RWG City District - Grid

zztong · Aug 22, 2022

A number of players have requested an Airport POI. Yet, the scale of such a POI presents a challenge. If we were to mimic an actual regional airport runway, we'd need 1500 blocks in length, or more. That's 10 Tiles (unless you make the runway run diagonally along the hypotenuse of a square area).

Obviously, POI designers take liberties with scale. How many blocks makes a reasonable runway? Unless the answer is less than 150, you need more than one tile. If you settle on 100 blocks of runway to allow for various runway trappings (lights, barriers), then your runway will be rivaled by the in-game equivalent of the Walmart parking lot.

An idea for getting around this is having a way to specify groups of Tiles that appear together in a predictable pattern. The following example XML attempts to suggest letting folks define a District in grid form, specifying which Tiles are placed where, how they are rotated, and how other tiles can connect to them. As a District, it could be part of a larger city. Or, the District could be the only District of some custom settlement.

A 2x2 Grid is depicted. I suspect an airport would probably need to be 3x2, but its the grid concept that matters, probably not any potential limits on max dimensions.

<rwgmixer>



<district name="airport" type="grid">
<property name="district_spawn_weight" value="0.2"/>
<property name="district_required_township" value="city"/>
<property name="district_preview_color" value="0.5,0.5,0.1"/>
<property name="poi_required_tags_all" value="airport"/>
<property name="grid" value="airport"/>
</district>


<grid name="airport">
<row id="0">
<column id="0">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_parking_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="0,3" />
</column>
<column id="1">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_terminal_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="0,1" />
</column>
</row>
<row id="1">
<column id="0">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_runway_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="" />
</column>
<column id="1">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_runway_02" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="" />
</column>
</row>
</grid>



</rwgmixer>

Thanks for listening.

AH64_Jimbo · Oct 18, 2022

zztong,

You are spot-on with your assessment of generating an airport. This is fantastic, and goes inline with a little something that I have been working on; A regional airport! Since many players (myself included) would love to see airports included in the game.

So far I have been able to finish a terminal complete with concourse, gates and a few airliners parked at the gates.

It's a modular design comprised of 2 tiles, a large part (Skybridge) and 9 inter-connected POIs. The image above is the complete terminal put together. As you can guess, the terminal has to be assembled in a certain order and orientation to make sense. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as an airport encompasses much more than just a terminal. To complete the airport, I came to some of the same conclusions;

- Airports should be treated like special towns upon map generation

- Certain parts of the airport, such as the terminal and runways, must be placed in a specific order and in a specific orientation to each other and the map

- Runways would range between 1000 - 3000 meters (spot on with the 1500 meter estimate that you came up with)

- "Districts" would be handled differently than normal towns in the sense that they would represent certain parts of an airport environment such as runways, taxiways, tarmac, hangars, terminal, etc.

- Non-airport tiles could be integrated into the airport as a whole, leading up to the terminal tile; Around an airport it's not uncommon to see large parking areas (including parking garages), small businesses, car rental lots, hotels, restaurants, etc. In my opinion, I would start with the usual trader tile, but then quickly move to industrial and/or commercial tiles which then give way to the terminal tile and the rest of the airport.

- Given the vast size of the runway environment, it dawned on me that this might be best treated as special "wilderness" tiles; Besides the runway, certain smaller POI's could spawn.

Anyway, these are my opinions to introduce airports into 7 Days to Die. What do you think?

If you like what you see, check out some more of my Steam screenshots;

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197966986156/screenshots/

zztong · Oct 18, 2022

AH64_Jimbo said:
Anyway, these are my opinions to introduce airports into 7 Days to Die. What do you think?

I largely agree.

The local regional airport where I live is 1707 meters, which I rounded off for the sake of discussion. Nobody is going to make an 11 Tile (1700/150) runway in the game, but how many tiles is enough to convey the theme? 3? 5?

You're showing a 6 gate terminal with larger aircraft, so you're going to be looking for a long runway to go with that, I'm guessing 5-7 Tiles in length so that the runway is longer than the terminal.

I was thinking of my regional airport with 1 gate and no passenger boarding bridges. I was also thinking of the airport in Nome AK that I once visited: 2 gates, no bridges.

