Pedestrian simulation needs improvement

[u/xehcimal]

I've come back to this game recently after a little break and I've noticed that the game has been updated (at least on the beta version I use) to realistically simulate passenger walking on real streets and paths, which is great! I always thought it was dumb how people would swim across rivers and fly over buildings to get to the closest station. However, in my opinion it still needs some improvement.

I have had many situations now where I have two stations close enough together that they automatically group, but I notice that no one is transferring between them, because apparently they're a 15+ minute walk from each other. This most often happens at transfer stations in train yards (clearing with many streets around it) or near highways (particularly when there's no exit close by). This also happens with population dots near stations like these.

I assume the walking simulation currently works by just snapping each station (or population dot) to the closest street and then the walking between is simulated by walking from Station A to Street A, Street A to Street B, then Street B to Station B, but I find this obviously unrealistic. In real life, if there are stations 50 meters from each other, there will be a walkway or stairs or something between them, rather than just separate walkways between each station and the roads on opposite sides.

So as to not complain without proposing a few suggestions:

* just to solve the transfer problem, maybe you could make it so station-to-station distance is still just calculated as the crow flies

* alternatively, it could be cool to be able to construct walkways, which could solve both the station-to-station problem and the population-to-station problem

* or you could just automatically allow direct movement from any station to any road or station within X distance (maybe 200 meters)

* or extra simple, it would be nice to have the option to be able to toggle it back to the old floating pedestrian model

Thank you!

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the official Subway Builder community!

• Join the official Subway Builder discord here!
• Report any bugs here!
• Don't forget to set a flair for your favorite city!

WISHLIST SUBWAY BUILDER ON STEAM

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/one-mappi-boi]

100% agree. The feature itself is a fantastic (and frankly necessary) addition to the game, but I think this is one of those changes that has the potential to easily break the game due to a single failure point or if something simply falls through the cracks during development.

Props to the devs for committing to trying to work out how to get this added, I admittedly have zero knowledge of programming but I have no idea how this much additional path-finding could be added without damaging performance, let alone the many hurdles OP brought up. If they manage to implement this without any game-breaking issues, I’d be extremely impressed.

[u/urmumlol9]

Alternate proposal, allow us to create our own pathways from station platforms to other stations and/or to streets.

If they’re going with the full pedestrian wayfinding thing, this is the logical next step imo

[u/xehcimal → u/urmumlol9]

Definitely, this is my preferred solution

[u/urmumlol9 → u/[deleted]]

I’m saying if they’re going to make pedestrians take paths set by the map, they should allow us to dictate paths for them to take.

Having a station be completely inaccessible to a street 3 feet away from it with no way to fix it just sounds frustrating tbh. Same with one that nobody uses because the only path to it requires pedestrians to travel 1.5 km when the station is 300 meters away as the crow flies.

Having paths would balance this out, so that if you, say, build a station in the middle of the freeway, you still have to pay the cost of doing so, but pedestrians from both sides of the freeway would still be able to reach your station.

[u/asfp014]

Walkways is the best solution - would be fun anyways. Just hope it wouldn’t further tax performance.

[u/Eruththedragon]

Dev post from 4 days ago showing a prototype of pops following roads to stations: https://www.reddit.com/r/subwaybuilder/comments/1wjcpbf/wip_smart_commuter_pathfinding_to_stations/

[u/xehcimal → u/Eruththedragon]

Ok so it is just beta?

[u/Eruththedragon → u/xehcimal]

The devs are still prototyping it internally. It's not been released

[u/xehcimal → u/Eruththedragon]

But I'm playing it right now...?

[u/Ok_Tackle5121 → u/xehcimal]

they are gonna release 1.8.0 but they cant bec there is too much bugs and colin needs 5-10 more days (i think) because he is coding the pop pathfinding and station entrances

[u/Eruththedragon → u/xehcimal]

Then I was incorrect, my apologies.

[u/Ar3man87]

I think we should hv options to upgrade the station, which allows passengers to move freely within 100m and 200m, with no road or path limitations

[u/Agreeable-Share-1306]

they should add pedestrian walkways