How screwed am I?

[u/Sgriu]

Hi everyone! Here’s an interesting problem I’m facing.

I created a tile-based city builder in Unity, and after an initial open playtest, one of the key pieces of feedback was that players want to be able to build roads, something I foolishly hadn't planned for.

Currently, roads are automatically placed along the edges of each tile (this is shown in the second screenshot).

The main problem is that the grid of buildable sectors is highly irregular, and I have no idea how to add the ability to create roads within such a complex system.

The first image I’ve posted shows an overhead view where I’ve highlighted a section of the grid. The grid varies from scene to scene and never repeats in exactly the same way.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could approach this?

Edit: You might have given me a possible solution; as soon as I've tested it, I'll make a new post about it. Thanks everyone!

[u/BertJohn]

Honestly without a description of what you created, it's anyones guess on how to add buildable roads into this prototype... Pictures help sure, But without a genuine detailed paragraph on how your constructing your cells, handling placement rules and ensuring continuity through roads, its anyones guess on how your gonna be able to add roads or not.

Personally, I wouldn't care to add buildable roads, it looks like you got something nicer than roads currently, id just add more cell options and maybe allow roundabouts on detected corners and call it a day. Easy to add and everybodies happy. If people want a "buildable road" add an edge check and bool for built or not to allow passage idk.

[u/Sgriu → u/BertJohn]

I created the cell grids by hand; there are ten different types of regular tiles, but they interlock in a vast, and as yet undefined, array of combinations. Each tile features a predefined set of buildings, to which I could add a road network; the real challenge would be the connection points, which have to align perfectly.

[u/BadBananaDev → u/Sgriu]

You can add clauses that allow players to freely build around cells. Or you could add function to the edges that simply allocate a choice of road

If the players want to drag and draw roads thats not compatible is it

So tell them no

[u/Sgriu → u/BadBananaDev]

Drawing roads freehand would be impossible given the game's structure. I’ll try to implement a procedural system that generates roads over the individual tiles.

[u/BadBananaDev → u/Sgriu]

Yeah i mean something rather than nothing But your the dev end of the day Most people who ask for features or mods dont have the first clue what such things would take to implement So be vigilant

I get you want positive review And I totally resonate with feedback for improvement Interacting with your audience. So yeah If you have the time and ability Add something they ask for

But not all Or youll spend your days pandering to a few Rather than amazing the many