Townsaper | Ideas | Suggestions | Requests

[Richie]

Summary

I see a lot of posts with ideas, some probably have already been said. I know the game is still in early access, however, I would like to see the following additions to the game in future developments (if possible):

Building and Terrain Options

• Add Wharves or docks option (Add ships, boats, canoes, rafts).
• Add Building architectural options (Markets, cathedral, huts, boat yard, docks, fountains).
• Add Different types of foundation/terrain tools (Beach sand, desert sand, hills, mountains, valleys, pond, stream)
• Add Plant and tree types option (Wall garden, palm trees).
• Add Ability to create stairs manually as well as automatically (maybe).
• Add Lighting fixtures (Lamp posts, street lamps)
• Add Road pathway (maybe).

Life

• Add People (like how there are birds) with an on/off option.
• Add Sea life (Water vegetation like sea-weed patches, water-lilies, fish/whale/dolphin/turtle breaking water's surface)

Tool Options

• Add Different brush sizes.
• Add Photo mode.
• Add Fly-through or walk-through mode.
• Add Day and night on/off option.
• Add Grid options (Keep existing random grid, but add a linear square grid, as well as a circular grid).

Future Release Ideas

• Build cities in the sky (Floating islands maybe).

[Adondriel]

For the grid options, it would be cool to have a sort of... "mini-grid" where each grid tile is also multiple smaller tiles, but I also know that could be a lot of work to pull off depending on how the engine works.

I would LOVE a walk-through & fly-through mode.

[andy]

This definitely needs a walk mode.

[Han Yolo]

Those things sound like great additions...

[KarhuTitus]

I just discover this game, it's amazing. I'm agree that some tools are missing. I'm thinking of using this game for role playing game for personnal use, to create town and create some adventure in it. I think the plant and grass option would be a must, but i like also the other ideas. I was wondering also (I know it would be a big job to create this... but...) if it's possible to add a button that change the style of the town : for exemple, medieval, modern, futur, 1800,...

[OP3NGL]

walk/fly mode after building your city would be great

[Grey]

I've got a few suggestions from my first short while playing.

Middle Click to select the colour you've moused over. I instinctively attempted to do that when I first started, and I've so far found the lack of a feature like that to be frustrating.

Sound Control. The game is quite loud at the moment. Being able to toggle sound effects, ambient sound, and maybe even some music would be a significant improvement.

Toggle Camera Auto-Movement. At smaller City sizes, the camera moves like crazy which keeps throwing me off. However, I can see how some people could actually like that feature, so instead of removing it, I'd recommend a toggle option.

Export to 3D Package would be another great option, but that's been mentioned in a few places. It would allow for 3D Prints of buildings, or allow for Exporting an entire City / Town into something like Tabletop Simulator so that people could play Tabletop RPGs in their cities.

More Colours would be nice, though I suspect it might well be easier to just implement a colour slider and set up a dynamic texture system. Would remove the need to manually create 30+ textures for each tile variant. Though if pressed, I'd really only suggest a Pale and Darker shade of each existing colour. The Variants are good already, but that would allow for enough of a variance to create truly unique cities.

Resource Packs would be an interesting addition. The idea of someone being able to change the textures or meshes for each building type through some modding tools down the road could allow for damn near infinite choice. It's also a nice cop-out to hand the community a set of tools and a workshop so that the developer wouldn't need to deal with creating 5 or 6 different sets themselves.

Steam Workshop support for sharing builds. No idea how hard it would be to implement, but it would be amazing.

Dedicated Screenshot Tools. It's been mentioned already, but a way to render a screenshot at higher resolutions, or even a GIF that shows a loop-spinning render of your City would make it much more useful than just hiding the GUI and hitting Print-Screen. There's a lot of things that could be implemented. Could also tie into an Ambient mode of some sort where you could have that ambient camera movement play while the game is open just sitting there. Could allow for having the city open on a second monitor while writing or gaming.

Better Saving. Right now there's no easy way to have multiple versions of your City, nor is there a way to name it. Cloud Saves would be nice as well to be able to adjust your City on the go, or allow you to build it on your Main machine, then show it off to a Tabletop Gaming Group on your Laptop.

Some of these options should be quick, but many of them would take a long time to implement. None of these would really be needed, but as the game is in early access, those would be what I would add. Really looking forward to seeing where the game goes, and REALLY interested to see what others suggest as well, because there's already been a few suggestions I wouldn't have thought of.

[Glen Chico]

Great suggestion. Towns folk and boats randomly milling around would be amazing.

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

export to .obj ! ;)

[Tini Taleweaver]

On top of all the wonderful suggestions here, I would add a click and drag option for making things. The single clip to place anything is very excessive.

[Jeran]

oddly, I would love a sense of absolute direction. Adding a compass would be really helpful. This wouldn't add much to gameplay, but would hopefully be relatively simple to implement.

