0.5.3: Neighbourhoods, alleys and buildings
Neighbourhoods
Neighbourhoods are groups of adjacent wards of the same type. The idea is to reduce amount of labels on a map: if there is a cluster of 3 "craftsmen" wards, for example, labelling each of them is overkill. Instead, a single label can be placed somewhere close to the center of the cluster. The placement of labels is far from perfect and it can be easily improved, but I'm going to refrain from it now to see where all this is heading. Ideally, I'd like to implement custom editable neighbourhood labels and autogenerated ones as an option. I think that toponyms such as The Shades or Diamond District may add a lot of character to a map.
To enable colour coding of neighbourhoods check the new Watercolours option in the Palette submenu which is unchecked by default.
Alleys and buildings
In every update I announce improvements in alleys and buildings generation, but this time they are really visible - there are much fewer ugly triangular lots and buildings are inscribed into these lots much tighter. As a result, even with buildings option checked maps don't look like a shattered Lego thing. All in all I'm pretty content with the current state of this part of the generator.
Other changes regarding alleys and buildings:
- House view option is replaced with Buildings submenu in which you can choose Off (no buildings, just lots), Simple (rectangular buildings where possible) or Complex. The "B" key switches buildings on and off.
- Every neighbourhood has a "local temple". It's just a large building with a small plaza in front of it. Obviously you can ignore their "temple" idea, as they are not marked in any way.
- Buildings no longer touch city and castle walls. It looks a bit odd, but probably I just need to get used to it...
- Large temples now have mostly symmetrical plans.
Comments
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Incredible!!!!
How do you print the map and the data? I can't find a "Print" button anywhere.
Awesome update. I don't know how easy it was to add this from a development perspective but the "simple" addition of colored sections has already vastly improved the aesthetic of the maps
One suggestion / wish list item - you already spoke about adding a topography editor for water for the desktop app (if you make one which is still very "omg i hope i hope" for me), but for the online version an option to reliably put the river through the city would be great
Options for smaller waterways in the city would be even nicer but just getting even the main river through the city reliably would be cool
Thanks for all the work you keep doing on this!
I love this tool and can't wait for additional features to be added!
Please keep up the great work. :)
One question: What does "continuous" actually do?
https://itch.io/post/422446
Hi! This is an amazing tool that I've had lots of fun playing around with, and I've enjoyed reading your blog entries describing its development. Maybe I missed it in one of the blogs, but I'm interested in what the "Layout->Continuous" option does! I noticed it simplifies things a bit, but I cannot figure out by what technique exactly!
Thank you for creating this great tool, it is all types of cool.
Every district has a set of parameters affecting its layout - how regular is the grid of its alleys, how big are the buildings etc. This way different parts of a city has visibly different layouts. But in some cases it may look wrong, for example on one side of a street buildings are tiny and on the opposite side buildings are huge . When the "Continuous" option is checked, the generator tries to change these parameters across districts gradually to avoid abrupt shifts.
You blow me away every new update. This looks incredible.
This is so good, thank you for this work!
Yes, there is: link. But is it that bad for you now? On my decent, but pretty old MacBook Pro (2013, 8Gb) it never takes longer than a fraction of second to generate even a large city. There may be some memory leaks though depending on a browser...