Airports

Riamus

Riamus

Hunter
Okay, so I'm starting this so we can discuss airports without filling up the dev diary thread. Hopefully a moderator will merge that discussion into this thread at some point.

HammerDano said:
sorry...you are right, this is it's own thing. I'll stop asking questions that only cause me to have more questions... until it gets moved. I am curious why wilderness towns are only two tiles and how big those tiles are...just more questions. lol
Click to expand...
Wilderness towns can be any size. The issue is that if a town is larger than 2 tiles, you might have corners, which would mess up the runway.

Example:

2 tiles (Picture a runway down the middle):

Code: 
**************

*     **     *

**************

3 Tiles (version 1 - works):

Code: 
*********************

*     **     **     *

*********************

3 Tiles (version 2 - doesn't work):

Code: 
*******

*     *

**************

*     **     *

**************

If you can't force it to not be random, your runway isn't going to always be a straight line with more than 2 tiles.

As far as size, vanilla tiles are all 150x150.
 
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Riamus said:
Okay, so I'm starting this so we can discuss airports without filling up the dev diary thread. Hopefully a moderator will merge that discussion into this thread at some point.


Wilderness towns can be any size. The issue is that if a town is larger than 2 tiles, you might have corners, which would mess up the runway.

Example:

2 tiles (Picture a runway down the middle):

**********
* ** *
**********

3 Tiles (version 1 - works):

***************
* ** ** *
***************

3 Tiles (version 2 - doesn't work):

*****
* *
**********
* ** *
**********

If you can't force it to not be random, your runway isn't going to always be a straight line with more than 2 tiles.
Click to expand...

But you do have control of layout and randomness if you define your own custom townships and districts. I've posted instructions for how to do this. And it's not hacky at all -- it uses the vanilla townplanner and obeys all the rules of the rwgmixer.

You could define a settlement type that only uses a straight gateway, 5 straight tiles, and a cap. There's no way you're getting a corner tile with the those rules in place.
 
EvilPolygons said:
But you do have control of layout and randomness if you define your own custom townships and districts. I've posted instructions for how to do this. And it's not hacky at all -- it uses the vanilla townplanner and obeys all the rules of the rwgmixer.

You could define a settlement type that only uses a straight gateway, 5 straight tiles, and a cap. There's no way you're getting a corner tile with the those rules in place.
Click to expand...
As I said, if you can do that, then you have options. You still have to do things like a double runway with buildings between, so I'd still call it hacky, but it can work to a point. I didn't see where you posted instructions.

I would still want to have RWG set up to properly handle doing things like airports or railways or boulevards or elevated roads or whatever else. In the meantime, I'd still do airports using group POI in Teragon since I like the layout options better. But that's just my personal preference.
 
pApA^LeGBa said:
Don´t know if this helps, but there is several custom made Airport POI´s already existing. One is pretty big. Maybe it helps looking at those.
Click to expand...

Those are what kicked off the discussion. Most of them are...sub-optimal for a number of different reason. I mean, some of them are a lot of fun, but doing them as giant POIs causes all kinds of issues.
Post automatically merged:

Riamus said:
As I said, if you can do that, then you have options. You still have to do things like a double runway with buildings between, so I'd still call it hacky, but it can work to a point. I didn't see where you posted instructions.

I would still want to have RWG set up to properly handle doing things like airports or railways or boulevards or elevated roads or whatever else. In the meantime, I'd still do airports using group POI in Teragon since I like the layout options better. But that's just my personal preference.
Click to expand...

Here are the instructions on how to implement what I was suggesting, with notes on how my experiments have been progressing:

EvilPolygons

Thread 'PSA: Wilderness Townships/Districts method'

With the recent changes to RWG, very large wilderness POIs have become a problem. They tend to spawn inside city limits, wrecking city tiles, and can also overlap other wilderness POIs and paths, generally causing a big mess. Especially on smaller maps.

@stallionsden and @zztong developed a solution that involves taking those old, oversized wilderness POIs and spawning them on (or building them into) rwg_tile_cap tiles. These tiles can then be set to spawn as one-tile settlements out in the wilderness, and the RWG townplanner will even draw roads to them.

The problem is, that...
 
EvilPolygons said:
But you do have control of layout and randomness if you define your own custom townships and districts. I've posted instructions for how to do this. And it's not hacky at all -- it uses the vanilla townplanner and obeys all the rules of the rwgmixer.