But either vision would be supportable with the base idea of declaring a grid. Anything more about integration with cities, stand alone settlements, etc. we would just roll with whatever support TFP could extend via RWG. An airport off on its own in the wilderness works well enough. Other non-airport projects that might want to use a grid might prefer to be more tightly integrated into a settlement.

zztong · Oct 18, 2022

Since we're sharing pictures, here's my regional airport. Of all the buildings pictured, the one on the far left is the gate/terminal/operations building. There is no tower. The two larger hangers contain some maintenance facilities. There's a flight school in one of the buildings, some research, etc. Parking is hidden by the hangers or the gate/terminal building. A taxiway is only partially shown. I'd probably try to make the buildings depicted fit on 1 Tile. Then a runway could be maybe 3 Tiles, though 5 Tiles would probably look better. If we had some flexibility in what we could do with Gateway Tiles, then maybe I'd put the airport buildings there and just have a runway for the settlement.

Arma Rex · Oct 18, 2022

AH64_Jimbo said:
zztong,

You are spot-on with your assessment of generating an airport. This is fantastic, and goes inline with a little something that I have been working on; A regional airport! Since many players (myself included) would love to see airports included in the game.

So far I have been able to finish a terminal complete with concourse, gates and a few airliners parked at the gates. View attachment 26481

It's a modular design comprised of 2 tiles, a large part (Skybridge) and 9 inter-connected POIs. The image above is the complete terminal put together. As you can guess, the terminal has to be assembled in a certain order and orientation to make sense. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as an airport encompasses much more than just a terminal. To complete the airport, I came to some of the same conclusions;

- Airports should be treated like special towns upon map generation

- Certain parts of the airport, such as the terminal and runways, must be placed in a specific order and in a specific orientation to each other and the map

- Runways would range between 1000 - 3000 meters (spot on with the 1500 meter estimate that you came up with)

- "Districts" would be handled differently than normal towns in the sense that they would represent certain parts of an airport environment such as runways, taxiways, tarmac, hangars, terminal, etc.

- Non-airport tiles could be integrated into the airport as a whole, leading up to the terminal tile; Around an airport it's not uncommon to see large parking areas (including parking garages), small businesses, car rental lots, hotels, restaurants, etc. In my opinion, I would start with the usual trader tile, but then quickly move to industrial and/or commercial tiles which then give way to the terminal tile and the rest of the airport.

- Given the vast size of the runway environment, it dawned on me that this might be best treated as special "wilderness" tiles; Besides the runway, certain smaller POI's could spawn.

Anyway, these are my opinions to introduce airports into 7 Days to Die. What do you think?

If you like what you see, check out some more of my Steam screenshots;

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197966986156/screenshots/

These are great, incredible work man. The detail on the jet planes look awesome too!

AH64_Jimbo · Oct 18, 2022

zztong said:
Since we're sharing pictures, here's my regional airport. Of all the buildings pictured, the one on the far left is the gate/terminal/operations building. There is no tower. The two larger hangers contain some maintenance facilities. There's a flight school in one of the buildings, some research, etc. Parking is hidden by the hangers or the gate/terminal building. A taxiway is only partially shown. I'd probably try to make the buildings depicted fit on 1 Tile. Then a runway could be maybe 3 Tiles, though 5 Tiles would probably look better. If we had some flexibility in what we could do with Gateway Tiles, then maybe I'd put the airport buildings there and just have a runway for the settlement.

View attachment 26483

View attachment 26484

Admittedly, an airport like this would have made a better proof-of-concept than the monster that I have been making. Oh well! However, with your Grid idea, it would be more than possible to generate a smaller airport like this, or a larger one like I am making; After all, there are different sizes to the various towns that are generated in RWG.

zztong · Oct 18, 2022

AH64_Jimbo said:
Admittedly, an airport like this would have made a better proof-of-concept than the monster that I have been making. Oh well! However, with your Grid idea, it would be more than possible to generate a smaller airport like this, or a larger one like I am making; After all, there are different sizes to the various towns that are generated in RWG.

I think you're going for a "taste of phoenix", which I think TFP does too with their skyscrapers.

MichaelL. · Oct 19, 2022

I endorse this idea of having tile systems that we could configure in a predictable manner. I've been wanting to do a canal tile system, but with how the tiles are semi-randomly placed with the current system, you just end up with a unrealistic grid of canal networks. Same thought could be applied to a railway tile system. Noe, if we could have a custom tile system where you didn't have to have all five tiles as you do now - maybe just limited to straight, corner, and caps (not to mention adding custom gateway tiles), then we'd be able to generate a "linear" type district/city. Though that wouldn't necessarily help out with the Airport setup - as you'd want to have control over specified placement and orientation of the tiles used for something like that.

