MEMORIA POLIS News

Today we're going to take a little time to explain in detail what we've called the "town planning rules" in Memoriapolis and how you'll be able to interact with them.

A planning rule defines how land and houses are created in the game.
They concern

• The size and shape of the plot
  
• How the land is divided into blocks and the size of the paths that divide it up
  
• The size and length of properties
  
• The type of house (facade, roof, colour)
  
• Treatment of open spaces (garden, green space, trees)
  
• The percentage of built and open space
  

These town planning rules are obviously modified when moving from one age to another, but also within the same age, when the player develops his town centre.

Evolution of the town centre in ancient times

The town centre is the first building of an age.

This is the building that will define the area in which you will be allowed to build in Antiquity, or the safety area in the Middle Ages. This building can evolve over 5 levels, which give access to specific bonuses and, at levels 1 and 3, change the town planning rules for the current age.

There are therefore 4 town planning rules in the Early Access version of the game (Antiquity and the Middle Ages) and 8 in the final version of the game, which adds the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.

First of all, let's explain how to define the place where a plot of land is created.

Every time the player places a building on the map, it affects the city's drawing power. This force of attraction, which affects the whole city, defines where the next plots of land will be created. All the buildings you place on the map have their own attraction force. It will add to, or sometimes subtract from, the force of attraction already present.



We'll be coming back to the details of how the attraction works in another Dev Diary.

Now that a new building has been constructed, it will allow the arrival of new building plots in the city.

A plot of land is an area of variable shape and size that is positioned to be as close as possible to the nearest source of attraction. The land is divided into blocks, which are in turn divided into properties. The houses will be built on these properties.

The size of the plots and the size of the properties are values defined by the town planning rules of the current age. This division is specific to the current age and will be different for each age of the game.

The way a plot of land is divided into parcels is a fixed feature, regardless of the current age.

Parceling in Antiquity

Parceling in Middle Ages

A plot of land created in early antiquity can have its dwellings transformed as the town evolves towards other town planning rules, but this will not change the organisation of its properties. This is not possible during Antiquity, but players will have a way of remedying this from the Middle Ages onwards.

With the "Master Builder's Office" building, players can influence the town planning rules and modify certain aspects, in particular the density of buildings, the maximum height of dwellings or the division of properties. These changes will obviously have a cost.

To conclude on the subject of town planning rules, I think it's important to say that ideally you shouldn't see them!

In fact, our aim was to make the development of the town seem as realistic as possible, as organic as possible, and as logical as possible, and to make the transformations of your town at each age seem normal.

Time will tell whether we've succeeded.

In the next Dev Diary we'll explain how to win or lose.

There are six basic resources:

• wood,
  
• stone,
  
• sand,
  
• clay
  
• iron
  
• gold.
  

They can be transformed into :

• beams,
  
• rubble,
  
• tiles,
  
• bricks,
  
• steel,
  
• jewellery.
  

There are special resources such as gold coins, gems, blueprints, food and culture points, which are not used to construct buildings but for many other tasks.

A farm and its fields on the edge of town

We wanted to use a fairly varied number of resources to create different ways of occupying natural space with harvesting buildings, but not overdo it to keep the game accessible. Production is an important part of developing a town, but we didn't want it to be the focus of the game.

Tip: Make sure you always produce more food than you consume. As citizens continue to flock to your city, this is bound to happen eventually, and you don't want a famine to break out! ːsteamfacepalmː

Most of the time, saying that you can build an organic growth city implies that:

1. the game will not produce a regular construction grid to rely on
   
2. And that the player lets the game decide on the urban layout.
   

The first point highlights the fact that, in reality, the roads in European cities don't typically form a neat grid. Instead, they resemble more a combination of islands with varying shapes.
As for the second point, some games allow you to define an area in which your inhabitants create their own houses. These random constructions are likely to create unique spaces with diverse structures that give the feeling of organic organisation.

And sometimes, the residents themselves define the routes through the city as they navigate between the various buildings.

In either case, the idea is to produce an 'organic' form that does not obey a conscious design, but exploits the practical use of the urban space as a mean of defining the city’s organisation.

When we look at history, we see that only a few cities in Europe have been entirely planned.
Some famous interventions – Haussmann’s changes for Paris springs to mind – have greatly transformed the appearance of the city. But in most cases, cities have developed autonomously.
At times, depending on the current leader's political inclination, specific areas of the city may adhere to a definite plan. However, more often than not, the city's development is shaped by the immediate needs and available land.

We believe that the primary driver behind a town's growth is, essentially, land ownership – the very ground it stands on. A mere path transforms into a road, and eventually, a street; a field evolves into a construction plot, into a house, and ultimately, into a building.

We worked hard on this map of Paris to come up with the development rules we could use in the game.


Moving from left to right – from the outskirts to the city centre – observe how farmland start giving way to small houses, all lining the road.
The land around these plots is broken up to create access to the main road from the plot's centre. Additional houses sprout along these new pathways, boosting urban density and reshaping the land into an urban block— an assembly of buildings encircled by roads.

That is the system of division and densification that we've tried to reproduce in the game.

Identification of each type of land on the plan

It's this system of division and densification that we've tried to reproduce in the game.

The first step is to establish a plot of land near the player's constructed buildings. These plots are divided into construction plots or orchards or vegetable gardens. The initial houses are built along the roads, following the town planning rules set for each era.


As new structures pop up on the outskirts, the appeal they generate draws in the construction of additional houses until the construction percentage hits the maximum limit allowed by planning regulations.


These rules consider factors like plot size (i.e., house dimensions), height, architectural style, roof type, inhabitants per house density, and the construction percentage allowed on a plot.

Creating the land and dividing up the plots

As each age has its own set of town planning rules, they will evolve differently over time.
Land created in early antiquity will not evolve in the same way as land created in late antiquity. Similarly, these two types of land will evolve differently in the Middle Ages.

We hope that this system will make it possible to create towns that are very different from one another.

Town planning rules from early antiquity

Town planning rules from late antiquity

Of course, players will also be able to rearrange the land plot to give it the shape they want and control its transformation over time.

We'll look at this in detail in the next Dev Diary

[h2]We're alive![/h2]

OK, yes I know, it wasn't exactly obvious from the last few months on this Steam page.

But to be completely honest, between the time we published this page and now, there have been a number of incredible events that have changed the way we've decided to communicate about the game

Those who follow us (I can see the three of you at the back of the room) have seen our discord change, our Facebook page evolve and very soon the arrival of the website, open playtests and so on.

So stick around, we're going to be telling you a lot about the game over the coming weeks!