[GodlessArco]

Originally posted by Jeran:

oddly, I would love a sense of absolute direction. Adding a compass would be really helpful. This wouldn't add much to gameplay, but would hopefully be relatively simple to implement.

I like that Idea, that will help us know where to do the main entrance for the city or whatever we're building.

[jumlynar]

My 2 cents (I have seen multiple of these already suggested, I just want to support them):

High priority:
- sound control - volume, on/off (say I want to listen to some music instead of water splashes)
- walk-through mode (!) - I've got this fantastic little city, I want to visit it as a tourist and enjoy the creation!

Mid priority:
- It would be nice to have more realistic textures on buildings, either as a 'global' choice for my city, or per building/square. The current textures and colors are cute, but sort of toy-like. They are enjoyable and good for building, leave them in. It may be feasible to have an option to render using simpler/lower quality textures, possibly even grayscale mode when building for slower PCs, but then turn on proper textures to view city or walk through. I don't know how you define textures now, but if it was simple enough to provide an image, add it into a directory of textures available for building, people could build their own texture images and use them in game, save with their city, and upload to share (a city would then be a zip file with city+textures+perhaps custom assets in the future).
- More control over what gets built:
- An enclosed garden space but with a gate to go in.
- A selection of bridges - narrow or wide, higher (which boats could go under) or just small & private.
- Decorations, e.g. fountains, seating, flowers, trees/bushes, market stalls.
- Several pavement types/textures to choose from.
- Building types e.g. residential vs commercial vs maybe also some industries e.g. docks/warehouses/factories, etc.
- Toggle between block alternatives, e.g. a slanted roof or flat roof, house vs stairs. Sometimes you don't get what you'd like by default.


Low priority:
- If you forced the current maximum/full grid to be an exact hexagon, in game you could then show adjacent hexagons where user could load other cities. These would render only with low detail (except near edges perhaps), but you could populate a whole map of hexagons with your own cities or cities of others you like in some separate 'map editor', and then edit either hexagon in the current mode, plus in walk mode be able to walk right through them. I am not sure about connection points, but perhaps when editing a city near edges I should be able to see the neighbor city enough to connect to it well. This would allow people to build large cities made of hexagonal districts, and/or with minor adjustments at the edges connect other people's cities into bigger ones. Obviously a 'load/save entire map' option would be cool to share whole maps of cities...
- The current colors are somewhat toy-like. Allow user-adjustable colors, or add an alternative color set option with more realistic colors. Similar to texture images: allow users to upload a custom image with colors, these could then be shared on workshop.
- Some way to scare the birds and have them fly around the city a little bit (without having to demolish/build). Or make them fly around more frequently. It is cool when they fly!
- People in the streets, even if very low-detail, probably without faces. Add life.
- Let user place some boats, or place random boats, say in docks.
- A tool to highlight all connected areas, either on the same level or including stairways. To check whether a city is walkable.
- Lighting options to create a mid-day vs sunset vs night scene. Night lights + street lamps etc. would be nice.

P.S. Very nice game! I hope you work on it further.

[jumlynar]

One thing I'd like to add. (mostly for the developer)

I think the greatest strength of Townscaper is that it pretty much "just does the right thing" on its own, and all the user has to do is click. That single thing is excellent, and very much defines it (and makes it unlike say Cities Skylines, where you have to browse through menus to pick what you build, so menu browsing is what you do half the time).

If you decide to expand features of this game*, then I highly recommend that you keep that spirit of the game intact, and only build around it. That is, whatever options there are, they should be subtle in the UI, and the current mode should be the main and default. Other tools, options, choices, extensions, etc. should be things which a user may choose to reach for if they want to do detailing and "go for more", but they should not be clutter for those who don't care about specific details much and are happy with the default (which is already excellent!). Maybe those extras should be hidden in some detailing tool or an expandable toolbar, or sth like that.

I think there are people who "just want to build something" to relax and don't care much about, or don't have the time, to tinker with details. There are others who really like to indulge and spend hours/days/months really getting a very own detailed result. (Just like in Cities Skylines - some play the game, others make 50 videos on youtube about detailing one city over 3 years.) It will take careful balancing to keep both happy (if that's what you want). But GUI simplicity rulez!

FYI, I am middle ground - I like detailing, but not spend excessive time on it. I built a city in 3 hrs, I could spend say another 3-5 on detailing, and call it done.

(*) I call it a game, but I definitely vote for it just being a sandbox builder without gameplay.

[shogged]

I would love to see more life in the towns, like citizens coming and going, using the binoculars, sitting on the benches. Maybe where there are large open plazas, buskers would appear, or little pop up shops. Since there seem to be mailboxes near the water, maybe a little boat that travels around delivering the mail.

[The Leonard]

I really love all of those ideas, I hope they make it into the game, especially walkthrough and hopefully stairs. Amazing job, true piece of art