You could define a settlement type that only uses a straight gateway, 5 straight tiles, and a cap. There's no way you're getting a corner tile with the those rules in place.
Click to expand...
okay...this is ball park what i was trying to ask about to you two.
can you or could TFP insert code so that a town sized area could allocated to an airport instead? and limit that option to one per map?
with enough variations of tiles that could be generated and laid together so that they are not one cookie cutter each time? (which might be good for vanilla too)
 
Bear in mind, that method currently is only set up to generate settlements with one tile. But in dissecting the way townships and districts are handled, I don't see any reason at all why the method couldn't be expanded to point where you generate a whole city worth of tiles like this, basically out in the wilderness. Now that would be pointless, because you might as well just generate your own town using vanilla logic. Haha. But it's food for thought.
 
EvilPolygons said:
Those are what kicked off the discussion. Most of them are...sub-optimal for a number of different reason. I mean, some of them are a lot of fun, but doing them as giant POIs causes all kinds of issues.
Post automatically merged:



Here are the instructions on how to implement what I was suggesting, with notes on how my experiments have been progressing:

EvilPolygons

Thread 'PSA: Wilderness Townships/Districts method'

With the recent changes to RWG, very large wilderness POIs have become a problem. They tend to spawn inside city limits, wrecking city tiles, and can also overlap other wilderness POIs and paths, generally causing a big mess. Especially on smaller maps.

@stallionsden and @zztong developed a solution that involves taking those old, oversized wilderness POIs and spawning them on (or building them into) rwg_tile_cap tiles. These tiles can then be set to spawn as one-tile settlements out in the wilderness, and the RWG townplanner will even draw roads to them.

The problem is, that...
Click to expand...
And you say you're too lazy to set up a group POI? This seems like a lot more work and headache to me. Useful, but I'll avoid it. ;)
 
HammerDano said:
okay...this is ball park what i was trying to ask about to you two.
can you or could TFP insert code so that a town sized area could allocated to an airport instead? and limit that option to one per map?
with enough variations of tiles that could be generated and laid together so that they are not one cookie cutter each time? (which might be good for vanilla too)
Click to expand...

That's the direction I'm heading in with this. I won't know it's actually possible until I do it and it works. But anyone else is free to take my research and do it themselves in the meantime. As interested as I am in the airport topic, I'm juggling so many other projects.
 
HammerDano said:
okay...this is ball park what i was trying to ask about to you two.
can you or could TFP insert code so that a town sized area could allocated to an airport instead? and limit that option to one per map?
with enough variations of tiles that could be generated and laid together so that they are not one cookie cutter each time? (which might be good for vanilla too)
Click to expand...
Curious do you have the game for Xbox and PC? I bought it for PC awhile ago but haven’t played it in ages. Sounds like you may want to get into the modding scene?
 
Riamus said:
And you say you're too lazy to set up a group POI? This seems like a lot more work and headache to me. Useful, but I'll avoid it. ;)
Click to expand...

Lol, no, this is just xml. Once you understand the rules, the script almost writes itself. But I actually enjoy reverse engineering systems via testing and observation. I find it incredibly stimulating and a lot of fun.

(probably because there's something deeply wrong with me)
 
HammerDano said:
okay...this is ball park what i was trying to ask about to you two.
can you or could TFP insert code so that a town sized area could allocated to an airport instead? and limit that option to one per map?
with enough variations of tiles that could be generated and laid together so that they are not one cookie cutter each time? (which might be good for vanilla too)
Click to expand...
You can set a town to be a specific district. That district could be something called airport. Only POI and tiles flagged for use in the airport district would spawn. So, yes. You can do something like that.

However, it's more complicated because randomization in layout can make it not look right. Airports generally have a layout that is relatively similar to one another. There are obvious differences and variations, but you can easily pick out a lot of things that are almost always done the same way. Trying to make that happen with RWG (currently) requires a lot of work/modding, not to mention making all the tiles and POI for it. It can be done, but it's not a great option, imo. I'm willing to accept lesser options if better options are not available, but I still would push to see better options become available.
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EvilPolygons said:
Lol, no, this is just xml.
Click to expand...
And group POI are just xml (prefabs.xml to be precise). ;)
 
Lax said:
Curious do you have the game for Xbox and PC? I bought it for PC awhile ago but haven’t played it in ages. Sounds like you may want to get into the modding scene?
Click to expand...
just for xbox
I am thinking about moving to a deck.
This conversation just sucked me in, it's an interesting problem with some fun applications...if anything could get me back on PC...this is the kind of thing that would. lol
 
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Just to add, if RWG was improved to be able to generate "towns" in specific ways instead of having to do a lot of manual work to rwgmixer, you could expand this to other things that need a more specific layout. Take FluffyPanda's Mega Mall, for example. That really needs to be laid out in a specific way for it to look right. Even more than an airport. Having the ability to do that in RWG by only setting a "rule" on the tile's XML that dictates how it connects to other tiles would be a huge help.

