Building Placement

[Grandma Ruth]

This is a fort that was generated by the game. You know the message that comes up the first time there's a new industry?
It looks very shaky to me - I thought the game would not place anything where it's too hilly or over water, etc. I thought there was a built-in safeguard.
This might not be anything to do with Trainmaster, of course, but just a quirk of RT.
What do you think?

[nedfumpkin]

I have to admit that it looks kinda funny.

I'm not sure what is causing it. The fort is using the Southwest Station buildingfiles, but I am using the lumber mill bty file for footprint. Maybe the foot print is too small. I'll do some tests and see what workks best.

I do remember a few years ago when I had something similar happen in 1.05, so there may also be some quirk in the game...so long ago I can't rmemeber specifics.

[proudcanadian]

I've seen this in a couple games, so I think it's just a quirk in the game. It happens in particular when you try to build a large station in a mountainous area. The ground rises up to level the surface, but from certain angles it looks like the station hangs over the edge of a cliff. Since the fort appears to be based off of the Large station of the southwest style, then my guess is that it has something to do with that.

[WPandP]

One thing that *could* be done, not that I'm volunteering or anything, is that the 3DP file for the building(s) could be edited, to add a deep "basement" to them, so that when the land gets oddly sculpted like this, one ends up with a reasonable looking edifice. The Port already works like this - most of it gets buried in the "shore"; if you try to use the Port's 3DP files for another building, you'll see a much taller building sitting up high and dry on top of the land. Simplest method would be to find all the points that have Z=0, as these define the building's footprint on the ground; then, for each such point, add another with Z=-30 or some other negative value. Then, go through and define faces using these new points; one could just copy the face from above, although you'd probably want to re-map each face to a part of the skin file that looks most like concrete. Okay, so that's not quite the SIMPLEST way to do it.

The SIMPLEST way to do it is to just change all the Z=0 values to Z=-30. This will end up stretching the building down below grade. However, because all you're doing is stretching, this will warp the building and might make it look funky. A building, like a station, that sits on a skinny platform might work this way... you're stretching the bottom of the platform, leaving the walls untouched.

Just thinking things through. If Rail Mogul were alive and well, I'd be insisting that building models include deep basements, to accommodate varied terrain. Probably too much work to revamp RRT3 that way, though.

[nedfumpkin]

For the fort and the military outpost, I think I'll try editing the 3dp files since it will lend well for them being on land that is not flat. The buildings use stations, so it should work well.

[Grandma Ruth]

Of course the game itself would never randomly place a station, as it did this. Is that relevant?

[nedfumpkin]

It shouldn't be because as far as the building type goes, the game doesn't perceive it as a station. Its footprint should be almost the same size as a lumber mill, but I might just find something a bit bigger since looking at the 3dp file, making changes will be difficult since there's no way of finding the precise location of the z coordinates for dropping the base other than t&e.

I have noticed that when placing a fort that it does want flat land and is a big finicky about it. I'm going to dig into this more because I want the agricultral communities to be more able to go on sloped land. Same concepts, just the opposite desire.