draw on map

[Tidus97]

how about we give the player an abillity to draw some basic lines shapes, and symbols on the map. you could toggle on or off the drawings just as you can toggle on buildings and factories. the point of it would be to draw out your plan for others to see when going coop. you could sketch out where the lines would go, at which factories stations might be built at, etc. idea seems pretty good i think. thoughts?

[cmoiromain]

I think this feature is totally useless, if you want do draw something then building rails instead of using a pencil does exactly the same thing.

[Expresso]

I think this feature is totally useless, if you want do draw something then building rails instead of using a pencil does exactly the same thing.

Nothing is further from the truth. Something like this could be really useful, but needs a decent working implementation.

I play coop games with a friend. In several occasions we found that using a paint-program simply to convey a quick idea (for discussion) was more efficient then to actually start building it. A tool like this is very useful for communication between players about the game.

So, first. This idea can be useful, but needs to be fleshed out (I think Tidus97 had something like you see in some rts games in mind). Second, there is no such thing like a useless idea.

[shampie]

Using it as a layer overtop may prove very useful, It may only be useful for coop games which would not make this an ideal candidate for implementation. On the other side, if you are making a new railway or road you could use drawing as a guidline so you know where you are going (especially long distant connections).

[Futchmacht]

I play co-op all the time.. with a friend .. and asides from using vent. we use signs to point to places and even explane what we want to do.. that along with talk most of the time solves or problems..

eg. ill be like dude i want to build a train station from here to here to here... and place signs in all locations with directions.. ect.. its crude but 90% of the time it gets to point accross.. but setting up more complex (signs) would be nice on the map or even just using the current sign system with addons(basicly shadow draw what you want to do as a layer over what is there now.. as a sign .. would be cool .. but im sure hard to implement.

[Tidus97]

the idea is simple really. train, plane, boat, lorry and bus stamps will be available for the player to draw on the map with. these will automaticaly be turned yellow in color (cant pick its color like lines etc). the player will have the tools for:
freehand drawing
ellipse drawing
straight line drawing (isometric ofcourse)

the pen tool can be colored either blue for planned roads, green for planned rail roads, and yellow for "other" (from where to where planes will go, ship paths, writing etc )

here is a mock up:

Untitled-2.png (30.87 KiB) Viewed 1574 times

[Futchmacht]

thats not a bad idea but not sure how easy it would be to implement..but an option like that would be nice for multi player co-op.

[LordAzamath]

One thing that can be used is signs. !COAL MINE HERE, !MONEYMAKER #1, !POWERPLANT STATION or whatever.. !jam

[Tidus97]

yes...ofcourse we can use signs...

im not bringing this up because there is absolutely no possible ingame solution to working out your teams plans. im bringing it up to improve the system thats already there. thats the point of most suggestions here mate

[Expresso]

One thing that can be used is signs. !COAL MINE HERE, !MONEYMAKER #1, !POWERPLANT STATION or whatever.. !jam

While this is helpful as a reminder and can most certainly be useful, it doesn't provide for a decent mechanism to show (in a crude way) what you intend to construct.

If a user could draw in something scratch-board like on top of a viewport and/or the minimap, people could show ideas easily to others, without using workarounds. The game could keep track where on the minimap persons have drawn things. Stamps, lines and shapes aren't needed that much but multiple colors could be quite useful in such a patch.

[Eddi]

quick idea sketch: when placing/editing a sign, you do not only get to give it a name, but you get some vector-graphics-style painting tools to attach lines to the sign, which other users can enable or disable showing.

the lines could be company coloured, or individually coloured (regarding the custom company colours switch for own company/all companies/never)

[SirXavius]

I can already envision a use for my non-multiplayer games -- labelling streets. Right now the signs are OK but they look just like town names or community names. I love to be able to give my little worlds some personality by naming the streets (y'know, "Awntha Blvd" or "Hwy Tahell"), and this would go a long way of making that more feasible and fun....

[Xander]

I can already envision a use for my non-multiplayer games -- labelling streets. Right now the signs are OK but they look just like town names or community names. I love to be able to give my little worlds some personality by naming the streets (y'know, "Awntha Blvd" or "Hwy Tahell"), and this would go a long way of making that more feasible and fun....

Surely a better use of this system would be to mark down potential routes and lines without actually building anything? I always find the hardest thing to do when opening an old game is remembering what I'm doing. "Is that line meant to finish there?" "Why isn't that coal mine connected?" "What is that train doing?"

Having even just a few lines along the map would be very useful in refreshing my memory.

[Circeus]

I can already envision a use for my non-multiplayer games -- labelling streets. Right now the signs are OK but they look just like town names or community names. I love to be able to give my little worlds some personality by naming the streets (y'know, "Awntha Blvd" or "Hwy Tahell"), and this would go a long way of making that more feasible and fun....

Yeah. A way to allow stations and sign with identical names.

[Qu@rks]

Why don't we ask Mega, he cartainly has a patch available

I personally do not feel the need for this feature since there are other ways of showing your fellow players what you are going to do. IRC, TS, and ingame chat are great for communication, rails are great for creating a small "picture" of your plans.

[Terkhen]

A possible way to implement this could be using a dummy rail that won't do anything at all besides appearing at the minimap. There would be a lot of problems to solve; tile ownership, obstacles and terrain elevation are just the first ones that came to my mind.