Compositions
Posted: 28 Apr 2019, 19:04
Overview
Compositions are a way to combine buildings, roads, road decorations and trees as a building. An important property of compositions is the support of a non square ground size. Therefore it could be used to make up non squared buildings for example
Compositions are used for example for the pre-built train stations
Definition
Technically compositions are defined as buildings that contain a list of the "things" they are built up with. The user can build it like a regular building, the preview displays the actual contents of the building. However, once the player issues to build the building the actual contents of the building will be built instead.
Basic structure (here for the train station as an example)
To understand how it's built up let's try to make a composition of the following:
So basically a road with a crossing on it and a park. The size of the building is 4x2. The basic structure of the building might look like:
Note that we will put the components of the composition into the composition array. Let's begin with the park. Since it's a building (we'll use the park with id $park01 for it) all we have to provide is the id, the position x, y within the composition. Optionally we can specify which frame of the park should be used. If we don't provide a frame the game will pick one randomly (if multiple are available). The code for the park:
The next thing will be the road. We will use $road01 (the country road) and have to provide the starting position x0, y0 and the target position x1, y1. To form a line that is axis aligned these parameters have to obey x0 == x1 or y0 == y1 (or both). With that, the code for the road would be:
Note that y0 == y1, so the condition mentioned above is fulfilled. Roads will connect to neighboring roads automatically if they intersect with them or if the start/end point is near to a connectable road.
Last but not least we want to put a crossing on the road. For that we will use the road decoration of id $roaddeco_crosswalk00. Similar to buildings it's sufficient to provide the id as well as a position x, y:
Done!
Let's insert these objects into the composition array above and we get
Alternatively you may download it as a ready to play plugin (no external files needed):
which results in
As you can see it's possible to rotate the composition. If rotation aware buildings are part of the composition they will rotate accordingly.
For road decorations and bus stops you can provide a level attribute (0 by default).
New attributes were added for roads in compositions, namely:
You may for example create intersections with these. The composition extractor mentioned below doesn't work for roads that are not on ground.
Since version 1.10.62 you can also include bus stops in your compositions. Lines for bus stops will look like that:
Tool
To make building up a composition easier there's a tool to convert a selected rectangle from a city to corresponding json code. It's part of the Plugin Creator Tools that you may find in the Plugin Store (you may find it via search function or listed in Categories->Tools).
Once you have installed the tool(s) you can select it from the toolbar. After that mark the area you want to create a json composition code for. The code will be copied into your clipboard then. This may look like:
Note that it's up to you to add at least an id as well as a building type (e.g. decoration) to it.
Known issues:
-The tool does not always handle road curves correctly.
-Road levels aren't supported, yet.
Compositions are a way to combine buildings, roads, road decorations and trees as a building. An important property of compositions is the support of a non square ground size. Therefore it could be used to make up non squared buildings for example
Compositions are used for example for the pre-built train stations
Definition
Technically compositions are defined as buildings that contain a list of the "things" they are built up with. The user can build it like a regular building, the preview displays the actual contents of the building. However, once the player issues to build the building the actual contents of the building will be built instead.
Basic structure (here for the train station as an example)
Code: Select all
[
{
"id": "$somerandomid00",
"type": "decoration",
"width": 4,
"height": 2,
"composition": [
{"id": "$trainplatform03","x": 0,"y": 0,"frame": 1}, // A platform
...
{"id": "$rails00","x0": 0,"y0": 1,"x1": 3,"y1": 1}, // Rails/road
...
{"id": "$railroof01","x": 1,"y": 1}, // Road decoration (for the rail)
...
]
}
]
Code: Select all
[{
"id": "$compositionexample00",
"type": "decoration",
"width": 4,
"height": 2,
"composition": [] -- We will put something in here
}]Code: Select all
{"id": "$park00", "x": 0, "y": 1, "frame": 0}Code: Select all
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 0, "y0": 0, "x1": 3, "y1": 0}Last but not least we want to put a crossing on the road. For that we will use the road decoration of id $roaddeco_crosswalk00. Similar to buildings it's sufficient to provide the id as well as a position x, y:
Code: Select all
{"id": "$roaddeco_crosswalk00", "x": 1, "y": 0}Let's insert these objects into the composition array above and we get
Code: Select all
[{
"id": "$compositionexample00",
"type": "decoration",
"width": 4,
"height": 2,
"composition": [
{"id": "$park01", "x": 0, "y": 1, "frame": 0},
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 0, "y0": 0, "x1": 3, "y1": 0},
{"id": "$roaddeco_crosswalk00", "x": 1, "y": 0}
]
}]
composition_example.json- (418 Bytes) Downloaded 320 times
- result.png (186.35 KiB) Viewed 14505 times
- image.png (548.69 KiB) Viewed 13885 times
Code: Select all
[{
"id": "$compositionexample01",
"type": "decoration",
"width": 3,
"height": 3,
"composition": [
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 0, "y0": 0, "x1": 2, "y1": 0,"l0":0,"l1":1},
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 2, "y0": 0, "x1": 2, "y1": 2,"l0":1,"l1":2},
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 2, "y0": 2, "x1": 0, "y1": 2,"l0":2,"l1":3},
{"id": "$road01", "x0": 0, "y0": 1, "x1": 2, "y1": 1,"join":false}
]
}]New attributes were added for roads in compositions, namely:
l0, l1
join
Since version 1.10.62 you can also include bus stops in your compositions. Lines for bus stops will look like that:
Code: Select all
{"id": "$busstop00", "x":1, "y":0, "level":0}Tool
To make building up a composition easier there's a tool to convert a selected rectangle from a city to corresponding json code. It's part of the Plugin Creator Tools that you may find in the Plugin Store (you may find it via search function or listed in Categories->Tools).
Once you have installed the tool(s) you can select it from the toolbar. After that mark the area you want to create a json composition code for. The code will be copied into your clipboard then. This may look like:
Code: Select all
{
"width":4,"height":2,
"composition":[
{"y0":0,"x0":0,"y1":0,"x1":3,"id":"$road01"},
{"level":0,"x":1,"y":0,"id":"$roaddeco_crosswalk00"},
{"x":0,"y":1,"id":"$park01","frame":0}
]
}Known issues:
-The tool does not always handle road curves correctly.
-Road levels aren't supported, yet.
