What has happened to RWG?

[InfiniteWarrior]

I just rolled a 8192 map with quite a few, fairly good-sized (bigger than a pond; smaller than a lake) bodies of water on the way to the initial trader (separated from the city right across the road) that were actually just shallow water covering what should have been dry land complete with grass and perennials. Once in the city, Judy Witch, technically part of residential, was nonetheless situated behind a Crack a Book looking terribly out of place and the town/city was a mish mash of old and new industrial on top of commercial on top of residential with no clear demarcation in between.

I've rolled several maps like this with, for example, residential that goes on forever with a just a tiny commercial and, less often, a tiny industrial section. Seriously, what has happened to RWG? It was fine in A21 and went haphazard with 1.0. A21 had reasonably sized, properly propotional districts with only the odd, seemingly out of place POI and fairly logical water placement. Anyone else experiencing the same? If so, I honestly think changes starting with 1.0 could use a thorough overview and possible rethink.

Am testing now to ensure no mods are interfering though I've had this haphazardness with and without mods all along between A21 and 2.3 (b9). The shallow water covering dry land issue is obviously most concerning. You're not experimenting with bringing in marshes are ya? If so, what I'm seeing definitely doesn't qualify as a marsh.

 

[LittleNightma]

You might need to verify your game files some more in case Steam didn't update them all like it should have. The marsh/water issue is the result of missing/corrupted config files and in some cases, outdated mods. Once you do, play around with RWG again.

 

[zztong]

Anyone else experiencing the same?

Maybe? I can't really tell from the description.

If so, I honestly think changes starting with 1.0 could use a thorough overview and possible rethink.

I'm not sure there's a big difference in city composition between A21, 1.0, and 2.0 at the RWG level. Thinking back, I can point to perhaps "density" computations being added that have affected Downtown and Commercial districts, and maybe the Industrial district. The industrial district has always been kind of small because there aren't as many POIs of that type. It's also a district where POIs can really range in a variety of sizes, from a small warehouse to a massive factory. You might even argue that it doesn't belong within a city, but in an industrial park or on the edge of a city, but since the appearance of Tiles and A21, it's been in the city the whole time.

Among the available POIs, TFP has started to introduce many more remnants which I believe is also an effort to improve performance related to "density." That is, when you get lots of complex blocks confined into a tight spot, that density leads to lots more rendering for client computers. So maybe a Downtown full of heavy skyscrapers is a bit of a bridge too far and smaller, less complex remnants provide some relief.

Am testing now to ensure no mods are interfering though I've had this haphazardness with and without mods all along between A21 and 2.3 (b9).

Mods can certainly be a factor, specially those that add POIs or those that get into messing with rwgmixer.xml. Any mod that wants to do things like make cities bigger will change the flavor.

My own modlet, for example, will add lots of Tile variety. And, while I don't try to change city composition in terms of the districts, by adding POIs I am changing the number of POIs RWG can consider for placement. I can also have differences in option about what kinds of POIs fit into each district. For instance, I'm pretty sure TFP and I have slightly different views of the Rural District.

I would add there's no RWG "transition" between Districts. One stops, the next one starts. It's always been that way. So it has always been possible for there to be a rather jarring or extreme combination, like a Skyscraper next to a hovel.

Also, something else that has been added more recently with 2.0 and perhaps 1.0 are a number of Rural Filler lots that are mostly trees and hills. This is likely an attempt by TFP to address the number of POI repetitions in the Rural District, as RWG consumes lots and lots of Rural Tiles.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

You might need to verify your game files some more in case Steam didn't update them all like it should have. The marsh/water issue is the result of missing/corrupted config files and in some cases, outdated mods. Once you do, play around with RWG again.

I'll certainly look into that for the "marsh" problam.

I would add there's no RWG "transition" between Districts. One stops, the next one starts. It's always been that way. So it has always been possible for there to be a rather jarring or extreme combination, like a Skyscraper next to a hovel.

It's hard to describe, but when I see a Judy Witch sandwiched in between a Crack a Book and a Piggy Bank, something is amiss in my experience. I realize it's a work in progress, but could roll a reasonably proportional and attractive map nearly every time in A21, some better than others, of course, with only the occasional oddity such as those dirt paths that go practically vertical in the wilderness. I gather that, perhaps along with the difficulty of getting vehicles around in them, is why most are avoiding mountains in their RWG maps that I've seen, though I distinctly remember rolling maps with logical transitions (for lack of a better term) in between, e.g. properly grading main roads, and wonder if the mountains couldn't just be graded a little less steeply than they are to alleviate that.

I fully expected someone to come along and say, "Use Taragon," or something, but am testing the vanilla experience here. So, thanks for the insight into technical changes being made along the way. It'll be a great help to know precisely what's changing and why. The only modlets I've ever used that affect RWG are those that reinstate the ability to generate large cities in the Forest biome and, of course, they just add 'forest' back to that one biome property line in rwgmixer, so I wouldn't think they're affecting much of anything when it comes to rendering the town and city grids, but will test with and without them regardless.

I'm no technical expert and am mainly keeping an eye on how updates are changing the aesthetics. I wouldn't be able to roll any of the most attractive maps I rolled in A21 at this point, but am not particularly interested in getting any of them back so much as how the RWG mixer is performing today. Algorithms will never rival the human touch, of course, but I expect better than I'm getting of late due to prior experience. This will help a lot. Thanks.

 

[zztong]

I had forgotten about changes that aligned cities, town, and countrytowns to certain biomes. I had forgotten about traders being matched up to biomes. Those happened in more recent times.

I probably overlooked them because to me those are minor things that I can change, but overall somebody could view those as being counter productive to non-story play.

Judie Witch is tagged "Rural" so it should be on the outskirts, but a Rural tile can end up next to any interior Tile. Judie might have ended up on a corner of a Tile at basically an intersection of the corner of it and three other Tiles. Then you could perhaps get Industrial and Commercial both beside the same Rural tile. ... I'd have to see it to be sure, of course.