2018-10-31 Street Lights, Bulldoze Craters, Smoky Craters

[Haxus]

Street Lights
Street lights remain unfinished in new style cities.

Street lights can now be created in the designer.

• To design a street light, change structure to Street Light on the design properties window. Unimplemented structures were removed from the Structure combo box, until they are ready.
  
• Street light can have one light bulb that emits light, similar to the headlight on a spacecraft.
  
• The number of street lights, headlights, vehicles, and other lights that illuminate the scene is controlled by a scene setting. Light sources are demanding. Only the nearest light sources to you emit light, up to the number configured in your settings.
  
• Street light can have multiple light lens parts. Lenses do not emit light but each of them gets a light glow sprite, centered on the lens geometry. This sprite is visible even if the light limit prevents the light bulb from emitting light.
  
• A simple street light blueprint was added to the blueprint exchange.
  
• Street lights switch on automatically in the dark, if they have power.
  
• Street lights do not consume power; they simply require it to be present.
  
• Light bulb properties can be configured on the Properties menu. Headlight bulbs of spacecraft and street light bulbs can be configured. they are the same kind of object.
  
• Light lens properties can be configured on the Properties menu. Light lenses in spacecraft and street lights can be configured. They are the same kind of object.
  
• Headlight lenses in spacecraft designs made prior to this update do not store light color. They are identified as "Headlight Lens" where the new lens is identified as "Light Lens". Select a headlight lens and run the Make Light Lens command on it to turn it into a light lens, if a different color than carbon arc light is desired.
  
• Street lights do not count against the 500 building limit on worlds. Their volume does count toward the building volume limit.
  
• Street lights can be placed on existing sites and new sites can be placed that overlap them. When placed on an existing site, you might not be able to access the construction window due to ambiguity of which site you are in.
  
• Street light designs will report commodity storage space, because that is the default for unused volume. Nothing will store anything there.
  

Ground Sound
The sound of walking on paved roads and at building sites is not correct.

Improvements were made to the choice of footstep sounds, based on terrain present at your location. This also affects your ground movement friction.

Bulldoze Craters
After a battle, it was a real pain to locate and clean up all the bomb craters.

A command was added to delete only bomb craters. All craters within 100m of the cursor are shown. The highlighted crater gets deleted when you click. Mouse wheel or arrow keys to cycle through stacked craters.

Smoky Craters
Bomb craters should smolder.

Bomb craters now smolder for a while. The time before going cold is based on the size of the crater.

[Haxus]

http://hazeron.com/splash/StreetLights.png

[martianant]

That model looks very good and simple, why don't roads use it to produce their own street lights instead of having the player have to place hundreds of lights or more? If players really want their own custom lights, have the option be a simple toggle "Include Streetlights" when laying the road, and then the players that want to have custom lights can just disable it and place their own. Or even better, allow players to select the streetlight design to use when placing roads. But at the very least I think it would be very nice and time saving if streets continued to place their own lights ala the old road system.

[Haxus]

I agree that a method for placing a row of street lights would be helpful. It all starts with a street light. I have to be able to place one single one, where I want, rotated how I want. That is the start.

The old roads automatically placed street lights. They often ended up in unwanted places, like in the middle of the street at a tee intersection. There was nothing you could do about it.

I put street lights throughout my city, one by one. It didn't take thousands, not even a hundred, wasn't too difficult, was easy in fact. It is handy that street lights can be placed on existing building sites.

I used the grid marks along roads as a general guide for spacing. It worked ok.

[Deantwo]

So these new street lights don't use candel/oil light if you don't have electricity yet? That is a little sad.
Do they cost electronic parts to make then?

[Vectorus]

The option for torch, candle or lantern light as well as electrical would be wonderful. Walking around my cobbled streets at evening, as the iron gas lamps hiss quietly with their yellow glow, would be very atmospheric!

[Haxus]

Electronic parts are not needed.

I'll have them come on dimly when there's no power.

[Vectorus]

I guess there's no reason why my lantern, as a custom item, couldn't be 15 feet high, actually! That would be functionally equivalent, wouldn't it?

[Haxus]

If you are referring to the sound, that takes more work. Buildings currently make no sounds at all until I rework the sound code. There is a sound resource that needs to be managed differently by SoH.

I have completed the changes to make street lights come on with dim candle light when there is no power.

[Vectorus]

That's a great change. I was just thinking out loud, because I'll probably want a way for mine to use candle light even when there is power. 

I meant that I could use the item designer to make tall lanterns the size of street lamps. But since you mention it, the ability for building to make sounds would be a superb change for all sorts of different reasons.