PaxLair Player Owned Town Scene Design and Test

Look at image 09 above. Everything except water lots is based off a city lot in red outline.

 

Player Owned Towns Design are talked about in this Community about 30 minutes into the video.

 

Weins makes a good point, a red city space can only hold 8 row houses, so any PoT owner who has a Metropolis and wants to place all row houses (556 of them), wouldn't be able to use the PaxLair template, because they would need 70 land-based city spaces to place row lots, and the PaxLair template only has 59. So the PaxLair template can only hold up to 472 row houses.

I don't think the PaxLair template is an ideal layout for such a 'big city' row house look, but it's food for thought.

 

Just a sec, let me fix that for you....

Having had way too many ideas "stolen" from me I'm much more precious of them.

Evidence 1: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ed-town-test-for-r17.23963/page-7#post-348901

Evidence 2: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ed-town-test-for-r17.23963/page-7#post-348938

Both dated April 7th.

Essentially all captured in the following picture:

Spoiler

I've mentioned this in a couple of threads and also in an email chain to some of the community, I also replied to Weins in another thread where he asks about anyone else seeing this conundrum (unfortunately it was ignored). There is definitely a problem, as there will be inefficient use of lot allocation.

That said, there is supposed to be an over-allocation of city lots but it may not be enough to allow for maximal row lots as you suggest. The devs either overlooked this, or are not banking on anyone going for maximal row lots. However, a 'bigger' problem is the density of row lots too. If you look at the picture above you can see the problem of trying to make row lots fit into city lots and there is likely to be a lot of wasted space: this will kill the built up feel that I believe many people, including the devs, want.

 

Is a good point

 

I believe a city lot can hold 12 row houses. This is possible as long as the front doors do not rest on another lot. I updated this figure below to show that 12 row lots is also a legal combination.



In several places on the PaxLair subdivisions, we divide up the city lots with a gap like that, but we use two village or a town lot in place of the 8 city lots. So I believe 12 row lots will work.

This will then provide 59 city lots x 12 row lots per city lot = 708 row lots maximum. It would be fun to fill the PaxLair scene with all Row Lots to see what it would look like ... hmm... 556 row lots for metropolis housing allotment = 46 city lots + 4 row lots left over.


Use of 46 city lots (each holding 12 row lots) plus 4 left over row lots = 556 row lots.



What all row lots looks like - Pretty neat actually. It's not Ardoris, but there are little neighborhoods.

The biome might need to be different so trees don't get in the way. A desert biome would be interesting to try with this.

 

Winfield to the rescue!

 

*Drool*

That's neat. It actually looks better than I first feared! Do you have any indication if you can fit 12 row lots into a city lot like that? (Also why are you awake so late?!!)

 

I guess we will find out for certain from the Devs when they have a chance to answer.

Why am I up so late/early? Well, I was having fishing nightmares -- flying fish, crying fish, but we need frying fish. So I decide to get up and have some fish for breakfast -- just kidding, who would do that?

Anyway, the more we pick apart the template system, the more we can learn and the Devs can learn I think.

 

Wait, that means you can get 556 row houses into PaxLair? If you would want.
That would be....an interessting option.

 

Totally agree!

Not so sure on that!

 

Sorry Jatvardur, in my defense, Weins did bring up the point here, which is all I was responding to. I'm aware of your 'wasted space' discussion, and really like your idea of using town spaces instead of city.. ;-)

Anyhow, I'm glad we were able to discuss it. The PaxLair template in all row houses looks mighty fine. I'm glad to see how dynamic these templates are working out!

 

The interessting thing is that if you can use the space like that you would be able to create a real city. Not just seperated and (sometimes) very different looking houses.

 

The problem with the 12 row to a City space is that they do not conform to the
"Entrance at edge"
requirement which I was opposed to earlier in this topic. Those four in the middle do not have their entrance at the edge.
If they allow for skipping that requirement then we should be able to work in the tiled solutions with back alleys that I showed earlier. Well at least the ones without angles.
If we could just have 4-6 pre-made tiles of Row lots within a City space that Port can plunk down with a cobble texture then we can have a great variety for Rows without big dev costs. This since Unity allows such clumping of assets into tile groups.

 

Spoon, what was the genesis of the "Entrance at Edge" requirement? I'd heard that there needs to be a place to put the sign or the stone in front of the lot, but not that the sign or stone would need to be outside the border of the building zone. If that is a requirement, then it does severely limit the ways Row lots can be laid out, and makes it very difficult to deploy row lots as they're intended to be used, in tightly packed rows.

My own plan uses a large number of Row Lots in the city center, hoping to replicate a tightly packed, medieval walled town feel, so, my hope is that Winfield is correct, as I use the '12 row lot' arrangement extensively.

 

It's more likely that Winfield has got it right, and that I've got it wrong.
Since I have third hand info while he has got some first hand info.

My point was rather that if one can do that then one could just as easily do this:

The white would off course be stone-paved.
Please note that these are not optimized for their purpose, just fast examples to show the idea. I can easily make better optimizations for a tile system. If done right I can do such that you can tile them next to eachother. (Done several such game tile systems before).

If Portalarium made 4-6 similar to these pre-set Row lot allocations then one could really have a city center with back alleys with a thick organic feel to it. Mixed with the old 8 row in city and 12 row in city. For such tiles one could also add a biome typical shrubbery to off-corners and such.
Since these can be grouped in unity one could "paint" with such without a further time loss than the first pass making them.

 

I think that's really cool Spoon.

 

It would be great if it ends up like that instead of the snaptogrid.

 

That would be just great. I love the idea.

 

I copied this down for my next visit. The first-hand discussions I've had so far deals with "snapping" sub-divided lots into place to the City Lots. How exactly that happens for 16 Row Lot positions, I don't know yet. I will try to find out. I will also see if there are ways to make Row House packages. I do know anything really detailed and specific requiring a lot of alignment and perhaps testing can slow the process down when trying to make 200 scenes. But we already know that. So maybe packaged row house designs might be an idea if they are linked together ... package A, B, C, D, E, F... and we designate them like Lincoln logs, etc.

How much interest exists for the row house lots and potential packaged designs for them? Can we get a bit of a community feel for that? Are row houses a big thing for the PoTs? Can you query this in the Player Town Designs thread in PoT Forum too that might reach a larger audience.

Thanks! Great ideas I think.