Riamus · Oct 19, 2022

This grid tile suggestion would also work well for the elevated road/train that is depicted in the images/videos section. Right now, it can only be done by making a custom map. With a grid system, it would be easy.

As a side note, in the original thread about the airports, I provided a way to avoid the very long runways without looking odd if you want to take a look.

zztong · Oct 19, 2022

Riamus said:
As a side note, in the original thread about the airports, I provided a way to avoid the very long runways without looking odd if you want to take a look.

I saw it. Basically, make the runway look like it dissolved into ruin or overgrown land. Position it in the Wilderness, or perhaps the edge of town, hoping that RWG won't place a landmark or a POI where the runway would have continued. It's an interesting idea with merit. I'd go Wilderness with this approach. As a Tile, I worry RWG will rotate it such that the runway ploughs into an Industrial zone or puts it next to Downtown.

I've also thought about the military. An Air Force Base would be too big. (The one I was stationed at would be a 10k map all by itself.) Also, aircraft have very long ranges, so why rush around during a pandemic to build a dirt airfield near Navezgane? I mean, somebody is _still_ airdropping crates on the area. What I could see is somebody clearing a patch of dirt for helicopter transports to use.

Riamus · Oct 20, 2022

That is a good point regarding air drops. Having a functional runway might not make a great deal of sense, though the air drops might be just fear of landing in an infested area rather than lack of landing space.

AH64_Jimbo · Feb 15, 2023

@zztong @Riamus Well, I done it. I've modified a map to add an airport!

AH64_Jimbo · Feb 15, 2023

Something occurred to me while I was laying out the airport that it might be easier to have pre-defined airports. Instead of having a completely random layout, a few airport designs (reusing the same tiles and POI's) could be defined and sequentially unpacked in a specific order and rotation. That way we could get the exact airport we needed without any random weirdness . . . if any of that makes sense.

Riamus · Feb 15, 2023

AH64_Jimbo said:
Something occurred to me while I was laying out the airport that it might be easier to have pre-defined airports. Instead of having a completely random layout, a few airport designs (reusing the same tiles and POI's) could be defined and sequentially unpacked in a specific order and rotation. That way we could get the exact airport we needed without any random weirdness . . . if any of that makes sense.

Well, you could always turn that entire airport into a single POI and it will always be laid out the same way. The issue is that POI sizes, although supposedly unlimited in wilderness seem to have a max usable size before you run into problems and I have a feeling yours would be larger than that. If they could fix the issues relating to larger POI, it would be feasible. In the meantime, you could break it up into POIs that are within that size range and make them available for people to add to their maps through the world editor. If it's a limited number of POI "pieces", players would be more likely to add it to their world than if each building was its own POI and they had to make a real effort adding it.

AH64_Jimbo · Feb 15, 2023

Riamus said:
In the meantime, you could break it up into POIs that are within that size range and make them available for people to add to their maps through the world editor.

That's actually exactly how I made my terminal and concourse. It's actually made up of 9 individual but inter-connected POIs sitting on two RWG tiles. For example, see below my airport_concourse_01_b POI. Together with the concourse_a, all six gated aircraft (or aircraft remnants) together with the terminal they make up the entire concourse and terminal.

I should have been more specific; When hypothetically unpacking the airport, the program would have to lay out the RWG tiles in a specific way. Once the correct RWG tiles are in the right place and the correct orientation, then it's just a matter of placing the POIs, which can be controlled by the RWG tiles (i.e. Zoning).

FYI, the tarmac, runways, taxiways, and hangar bases are all made up of 150 x 150 RWG tiles.

zztong · Feb 15, 2023

So if I understand this, you're making Tiles but instead of having RWG place them, you're placing them manually. Did I get that right?

Randomness is appealing to me, so it probably isn't a direction I'll go, but I see the logic behind the idea of making an airport for people to manually place and it meets the goal with features available today.

Riamus said:
Well, you could always turn that entire airport into a single POI and it will always be laid out the same way. The issue is that POI sizes, although supposedly unlimited in wilderness seem to have a max usable size before you run into problems and I have a feeling yours would be larger than that. If they could fix the issues relating to larger POI, it would be feasible.

