Add #6887: Option to show zone inside local authority boundary of towns

[GabdaZM]

Can be found at town information > local authority window
Layout for button is same as Graph Keys
Turn on/off for every town individually

[GabdaZM]

I need some feedback:

• on the color
• on the placement of the button
• and if the logic is appropriate or not

I saw the JGR Patch Pack/Zone patch, but the small selection sprites seemed too new to add (not legacy TTD look).

[Milek7]

I don't think that ClosestTownFromTile(ti->tile, _settings_game.economy.dist_local_authority); is correct lookup for town authority.
Comparing with cache.squared_town_zone_radius[0] (for each town separately) is likely better one. (see #6417)

[nielsmh]

How does the query tile window check? It always shows Local Authority.

[nielsmh]

Turns out that yes, this is exactly how the Land Info window determines local authority:

OpenTTD/src/misc_gui.cpp

Lines 139 to 141 in effb7da

	virtual void OnInit()
	{
	Town *t = ClosestTownFromTile(tile, _settings_game.economy.dist_local_authority);

OpenTTD/src/misc_gui.cpp

Lines 223 to 229 in effb7da

	/* Local authority */
	SetDParam(0, STR_LAND_AREA_INFORMATION_LOCAL_AUTHORITY_NONE);
	if (t != NULL) {
	SetDParam(0, STR_TOWN_NAME);
	SetDParam(1, t->index);
	}
	GetString(this->landinfo_data[line_nr], STR_LAND_AREA_INFORMATION_LOCAL_AUTHORITY, lastof(this->landinfo_data[line_nr]));

[GabdaZM]

Yes, I used the method from land info.

[Milek7]

Ok, nevermind. I had problems with this method 2 years ago but can't quite remember what was wrong.

[GabdaZM]

I've just realised that this version requires a lot of computation, so I have to do something about it.
Is local authority a static thing, or just as Milek7 said and linked, it can change on city growth, and the land info tool sometimes deceiving?

[Milek7]

Causes of my confusion about tile authorities 2 years ago were:

• ClosestTownFromTile, for houses and town owned roads directly returns town assigned to the tile, ignoring threshold.
• local authorities refusing demolition and crediting tree planting follows logic of ClosestTownFromTile with threshold (eg. town assigned to tile regardless of distance, or closest town in dist_local_authority range otherwise)
• but assigning stations to towns (and thus crediting local authorities ratings) is based on ClosestTownFromTile without max distance.

So using ClosestTownFromTile with dist_local_authority is correct for determining local authority jurisdiction for destruction/tree planting ratings, but invalid for purposes of determining stations influence on local authority ratings.

[GabdaZM]

Note about the methods to decide what tiles gets the zone indicating tile selection sprite:

• Calculate it every time a tile gets dirty: On big maps with lots of tiles and towns it is too much calculation.
• Calculate it once and store the information (and update it on appropriate occasions):
  • Storing the info in _me: _me is saved and not meant to be used for data without game logic.
  • Storing a list of tile indexes for a town: dynamic array size as towns can grow, appending and searching can have hard to predict performance.
  • Using a 1 or 2 bit / tile visual overlay cache for the entire map.

[LordAro]

I like it! I'm open to any further performance improvements, but as it stands currently this is a nice feature that I've seen requested many times and is very simple to implement

[LordAro]

I like it! I'm open to any further performance improvements, but as it stands currently this is a nice feature that I've seen requested many times and is very simple to implement

[LordAro]

I wonder whether this is a bit far out of the way in the Authority window. I suspect it's not going to be noticed here...

[andythenorth]

Try it as a toggle on either the global 'map' menu or 'town' menu? Dunno if it's better.

[LordAro]

Yeah, maybe try on the "parent" town menu ?

[GabdaZM]

I would like to keep the possibility to toggle the zone display for the towns individually. This way it is not a problem when two towns are really close or even grown into one. I cannot do that in the global map. Placing a toggle button before each town name in the town list would be possible, but finding a town you already see on the viewport can be harder than the current method.
The parent town menu is really close to the original TTD look, and I don't have the heart to modify it.
I agree that it is hard to find as it is, but I think the function belongs to that windows logically. If the same function will be added to the stations to show coverage, maybe more people will look for it and search the town related windows.

[GabdaZM]

The main performance problem is that is calculates the closes town for every tile even when none of the town zones indications are on (so I plan to add a counter, and calculate when it is not 0), and when on max zoom out, scrolling refresh all tiles, and all selections, and getting the closest tile for each tile on the screen, especially is there are a lot of town, is too much. I plan to disable this function on max zoom out.
I'll try the button placements you suggested.

[GabdaZM]

My other approach for this issue: Add #6887: Highlight tiles within local authority of towns #7047
I would like some feedback on which approach is preferable.

[LordAro]

I'm very tempted to say that this solution is the better one, just because it's so much simpler and doesn't touch the map array. I've not noticed any performance impact myself either... do you have any measurements for each solution?

