Better building selection in the Scenario Editor

[DanMacK]

With all the new buildings sets out there, it's getting increasingly difficult to plan out cities and towns the way we want in the scenario editor. Ctrl+Rocks works great, but half the time, if you have more than one building set (like TTRS2 and NABS for instance), it can take hours to get the right building you want.

If I want to make a row of small houses, I don't want a cathedral popping up 30 times until I get a house.

Would it be possible to have some sort of zone selection or building selection a-la Locomotion to place certain types of buildings. Maybe select certain styles, ie Historical, House, Office, Flat, etc and only have those types when you ctrl+Rocks. If you want a different type for 'downtown', deselect one type and select another (or two)

Make sense?

[White Rabbit]

Ctrl+Rocks? What is that and what does it do?

[Dave]

Press Ctrl when placing rocks and you probably get to go through every building sprite loaded by clicking again. (I think... merely speculating)

I second DanMack's idea. Though, OTOH, I suppose the idea is that the player is a transport company owner, and the local authority is computer-controlled, so they decide what is built...

But i'm merely looking too far into it.

The editor annoys me somewhat. The scope for flexibility is low and it takes ages. DanMack's idea is hopefully one of many which COULD be implemented (I say could because i know the patchteam concentrate on gameplay...)

Anyway that's my 2 penneth.

Dave

[Railwaymodeler]

If we're talking about being able to put the buildings we want, where we want, I'm all for it, unfortunatly, I'm only starting to learn how to make my own graphics, and probably won't do any patch coding or anything.

I used to make a lot of scenarios for TTD, and would like to have that finer control over the editor myself. I'd like to recreat my hometown area with the bus service, and the commuter rail line, and would like to put buildings where I want.

[Csaboka]

To be able to restrict the scenario editor to certain "classes", you would need to somehow tell what "class" the building belongs to. Currently, there is no such information stored with houses. That's the first problem.

The second problem is, I currently have no way to "force" the building code to choose a given type. The ctrl-rock thing is essentially a quick hack that tells TTD to build a house to the given position.

Having a full-blown house selector would be much work, and it would still have limited usability (I couldn't draw the house you're building, only tell its name, and that one isn't unique). Maybe I can try to do it after the stable, but I can't promise anything.

Edit: Oh, and don't forget that no matter how carefully you plan your towns, the town growth algorithm will probably scramble them in the first decade of gameplay anyway...