Deeper zones? Well, why not?

[AJ3D 437]

https://github.com/boformer/GrowableOverhaul/tree/AJ3D/GrowableOverhaul

I just had a look at things from a few months ago. Here are the key things that are currently working with the code posted in the AJ3D branch.

-New Zone types and densities added. I've bypassed referances to the Itemclass enum, and directed them to a new enum. You can see the new zone types and wealth levels that I've added. With this, we've essentially separated wealth and density. Asset wealth is determined by building level, and density by either height or a player set value.

https://github.com/boformer/GrowableOverhaul/blob/AJ3D/GrowableOverhaul/ExtendedItemClass.cs

Low, Medium, and High density zoning, based on mesh height. We're capped at 6 colors for now.

-Spawning of large assets. The cracked open spawning algorithm will read up to a 16x16 area, and will currently spawn a single large lot in the area of random size. There is potential for all kinds of neat features here. We could spawn multiple tillable buildings next to each other, single massive buildings, or evenly spaced small lots. Just need to get the design work going. This is were all the deterministic behaviors related to zone type, density, and wealth level will go.

https://github.com/boformer/GrowableOverhaul/blob/AJ3D/GrowableOverhaul/Detours/ZoneBlockDetour.cs

Everything in this screen grab was grown.

-RICO mod compatibility. The current version gets its large assets from a modified version of the RICO mod. I've added some new settings to the RICO mod (like density) that are read by the growables overhaul mod. The modified version of the RICO mod applies the RICO Ai's to all growables, and tracks what buildings were plopped and which grew. Plopped RICO assets maintain their RICO invincibility, while grown versions behave just like growables with auto demolish and abandonment. When combined with Find It!, from the players perspective, there is no difference between large RICO assets and small growables. Everything will grow, and everything can be plopped via the Find It! panel. So with these three mods in a test environment, we've achieved singularity between RICO and growables.

https://github.com/boformer/GrowableOverhaul/blob/AJ3D/GrowableOverhaul/Detours/BuildingManagerDetour.cs

A nice grown industrial area with RICO assets. 

 

Some core mechanics features that are possible and need to be completed are:

-Building Themes compatibility. Not a huge chore, but needs to be done. The Growable Overhaul mod uses an extended area index, and building themes will need to as well.

-New Demand Manager. We need new demand calculations for the new zone densities and wealth levels. Something like a float value between 0 and 1 for each density (high, med, low), and each wealth level ($, $$, $$) for industrial, office, and commercial, and ($,$$,$$$,$$$$,$$$$$) for residential. The spawning algorithm and new building manager will read the new float values to determine what to do. For testing, I'm going to make a simple UI panel with sliders so the algorithm and manager can be manually fed demand values.

-New Building Manager. Would handle dividing and merging of existing lots. If conditions trigger for lot merging, loop through all lots and find a small building. If it has a neighbor that's aligned and has similar depth, add the two lot widths together and generate a new lot size. Calculate a new lot center, and spawn a larger lot over the two smaller lots. If conditions trigger for lot dividing, loop through all lots, find a large lot, and cut its width in half. Calculate two new lot centers, and spawn a pair of smaller lots over the larger lot.

This is a concept mod, and no where near anything playable. We still have lots of technical hurdles to work through. Between the new zone densities, wealth levels, and lot sizes, there are so many ways things can grow, and its going to be a lot of work.

Is anyone with some video making skills/abilities interested in helping with some demo videos? My 8 year old PC with 1Gb video card just can't handle the video recording software. I tried OBS and windows 10 built in recording software, and its choppy as hell.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

OMG awesome awesome awesome !!!!!!!!!! 

 

I would suggest another mod addition to that, something inspired from SC3K. SC3k used small "fillers" when growing medium-sized buildings on larger zones. it would add mini parks, tennis courts, etc... so that no ridiculously small footprint buildings had to be used for the smallest lot sizes.
1 square wide high density buildings are ridiculous, getting rid of them this way could be nice.

 

Edit : I'm re-reading form the start and this has been discussed a bit. of course it would not be nice if such things prevented bigger buildings from growing, but could be used as they were in sc3, as fillers only. If there are tiny lots appearing on curves, or in the back of lots too long to be filled with buildings of the exact good size.

[AJ3D 437]

That's something I've had on my mind too. The algorithm will detect up to a 16x16 area, and can fill that area with any combination of lots. Different zone types, densities, and wealth levels can spawn different combinations of buildings, and it all needs to be deterministic.

So for example, if we detect a 16x16 area zoned medium commercial, we can spawn a 14x11 box store on the back of the area shifted to the corner, a 5x16 parking lot in front, and perhaps a 5x2 concrete alley filler lot off to the side of the store. Maybe there is a chance we fill the area with 4 8x8 lots, or a single 8x16 box store and another 16x8 parking lot. Or if we use the planned tillable lot feature, we could spawn a strip mall of 4 4x6 strip mall store assets, and fill the rest of the area with parking lots or perhaps another row of small random single shops.

If we detect that same 16x16 area only now zoned residential low, there's a chance we fill the area with 4 4x8 lots on each road, or perhaps we can do 2 6x8 lots and a 4x8 on each road.

I think spawning entire blocks of buildings at once opens up a lot of options. Not only will individual buildings be randomized, but entire layout configurations can be as well. There is still lots of work to be done to get all the positions and lots calculated, but the foundations are there.

