Off!

nimper
Jun 19, 2003

livin' in a hopium den
The way the cars interact in that video is just awesome to watch. Like you said it's mesmerizing! It looks very close to a real life freeway merging situation.

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?
That merging looks excellent and also pretty realistic. Did you come up with the algorithm for that yourself, or is it based on existing work? Traffic must be such a complex thing to implement in total.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






to be honest if you made an intersection simulator i'd probably play that all day long. that's what i always wanted in simcity. "noooo, this green turn arrow should be green for twice as long during rush hour to alleviate the backup arrrrrrrrrgh!"

The Deadly Hume
May 26, 2004

Let's get a little crazy. Let's have some fun.

Nition posted:

That merging looks excellent and also pretty realistic. Did you come up with the algorithm for that yourself, or is it based on existing work? Traffic must be such a complex thing to implement in total.
Not really, at least in this example, in a way it's a bit like flocking in that each entity is guided by a relatively simple set of rules, but as a group you get some interesting emergent behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_%28behavior%29

Of course when you have to simulate a whole bunch of such entities at once, that of course requires more computation.

There are probably advanced things that can be implemented a little further down the track once the basic traffic systems are in place, might be to take into account different driver behaviours, like those who might seek shortcuts and ratruns to get around jams, or comparing leadfoots vs "Sunday drivers" in the way they accelerate, which can also break up an optimal flow.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




crabrock posted:

to be honest if you made an intersection simulator i'd probably play that all day long. that's what i always wanted in simcity. "noooo, this green turn arrow should be green for twice as long during rush hour to alleviate the backup arrrrrrrrrgh!"

Well, let's be fair, SimCity is basically a huge traffic simulator with some bits around the edge.

Kinda like SimTower was an elaborate Elevator Simulator.

J-udy
Jan 22, 2009

crabrock posted:

to be honest if you made an intersection simulator i'd probably play that all day long. that's what i always wanted in simcity. "noooo, this green turn arrow should be green for twice as long during rush hour to alleviate the backup arrrrrrrrrgh!"

Yeah, this. I used to play SimCity for the buildings. I play it for the roads now. I want to see a crowded road with multiple intersections, and decide between construction of new lanes, or playing with traffic light timing. Less mayor, more traffic engineer.

fspades
Jun 3, 2013

by R. Guyovich

J-udy posted:

Yeah, this. I used to play SimCity for the buildings. I play it for the roads now. I want to see a crowded road with multiple intersections, and decide between construction of new lanes, or playing with traffic light timing. Less mayor, more traffic engineer.

Simcity 4 encouraged this because there wasn't much challenge to the "buildings" part of game after you had a healthy budget and unlocked all public buildings. All that remained was minmaxing your traffic setup in the face of constantly increasing density.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Looks good, but I'm the rare person who doesn't have much interest in car behavior and am happy with Cities XL level of abstraction so long as the we have tons of building, social, and economic detail.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Just a short announcement: there won't be a livestream today, I'll let you know when I'll do the next one.
And I will reply to all of you guys soon :)

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Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

Yeah I'm also not that interested in intersection micromanagement, I want a build a city, not just a transport network, including facilities and parks and whatnot.

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