ultramanyy's suggestion discussion

[unreal grotto]

So you just turned theotown into worldbox?

I’m not against this

But if this was added you could turn them into “City advisors”

[ivory pagoda]

I’m not sure what is worldbox, but it’s nothing new in TheoTown. Zoning will auto build, this is the nature of this functionality and design. And this suggestion is merely provide a way to improve it. I.e. rather than grow totally random or only based on population, it grow with some constraints

Plus you can always Not to use this feature, no matter you want to have a fully random zone auto build, or manual place building

[ivory pagoda]

And to add some thoughts to the practical process of applying this algo.
So when the algo is first apply, it automatically destroy all the auto building that doesn’t fit into the algo rule, e.g. destroy all repetitive building that has more than 2 in any no-repeat zone, e.g. 10-tile circle/sqaure (of course which out of the same building to destroy is random). Then let those destroyed field grow back with building that satisfy the algo rule, which I think could be quite nice to work with. I am ok that it destroy building and population little bit at first then restore back with better aesthetic zoning result

[misty marsh]

doesn't sound bad, but the performance implications are gonna be hell

[ivory pagoda]

I’m imaging it will only be heavy when first apply, later it should be light
first time applying will use some time, mostly to calculate and clean the building.
But later on it should be light, it’s just whenever the auto start to build each new building, just check if it follow rule with current layout, which only need to check the small circle/square of this 1 new building. if not follow rule, choose another building to build

[misty marsh]

that's the point, checking tiles around all the buildings that get built is gonna be heavy

[ivory pagoda]

That I don’t know the technical detail and specific implementation.
BUT, my city is not very often building on auto, so not very often need to check surrounding.
Plus, when you build a thing, it need to check surrounding about whether tile is occupy or not, and that’s whole map check, I don’t see why this checking only e.g. 10 tile surrounding would be heavy, compared to what already exist