[Darf 1,439]

Looks very promising AJ3d! It's everything what I thought C:S currently needs. If you manage this mod I hope it becomes as popular as RICO is currently. Probably one of the most important ones for sure. I understand most of it still it's infancy stage, but also hope you eventually can make the demand algorithm more robust than the current one. Keeping city size in mind for higher density levels, for example. One thing from your post I still miss is how you will deal with increase in density and spawning new buildings on currently occupied spots. Or is that out of your scope for the moment?

[AJ3D 437]

That part isn't too bad. You can just use the current lot size and position, and call CreateBuilding with all of the new building stats. There is some additional math with lot dividing and merging that will take a lot more time to work out.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

16 hours ago, AJ3D said:

-New Zone types and densities added. I've bypassed referances to the Itemclass enum, and directed them to a new enum. You can see the new zone types and wealth levels that I've added. With this, we've essentially separated wealth and density. Asset wealth is determined by building level, and density by either height or a player set value.

Low, Medium, and High density zoning, based on mesh height. We're capped at 6 colors for now until CO helps us.

-RICO mod compatibility. The current version gets its large assets from a modified version of the RICO mod. I've added some new settings to the RICO mod (like density) that are read by the growables overhaul mod. The modified version of the RICO mod applies the RICO Ai's to all growables, and tracks what buildings were plopped and which grew. Plopped RICO assets maintain their RICO invincibility, while grown versions behave just like growables with auto demolish and abandonment. When combined with Find It!, from the players perspective, there is no difference between large RICO assets and small growables. Everything will grow, and everything can be plopped via the Find It! panel. So with these three mods in a test environment, we've achieved singularity between RICO and growables.

Some core mechanics features that are possible and need to be completed are:

-New Demand Manager. We need new demand calculations for the new zone densities and wealth levels. Something like a float value between 0 and 1 for each density (high, med, low), and each wealth level ($, $$, $$) for industrial, office, and commercial, and ($,$$,$$$,$$$$,$$$$$) for residential. The spawning algorithm and new building manager will read the new float values to determine what to do. For testing, I'm going to make a simple UI panel with sliders so the algorithm and manager can be manually fed demand values.

This is a concept mod, and no where near anything playable. We still have lots of technical hurdles to work through. Between the new zone densities, wealth levels, and lot sizes, there are so many ways things can grow, and its going to be a lot of work.

I hope Colossal Order allows for 6 more zone colors.

I love the Ploppable RICO mod functionality!

Demand should only be seperated by wealth. Density should depend on total population (or jobs) of that category in city (if it depends on anything at all).

Starting in 2 weeks, I will start looking into changing wealth (hooking it up to job instead of house) and will share my findings. I'm a slow learner when it comes to programming so I don't want to give you false hope.

[Giggily 0]

AJ3D, I'd be happy to help out with videos. I can record and do editing.

[Kaschperl 92]

This project looks promising already. Great work so far! I had already given up on waiting for something like this to be made. Thanks for picking this up again!

[DaEgi 14]

wow, this is ... just epic!! everything i have wished for and more!!!

[jumonjii 19]

Any movement on this or was it abandoned?

[DaEgi 14]

you can pick it up

[jumonjii 19]

I don't know anything about modding.

I was just curious is all.

[DaEgi 14]

well, I am not involved so I can't say anything at all really.

[boformer 3,169]

It can be found on Github, but I'm unable to finish it.

[boformer 3,169]

Just a little update on this:

With the "Make Historical" option released by CO, we now have the option to set the wealth level of a building independent from the actual asset.

With a mod, it would be possible to use any kind of growable building for any wealth level.

This opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. For example, we can define a range of wealth levels a growable building can have (e.g. 1 - 4).

[Ocram's Razr 964]

How did this mod go? Was anyone able to complete it?

[Netuno 97]

Modder Klyte45 created a zoning mod called Zone Mixer 0 (Beta). It mixes two zones (residential/commercial).

Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1800844556

 

[Klyte45 170]

Digging using the golden shovel here...

Well, the non-beta version of Custom Zone Mixer was released yesterday: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2055972178&tscn=1586625297

Tutorial video:

Well, it's not exactly what AJ3D was planning for RICO, but this mod can be a start point to change the overall zoning behavior. This mod initially allow to create 7 new zones with mixed types - various different zone type buildings can grow in a block based on the highest demand between them.

But this also can evolve. An ideed mixed zone building can be created (as example: commerce + residential buildings) if the zone allows both at same time. It would require some asset configuration and a little of change on CZM mod. The medium zoning also is an interesting concept that can be added too (maybe consuming 2 of the custom zones if it get applied) using the AJ3D declared concept of getting the mesh size to reclassificate them.

The demand management also can be improved inside the CZM. Don't know if it makes sense in current game stage.

The only thing that I don't have idea if it's feasible to do in the game is to change the zone size. MAYBE it can be done considering that a zone block actually manages 32 tiles, not only 16 (that's the biggest lot size nowadays). But the layout only would grow along the roads, not to away from the sidewalk (at least I guess).

Also, the AJ3D code could be used in this mod, most of it may be still applying to the current game version.

I hope you'll like it =V

PS: I still being notified from comments from here, even being away that long. So feel free to tag me =V