Streets

[ssilk]

Streets should behave like normal ground, which means, you can put belts on it etc. It's just a new type of ground with special capabilities.

Streets can be built
- by the player using bricks of stone (or when oil is available asphalt or some other stuff is thinkable)...
- by usage: In "Siedler 3" the number of walks over a tile was counted and if the number was high enough the tile changes from simple ground to a pathway and then to a street by itself. I think this was a very cool idea, because naturally when you walk many times over something it changes to a "path" and then you can walk also faster on it.
This means also, that - if eventually maybe at some time in future - walking robots are introduced, they could built paths (streets) by walking over it.
- Maybe we have different street-types (path, street, highway), which also differs in the size of the pieces (1x1, 2x2, 3x3) and max speed.
- Combined with the idea above: The more often you walk over a street (or path) then the earlier the tile becomes more enhanceed.
- eventually it is also the other way around: The first path must be build by usage and then you can enhance it by building street and highway besides it (minimum one tile must be a path before).
- This gives the stones also more sense.


Streets could be useful for

- speeding up the game a little bit, especially, if streets are build by usage.
- help to get more orientation in more distance.
- faster walk - of course
Special: I think of roller skates you can research. If researched and you built a pair of it you can put them into a new slot and they are used when you walk on a street. Could be really fun to "slide" on it...
- the car is "locked" on a street. This means: When you come to the border of a street in a non 90-degree angle (touching the side of the street), the car is redirected (reflected) into the "direction of the border". This enables to drive through the factory without danger of hitting/destroying something (in my eyes the car is much too complicated to drive exactly through it without help). Eventually the car (and train?) is also faster when on a street. The street must be minimum 2 tiles broad for using it with a car and if you make the curves too steep you may not be able to drive around it.
- The creepers like also streets, cause they are faster for them (path-search knows about speed-gain). If we combine this with the "build paths by walking over it" the creepers will build their paths themself. So it is easier for you to find them.
- Building on streets should be easy but maybe costs a little bit more time.
- For a tower-defense-like-mod, streets could be the only way the creepers can walk on.

[SilverWarior]

I like your idea of streets.
Streets could serve greatly in helping to navigate large maps.
I also like the suggestion for car to automatically focus on street direction as this could make driving on streets much easier.
Streets could also work as a way for atracting creepers towar your base. For instance in game Timber and Stone mobs start to wander the paths after they find them so they will find your settlement faster.

I also like your suggestion for ground tiles to change into path after they are walked upon N times but implementing this would require increasing the memory that is being used for each tile to store the number of times some ground tile was walked upon.
Also if this is implemented I would like to see that after certain time of not being used the tile reverts back to initial state (paths gets regrown).

[ssilk]

Attracting: yes! One the other hand it's then eventually easier to defend, because they run directly into your weapons.

Path gets regrown: I like that and I thought for that, but this needs some kind of routine which scans the map. This needs CPU.

Something (a creeper), which is walking over a tile (increasing the number of walks) needs of course also CPU, but - well - this is not avoidable and the number of creepers at one time can be limited and increasing a number in the structure of the tile is not very complicated, but a routine, which scans the map can use a huge amount of CPU, depending of the size of the map - from architectonic standpoint of software-development this should be avoided. It's eventually possible to generate a special data-structure for handling that (game-time-based) but ... pffff ... complicated.

[Phantasm]

There has to be toggle button for car following streets. Like Simcity 4 has with you-drive-it missions.

[ssilk]

Why? If you want to leave the street you can go out of the car and mine it. The advantage is, that this also repairs the car. Ridiculous, yes, but practical. I just wish that when I place a car it is automatically filled with one stack of coal or wood.

[Phantasm]

Why? If you want to leave the street you can go out of the car and mine it.

That is a lot of work if you have to cross multiple streets.

[SilverWarior]

There has to be toggle button for car following streets. Like Simcity 4 has with you-drive-it missions.

What I had in mid is that car slowly focuses its direction to street direction but as soon as you press left r right button the autofocusing feature is overriden and car starts turning as it would outside roads. This way you would also be able to change lanes etc. without the need for togling road autocentering feature.

[ssilk]

That is a lot of work if you have to cross multiple streets.

See above:

When you come to the border of a street in a non 90-degree angle (touching the side of the street), the car is redirected (reflected) into the "direction of the border".

This means: When you cross a street-border (car is standing 90 degrees to the border or lets say better between 60 and 120 degrees), then the car is not "reflected", it passed just through, because this is, what you intentionally want to do there (think for the end of a street, that's 90 degrees). Eventually I would add also "If the car is very slow, so that it can't hit anything, it is also not reflected".

I don't know if those ideas really work. In the end only one thing counts: Usage of the car so, that you can drive through the factory, without damaging too much and making so the car more useful...