About Sweet Transit #17 | Limitations
[h2]Limitations[/h2]
Hello again, everyone!
Last week's focus was mostly on limitations. Sweet Transit has different kinds of challenges which means that some limitations will always be there such as a single warehouse. A single warehouse forces good station designs as most traffic will be directed to that point and that challenge constantly evolves the more you expand. There are plans for difficulty settings that will allow players to customize their experience while disabling specific achievements. But some limitations were not adding much apart from limiting how players can play and I have tackled some of them.
[h3]Expansion[/h3]
Villages had a limited build range. Now it is possible to expand indefinitely while growing your population and it works really well with new station distance calculations. Later I will have to take a second look at the population limitations balance.
[h3]Relocation[/h3]
Many newer players had problems with workers not going to their stations. This usually was caused because a village had reached its growth limit either due to the max population limit or there not being enough work for the current inhabitants to attract new inhabitants. This resulted in players trying to build new houses to fix this problem which did nothing as nobody wanted to move in. Now people will relocate inside a village from residences with no work to residences that need workers in nearby stations. This will make village growth more natural and as a bonus with fewer problems that do not add anything fun to the table.
[h3]Roads[/h3]
The next change is enabling road building under a bridge. This should lead to more interesting village designs having more ways to connect everything. On top of that, I have added a small QoL feature that allows building bridges on top of roads without removing them beforehand.
[h3]Production[/h3]
Build distance limitations are removed and only Warehouse keeps that rule. Placing farms and other production buildings inside of a village will be possible. It was a natural choice after allowing villages to expand their build range. With this change, it will be possible to connect production structures with roads directly allowing to pass workers and manage goods. However, this will have some downsides such as attractiveness and smaller growth due to fewer workers needed. For the next week I will continue working on this adding a pollution system and a new incentive to have trains delivering goods tied to the progression system.
The image below is a valid bricks production setup. Coal is being supplied to the village and brickworks, and bricks are produced while getting clay via roads. A village just makes sure that enough workers are in those workplaces.
[h3]Fertility[/h3]
Now tiles will hold height, resource and fertility information to provide more control over how farms and factories can be placed. This will be more strict to motivate the usage of the train. Map generation will also be iterated.
[h3]Rail Remove[/h3]
Rails and signals can be removed in a box drag mode. Some wanted a universal box remove tool as well and I am looking into that.
[h3]Optional Destinations[/h3]
I have added an option to mark destinations as optional. This works by testing wait conditions beforehand and deciding based on that if the trip is needed.
[h3]Zoom[/h3]
Finally, for mostly widescreen players a better zoom-out option will be available in the settings. I have implemented new systems for culling and distance-based occlusion to keep performance impact minimal.
Until the next week!
Hello again, everyone!
Last week's focus was mostly on limitations. Sweet Transit has different kinds of challenges which means that some limitations will always be there such as a single warehouse. A single warehouse forces good station designs as most traffic will be directed to that point and that challenge constantly evolves the more you expand. There are plans for difficulty settings that will allow players to customize their experience while disabling specific achievements. But some limitations were not adding much apart from limiting how players can play and I have tackled some of them.
[h3]Expansion[/h3]
Villages had a limited build range. Now it is possible to expand indefinitely while growing your population and it works really well with new station distance calculations. Later I will have to take a second look at the population limitations balance.
[h3]Relocation[/h3]
Many newer players had problems with workers not going to their stations. This usually was caused because a village had reached its growth limit either due to the max population limit or there not being enough work for the current inhabitants to attract new inhabitants. This resulted in players trying to build new houses to fix this problem which did nothing as nobody wanted to move in. Now people will relocate inside a village from residences with no work to residences that need workers in nearby stations. This will make village growth more natural and as a bonus with fewer problems that do not add anything fun to the table.
[h3]Roads[/h3]
The next change is enabling road building under a bridge. This should lead to more interesting village designs having more ways to connect everything. On top of that, I have added a small QoL feature that allows building bridges on top of roads without removing them beforehand.
[h3]Production[/h3]
Build distance limitations are removed and only Warehouse keeps that rule. Placing farms and other production buildings inside of a village will be possible. It was a natural choice after allowing villages to expand their build range. With this change, it will be possible to connect production structures with roads directly allowing to pass workers and manage goods. However, this will have some downsides such as attractiveness and smaller growth due to fewer workers needed. For the next week I will continue working on this adding a pollution system and a new incentive to have trains delivering goods tied to the progression system.
The image below is a valid bricks production setup. Coal is being supplied to the village and brickworks, and bricks are produced while getting clay via roads. A village just makes sure that enough workers are in those workplaces.
[h3]Fertility[/h3]
Now tiles will hold height, resource and fertility information to provide more control over how farms and factories can be placed. This will be more strict to motivate the usage of the train. Map generation will also be iterated.
[h3]Rail Remove[/h3]
Rails and signals can be removed in a box drag mode. Some wanted a universal box remove tool as well and I am looking into that.
[h3]Optional Destinations[/h3]
I have added an option to mark destinations as optional. This works by testing wait conditions beforehand and deciding based on that if the trip is needed.
[h3]Zoom[/h3]
Finally, for mostly widescreen players a better zoom-out option will be available in the settings. I have implemented new systems for culling and distance-based occlusion to keep performance impact minimal.
Until the next week!