Agreed. I'm aware the CP folks having trouble with larger POIs too. I stick to 150 since it seems safe TFP will support the Tile size.

Ouch Quit It · Feb 22, 2023

zztong said:
A number of players have requested an Airport POI. Yet, the scale of such a POI presents a challenge. If we were to mimic an actual regional airport runway, we'd need 1500 blocks in length, or more. That's 10 Tiles (unless you make the runway run diagonally along the hypotenuse of a square area).

Obviously, POI designers take liberties with scale. How many blocks makes a reasonable runway? Unless the answer is less than 150, you need more than one tile. If you settle on 100 blocks of runway to allow for various runway trappings (lights, barriers), then your runway will be rivaled by the in-game equivalent of the Walmart parking lot.

An idea for getting around this is having a way to specify groups of Tiles that appear together in a predictable pattern. The following example XML attempts to suggest letting folks define a District in grid form, specifying which Tiles are placed where, how they are rotated, and how other tiles can connect to them. As a District, it could be part of a larger city. Or, the District could be the only District of some custom settlement.

A 2x2 Grid is depicted. I suspect an airport would probably need to be 3x2, but its the grid concept that matters, probably not any potential limits on max dimensions.

<rwgmixer>



<district name="airport" type="grid">
<property name="district_spawn_weight" value="0.2"/>
<property name="district_required_township" value="city"/>
<property name="district_preview_color" value="0.5,0.5,0.1"/>
<property name="poi_required_tags_all" value="airport"/>
<property name="grid" value="airport"/>
</district>


<grid name="airport">
<row id="0">
<column id="0">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_parking_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="0,3" />
</column>
<column id="1">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_terminal_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="0,1" />
</column>
</row>
<row id="1">
<column id="0">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_runway_01" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="" />
</column>
<column id="1">
<property name="tile" value="rwg_tile_airport_runway_02" />
<property name="RotationToFaceNorth" value="0" />
<property name="exits" value="" />
</column>
</row>
</grid>



</rwgmixer>

Thanks for listening.

It doesnt have to be a major municipal airport.....

I had an airport on Guppycurs server ...at the time 200x200 was the max size...I had several hangers ....Actually had a small municipal one and a suburban rural one...both the same size . With the added blocks.....im sure it would be easier to do

AH64_Jimbo · Feb 25, 2023

zztong said:
So if I understand this, you're making Tiles but instead of having RWG place them, you're placing them manually. Did I get that right?

Randomness is appealing to me, so it probably isn't a direction I'll go, but I see the logic behind the idea of making an airport for people to manually place and it meets the goal with features available today.

Exactly! I modified a pre-gen map with manually-placed prefabs first, in order to work out the kinks and also give you folks a chance to playtest the airport POIs that I designed. The goal is to eventually have randomly-generated airports. Plus more prefabs to explore. I wanted to generate a framework first, though, with which we can add more to it.

I could definitely use help figuring out the best way to randomly generate airports, as the vanilla random gen wouldn't support such an endeavor. If you want to take a crack at designing new prefabs to place in and around the airport, then have at it! The more content the merrier, right?!

zztong · Feb 25, 2023

AH64_Jimbo said:
I could definitely use help figuring out the best way to randomly generate airports, as the vanilla random gen wouldn't support such an endeavor. If you want to take a crack at designing new prefabs to place in and around the airport, then have at it! The more content the merrier, right?!

With the tech available today, the best I can think of would be to make an extra large wilderness POI and hope it gets placed by RWG and lands intact.

The next best approach might be to experiment with a settlement inspired by the Western Town as it often ends up being a strip maybe with a bend, but I'm not sure why. It might have to do with the maximum size of the settlement. You might get a runway with that approach some of the time.

Your approach to manually placing a series of airport tiles in the wilderness is completely reliable and likely to be popular with those who like to handcraft their maps.

DocRussel · Feb 26, 2023

It depends what you want to accomplish with an airport. An airport POI could be just the terminals and the start of a runway that brakes up, so it doesn't have a full length runway. This could be done within the 150x150 parameters. Another option that could be a bit odd is to have the start of a runway that fades into a full width road. Not sure if there is a way to force that side of the airport POI to always connect to a road like how may traders are on the corner of an intersection. It's not ideal, but if it was always on the outskirts of a city like a trader, it could be possible.

RWG City District - Grid

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