I indeed load data by chunks from the server. I’ll do some double buffering later so it doesn’t lag/freeze.
EDIT: You can now log in using ra4king and the password from you latest account. It’ll take a server app restart before other people see your buildings as ra4king but the ranking will be correct right away.
Riven: Did you change the end station on some vehicle? I noticed some bugs around that before and it might be one here as well.
Mike
Thanks!!
Hmm I built a bus station, and clicked on “Buy Bus”. Then my entire browser locked up, and soon after my entire computer. Somehow I was able to open the task manager. I noticed 2 instances of Java running. I killed both and everything returned to normal. Refreshing the page, it froze again but this time, I couldn’t click on anything for over 5 minutes. After ages, the task manager opened again and the only instance of Java running was using 1GB of RAM on my 2GB system!! What a trip for just trying to buy a bus. Are Riven and Apo trying to discourage competition? 
I some town there is a LOT of station. It is not really a priority but I should be nice to have an option to hide/show name of competitor stations.
I have only one goal: a bus station in every town. 
My priority is growing really big towns.
It might result in less money, but it surely will find a lot more bugs in the code :persecutioncomplex:
For the new map, I’d suggest slight changes:
a way bigger world, with towns not more or less randomly placed like on the current map, but a couple of ‘hotspots’ that will be the main regions to compete for.
So is all you do: create station, buy buses, assign them random station, repeat?
EDIT: Crap I’m not good at this. I built 2 stations and have bought a handful of buses. However, all of them are now at 1 station and that station isn’t getting any passengers. So I’m stuck at $0 until any passenger comes T__________________T
Yup, it’s called Alpha 1.0 for a reason I’ve got big plans but it’s going to take me some time to get it all in seeing as I’ve still got a full time job (and family!). The only reason I can get lots done now is thanks to being on vacation. Soon the missus will start complaining that vacation is vacation and not game programming time…
Oh, and build stations in cities
I’m planning to only show the competitors station labels when zoomed in a lot, that will help with that.
The cities can grow 20 squares in each direction and the closest city is now 41 squares apart, dunno if I should make so cities can grow together or make the max size smaller, I’ll have to do one of them to create hotspots.
Regarding bigger maps. Currently the server takes about 500mb memory and the machine has like 2gb ram, I could double the size but that’s about it (java has a max size of 1.2gb at the moment to leave some for mysql, apache and windows.
Sometimes it takes 10ms and sometimes 80, 50 seemed like a good number
The routes aren’t cached for the reason that then I’d have to check all the cached routes every time a road is built (eventually, when there are roads everywhere).
The path finding system already handles intersections and stations as nodes (instead of every single road piece). That was a pain to set up but it seems to work 
Mike
For the heightmap (if that’s the RAM eater) you can use mapped files. The OS will swap data out for you automatically.
It’s indeed the heightmap (with two or so things on, content and owner). Mapped files? sounds interesting, I’ll look at it
Well you have impressed me very much sir. However, I shall now make a new account because I have broken my current one…again T_T
File file = new File("height.map");
FileChannel fc = new RandomAccessFile(file,"rw").getChannel();
MappedByteBuffer bb = fc.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_WRITE, 0, file.length());
Please note that you MUST use ‘fc.force()’ to sync the data to disk, ‘bb.force()’ is NOT enough on Windows.
Do buses go back and forth between the stations you chose automatically? Or do I need to reset a new destination once it arrives?
They go back and fourth automatically.
How did you break it? Built a station in the middle of nowhere and ran out of money?
Riven: You’re my hero, when you started talking about memory I profiled the server with a ton of land in it, and noticed that it’s not my land tiles that take up the memory, but the mysql jdbc connection not streaming the data and instead storing it all in memory. I changed it to streaming and made the land 4 times as big as the live server (10 million squares). The memory footprint is now 500mb instead of 600mb like it was with a quarter the size To increase it more I need to move over to the files (sounds really neat), but I’m thinking this will be enough for now
Ok the last 5 minutes I can’t find a town without an “apo”-station.
Do you think it is necessary to write “bus station” behind every bus station you have? Do you plan other stations? Subway? Tram?
Yeah, I’m now using ra4king2
Working hard on the map, then you can see where you’re missing stations
I’m planning boats, airplanes and trains at least (trucks too, but they’ll have some built in loading docks in the place you drop off/pick things up.
Mike
Can I suggest scaling down the up-axis for the terrain by factor 2 or 3 ?
45 degree slopes with roads are not really that common
Wow you’re getting me very excited! I finally succeeded in making successful stations and I’m making a lot of money. This is quite a fun game! Great job and keep up the good work!!
EDIT: Noooooo the server is down T_T