Better scenario worldbuilding by giving PC knowledge of the nearest city on start

[RenechCDDA]

Summary

Content "Most scenarios now provide vision of the nearest city on start"

Purpose of change

Some starts spawn outside of cities, but are not like... innawoods players detached from society. Presumably the PC had a home before the cataclysm, and some sort of education, and at least knew where the mcdonalds down the street was. The game doesn't currently represent that - it only plops down a big (15-tile default) radius of sight around you at the start, and if there's no civilization in sight, too bad, guess your character was living off the grid!

Describe the solution

Add a json toggle defined per-scenario (defaults true so it doesn't need to be added to 99% of starts) whether this vision should be granted.

Draw a path from the nearest road to the city center, revealing an area around it.

Reveal an area around the city center, scaling with the CITY_SIZE setting.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The current method of scaling with city size doesn't seem to be perfect? Sometimes cities are massive, sometimes cities are small, and the vision might either be insufficient or too much. But then again, I wouldn't expect a city's resident to know the entire city...

Testing

Here is an average evac shelter start:

Here is basically the worst-case scenario:

Additional context

Disabled this for the following scenarios:
Medieval peasant(DDA)
Lab patient(DDA)
Island Prison(DDA)
Mi-Go prisoner(DDA)
Portal dependent(DDA)
Aircraft carrier start(DDA)
Middle of nowhere(DDA)
Lost Underground(DDA)
All innawoods starts(just in case)
Wizard's Vacation(Magiclysm)
Exile (Magiclysm)

[RenechCDDA]

@ Mod maintainers & those more versed in the scenarios than I am, I would be interested in hearing which scenarios might need to be updated to toggle this off?

[ashGlaw]

Love this idea

[GuardianDll]

I wonder how it would work with alcatraz, as you can't draw a road here

which scenarios might need to be updated to toggle this off?

For magiclysm: lake_retreat, exile
For xedra: none

[RenechCDDA]

If it can't find a road it actually draws nothing (silently fails).

[github-actions]

Auto-requesting reviews from non-collaborators: @GuardianDll @Light-Wave

[alp7292]

does this spawn world items. for example if you go to a unvisited place and load back save items and zombies will be different. but if you go to evac shelter and learn refugee center location everything on the path is generated and if you follow the road and load save back everything will be same. it most of the time generates places i will never visit and by generating it. it makes saving and loading times longer.

[RenechCDDA]

No, it doesn't load any of the local maps.

[Inglonias]

This is fantastic for someone who tends to play in and around cities like me. I love this.