Right now production is being held up by me trying to figure out the best way to make the maps.
To get the detail I want I think I'm going to try using tiles. Any city generator we make needs a lot more guidance than the average landscape creator because of how much detail we expect from a city. So here's my current plan.
1. The game looks at an street map file that may or may not be randomly generated. It looks something like this:
A more blown up example [of a different map]:
Each one of these streets is a representation of far more tiles. A '+' might actually be a block of tiles like:
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--+--
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These streets do not contain sidewalks, curbs or anything, but asphalt.
2. The game then calculates the space in the open plots.
3. All available premade tiles for this district/theme that fit the dimensions of the plot will be gathered and one will randomly be chosen.
A plot tile might for a suburban house might look like:
4. The plot tile is randomly rotated and placed to fit in the plot, in game looking like:
5. The plot is filled with whatever random elements it comes with (random litter, trash cans, doodads)
Sounds like it could work. There should probably be some way of grouping plots together, marking a region as "residential - suburban" or "commercial - dense", a bit like SimCity. An easy way of doing that would be to have each zone have a similar theme of plots, similar to how NPCs are currently separated (mostly) by zone in ToME.
[tome] joylove: You can't just release an expansion like one would release a Kraken XD
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[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
[tome] joylove: You can't just release an expansion like one would release a Kraken XD
--
[tome] phantomfrettchen: your ability not to tease anyone is simply stunning
