City Sizes

croxis · October 17, 2009, 04:27:44 PM

How does this sound to make the two comparable? Currently we agree to make a "tile" at 10m. For loading sc4 regions the application will resize the heightmap internally. This means the layout wont be 1:1 as CityMania cities will be a little larger than their SC4 equivalents.

SimCity 4
Tile = 16m (15.625)

size      dimension    length
small      64    1000 m
medium    128    2000 m
large      256    4000 m

CityMania
Tile = 10m
size      dimension    length
xsmall 64 640m
small      128    1280m
medium    256    2560m
large      512    5120m
xlarge 1024 10240m

townscape · October 19, 2009, 04:08:18 AM

Question: Will Buildings be locked to the grid or will it be optional?

croxis · October 19, 2009, 09:53:31 AM

The grid is a more loose term. For the heightmap 1 pixel will become a 10mx10m polygon square on the terrain. A grid is also needed to process spatial data such as crime and pollution. Building construction will not be tied to a grid however. Yet I, and others, found in the CitiesXL beta that the complete lack of grid did make construction more difficult. Chances are the client will have a construction grid guide that the player can set to different angles.

MandelSoft · October 19, 2009, 10:34:06 AM

How about the sizes "Extra Small" (640m x 640m) and "Extra Large"(10,24km x 10,24km = Cities XL map)?

croxis · October 19, 2009, 10:57:32 AM

I don't see why not.

As soon as I can fix my gui code for the linux client (I hate programming gui. more than i hate netcode!) I'll start working on the basic region level.

JoeST · October 20, 2009, 03:07:15 AM

surely the pixels should be terrain points rather than terrain squares...

croxis · October 20, 2009, 11:43:52 AM

That is what I meant

dragonshardz · October 23, 2009, 11:51:22 PM

So city area would be as follows:

x-small: 0.4096 km²
small: 1.6384 km²
medium: 6.5536 km²
large: 26.2144 km²
x-large: 104.8576 km²

EDIT: Fixed decimal places.

croxis · October 24, 2009, 12:10:33 AM

Right, I was mostly looking at dimensions needed for the heightmaps

dragonshardz · October 24, 2009, 12:26:32 AM

Gotcha, thanks.

Nique · October 24, 2009, 07:14:07 AM

Quote from: dragonshardz on October 23, 2009, 11:51:22 PM
So city area would be as follows:

x-small: 409.6 km²
small: 1638.4 km²
medium: 6553.6 km²
large: 26214.4 km²
x-large: 1048.576 km²

500x500km ? holy ... aren't these meters ?

townscape · October 24, 2009, 11:54:41 AM

No...try it on you calculator. The sizes are just right, though even smaller 10x10km(100square km) maps (a la CitiesXL) would go nicely too

croxis · October 24, 2009, 02:27:39 PM

I think you might of gotten your units or decimal wrong actually:
xm: 0.4 km^2
sm: 1.6 km^2
me: 6.5 km^2
lg: 26.2 km^2
xl: 104 km^2

Extra large size is just a little bigger than CitiesXL

dragonshardz · October 24, 2009, 03:45:48 PM

You sure? If the x-small is 640m x 640m, then that's 409,600 meters². The formula for calculating area is h*w=A. Convert that into kilometers, and you have 409.6 km².

And so on up the list to x-large.

Oh, wait...I used the length converter, not the area converter. I have a program called convert.exe that is really handy for converting units, and I used the distance converter instead of the area converter.

I'll go back and fix it.

RippleJet · October 24, 2009, 03:53:50 PM

1 km² = 1 km × 1 km = 1,000 m × 1,000 m = 1,000,000 m²

Jonathan · October 24, 2009, 04:01:28 PM

Can the cities just not be really massive, like no limit.
You start off with a small city and then as you want to expand it just get a little bigger on one side and smaller(but it still keeps what is built there) on the other
Also will there be an option to "buy" more space, from like neighbouring cities (if CM will have nieghbours?)?

Jonathan

dragonshardz · October 24, 2009, 04:13:24 PM

Heh...Jonathan, check "Improving region play" later today, I am working on a post that would describe how that would work. I just need to finish up my diagrams.

Great minds really DO think alike.

croxis · October 24, 2009, 04:28:39 PM

It is possible, but there is a limiting factor in optimizing the game speed. There is a programming trick called Quad Tree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_tree). In order for this to work the map not only needs to be square, but 2^n in size. This is why all the maps in all the games have been square and the size they are. Yes, it is possible to do what is being asked, but we will lose an optimization tool in the process.

Earwhyckque · January 10, 2010, 02:32:24 PM

Hey! This is a nice project. Hopefully it will turn out to be as good as, let's say, OpenTTD

I have one question: I see that you have chosen to choose different sized tiles (10 metre instead of 16 metre). Maybe you've already thought of this, but just keep in mind that you may need a minimal size for a street with side paths, or a double railway. For instance, a motorway could use approximately 30 metres (according to Neufert

), which should fit in two 16m tiles...

So, maybe this is irrelevant, but it could be something to think about. Besides, 1000 m by 64 tiles doesn't sound too bad to me...

Good luck with this project!

croxis · January 10, 2010, 04:59:28 PM

Construction is not tile based, but freeform

The tile grid is for the terrain and some simulation