[GabdaZM]

This solution can have heavy impact, that is why I disabled the function in out zoom 16 and 32. The necessary calculations are proportional with the number of displayed tiles, and also proportional with the number of towns. In a 32x out zoom, the closest town check is done 250.000-300.000 times per second. When I tried it in a 4096x4096 town (it is only interesting because of the number of towns) the graphics needed ~10 ms when none of zones were turned on, and ~300 ms when I turned on one zone.
By disabling the tile highlights in 16x and 32x out zooms, the situation is not that bad, but I think it is a workaround and only hiding the symptom.
I modified the other commit, now it uses a separate cache array, not the map array.

[LordAro]

Have we come to the conclusion that this solution definitely isn't workable? If so, I'd like to close it and get it out of the way :)

[GabdaZM]

It is workable, but calculation heavy, and I like the other solution more.
One of the two can be closed.

[ldpl]

I used zoning patch for many years and even programmed some new zones for it (including town ones). Yet, I'm not a big fan of zones and I'm looking for a better ways to do it. First of all there are just too many different zones. Even if we only consider towns there are two authority zones, three advertisement zones and five house zones plus growth highlight and they all have their use. Second, they are indeed computational-heavy and there doesn't seem to be an easy way of making it faster. Third, sometimes you need two-three zones at once. E.g., I always keep growth highlight in citybuilder and switch between other zones with hotkeys.

What I'm thinking of lately is to somehow switch from having to toggle zones on/off to automatically show them when they're needed. E.g. show authorities when placing stations. Industry forbidden areas when funding industries. Advertisement zones when hovering advertisement options (and building stations I guess) and so on. But I couldn't think of any good way to implement it with current UI. I'd really like to see some new elements like opaque overlays for zones, rich building tooltips for info, something along those lines.

[andythenorth]

I used zoning patch for many years and even programmed some new zones for it (including town ones). Yet, I'm not a big fan of zones and I'm looking for a better ways to do it. First of all there are just two many different zones.

+1 I tried the zones patch included in JGR PP, and I found it quite confusing in use. I wonder if it's simply too much information, or if it's simply a visual problem with the overlay? It might be interesting to toggle ground tile sprites between 'terrain' and 'metadata'? Then tile colours could be used, for e.g. town boundaries. Might not work, dunno :D . Be easy to mockup a fake test with objects grf though.

[GabdaZM]

I used zoning patch for many years and even programmed some new zones for it (including town ones). Yet, I'm not a big fan of zones and I'm looking for a better ways to do it. First of all there are just two many different zones.

+1 I tried the zones patch in included in JGR PP, and I found the quite confusing in use. I wonder if it's simply too much information, or if it's simply a visual problem with the overlay? It might be interesting to toggle ground tile sprites between 'terrain' and 'metadata'? Then tile colours could be used, for e.g. town boundaries. Might not work, dunno :D . Be easy to mockup a fake test with objects grf though.

JGR PP zoning patch uses vibrant colours and smaller tile selection highlights. While it is informative, I don't know how it matches the TTD visual style, and which one is more supported:

• keeping the visuals close the original TTD as much as possible.
• adding new features for a more comfortable/informative UI which need new visual features as well?

[GabdaZM]

What I'm thinking of lately is to somehow switch from having to toggle zones on/off to automatically show them when they're needed. E.g. show authorities when placing stations. Industry forbidden areas when funding industries.

I like the idea, I did a demo on the industry forbidden areas part in an other PR.

[stale]

This pull request has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity in the last month.
Please feel free to give a status update now, ping for review, or re-open when it's ready.
It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 7 days.
Thank you for your contributions.

[GabdaZM]

Should it return with a bool, and make the drawing at DrawTileSelection? (Of course with a renamed function.)

[GabdaZM]

Now using a k-d tree to store the towns that have the highlight turned on. This way, when searching for closest town for a tile, most of the times it is enough to search in this small k-d tree.

[stale]

This pull request has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity in the last month.
Please feel free to give a status update now, ping for review, or re-open when it's ready.
It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 7 days.
Thank you for your contributions.

[GabdaZM]

Can I ask someone to have a look at this PR?

[LordAro]

Couple of small things, but I'm otherwise happy with this

[LordAro]

Couple of small things, but I'm otherwise happy with this

[LordAro]

should have a NOSAVE label, i think

[GabdaZM]

Yes, this data should not be saved. Is the label enough, or I also have to set is elsewhere?

[LordAro]

this seems very suspect...
Not only is townids empty when this is passed in, but it goes out of scope and is destroyed when this function returns

[GabdaZM]

I have to make an empty vector to add identical iterators to Build(), as it does not work with null pointers. However as it does not look good for sure, I made a Clear() function in the kdtree instead, and it can be called without any parameters. It seems like a little change, but I can put it into a separate commit if needed.

[GabdaZM]

This visualization does not collide with the coverage display.