That kind of thing also benefits other things, such as making it so that you can easily add elevated roads to a map that only connect to other elevated roads or to a transition road (a sloped road that connected between the elevated and non-elevated roads). Right now, boulevard tiles can look really out of place. Being able to make it so boulevards connect together only to themselves or a transition tile would be a benefit. The options go on and on for this kind of thing if they were to look at expanding it. Being able to do it manually through editing the rwgmixer may work some, but it requires you to do a lot of manual work for every kind of configuration you want, and it doesn't let you have something in the middle of town (a random boulevard in the middle of a random town). It's very static.
 
Riamus said:
I'm willing to accept lesser options if better options are not available, but I still would push to see better options become available.
Click to expand...

That's exactly why I'm willing to try getting it to work whichever way I can. I'd just really like to be able to do it via the RWG. I like Teragon and I've used it quite a bit, but part of the fun for me is that challenge of getting something to work without having to resort to Teragon.

Riamus said:
And group POI are just xml (prefabs.xml to be precise). ;)
Click to expand...

Bah don't try to use reason and logic with me, buddy!
 
Riamus said:
Being able to do it manually through editing the rwgmixer may work some, but it requires you to do a lot of manual work for every kind of configuration you want, and it doesn't let you have something in the middle of town (a random boulevard in the middle of a random town). It's very static.
Click to expand...

What I'm experimenting with currently are ways of improving that. I started with stallionsden and zztong's method, which was completely static. My method added per-settlement variety and randomization, but the tile selection was still completely rigid. Now it can use "generic" tiles which can pull from a variety of possible POIs via standard POI spawn markers, just like tiles in vanilla cities. So I'm making progress. We'll see where it goes.
 
Something I just thought of would be while we are required to provide Cap, Corner, Intersection, Straight, and T Tiles, we don't really have to configure the roads on those tiles to match those configurations.

If we asked for a settlement with one district of three tiles, would it line them up in a row and leave their orientation as N-S | N-S | N-S?

If so, then the runway can go through all three. The bummer would be you might put your infrastructure on a "Straight" Tile and it might not use that Tile, or it might use it 3 Times. :)
Post automatically merged:

pApA^LeGBa said:
Don´t know if this helps, but there is several custom made Airport POI´s already existing. One is pretty big. Maybe it helps looking at those.
Click to expand...

They're totally cool, but they tend to require a person to use the World Editor to make a map, and I personally desire to be lazy and have RWG make me maps, mostly because I sense my modlet's customer want to be lazy and just have RWG make them a map.
 
zztong said:
Something I just thought of would be while we are required to provide Cap, Corner, Intersection, Straight, and T Tiles, we don't really have to configure the roads on those tiles to match those configurations.

If we asked for a settlement with one district of three tiles, would it line them up in a row and leave their orientation as N-S | N-S | N-S?

If so, then the runway can go through all three. The bummer would be you might put your infrastructure on a "Straight" Tile and it might not use that Tile, or it might use it 3 Times. :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, that sounds tricky. Rotations are based on the tile type, which means that if you need rotations to be correct, it wouldn't work to use the same tile for different tile types. If it was something where there weren't roads or paved areas or other directional things that require a specific rotation, then it would be an option. But as you said, you might get the same tile repeatedly or not at all. That's especially a problem with tiles in a new district that require specific kinds of POI because you don't have enough different POI to make it seem different. If you have a few straight rural tiles in a row, the POI on them can vary enough that it doesn't really feel like the same tile even though it is. But if you're doing something specific like an airport with limited POI that can be placed on the tiles, getting that same terminal or parking lot or whatever over and over or not at all would be a problem.

Adding a "Lock Orientation"=true option in the tile's XML would be a good option to handle at least the rotation option. Of course, that requires either only making "towns" that use that tile in a single orientation, or else having another tile of the same type that can be rotated differently. For example a locked E/W straight and a locked N/S straight.
 
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