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Arathorn wrote:What I was thinking of is more the pencil tool in paint (one you're probably quite familiar with ). My idea is simply drawing the track on the 3d map.

But still using tiles? (or, large pixels, if you wanna compare it with paint )

you could have the lomo gui, plus! straight and diagonal staight track can be built with the tt drag, optionally, so you have the option both,
or 'lay XYZ # of track pieces in a straight line' ?

Or, be able to build a piece of track anywhere (including dragging) by clicking on the map, and building a track piece where you were building (LoMo/RCT way) by clicking a button on the GUI. Something like that is what I'm thinking about...

EDIT: btw, could some Mod split this topic into a topic about the GUI Graphics, and about the GUI Layout and such?

Purno wrote:

Arathorn wrote:What I was thinking of is more the pencil tool in paint (one you're probably quite familiar with ). My idea is simply drawing the track on the 3d map.

But still using tiles? (or, large pixels, if you wanna compare it with paint )

Tiles yes, but (semi-)fluent tracks. See the attachment. The engine will make the wacky line fluent if it's smart enough.

Ah, then you could use splines as well, kinda like the way Trainz/TRS handles it...

Arathorn is basicly suggesting what I also wanted to suggest, you draw a line and the game applies a cubic/bezier splane algoritm on it (it creates a smooth line between all the points, they are basicly the same, but bezier also implies a tangent you can edit). They both present a very powerfull method of laying tracks, it is used in Theme Park World for example.

Then you've got to work out how you adjust it afterwards. With a beizer curve or any spline you've got control points, but I think these would be confusing in a track-laying context.

Did we decide on having 8 main directions like TTD or having any direction?

For 8 directions I was just playing about with having multi-tile curves (a bit like RCT) and came up with this system:



In TTD the end-points of the track were the tile edges, whereas here it is using the tile centre-point. I think something like this would satisfy both the simplicity and flexibility criteria.

Edit: This could still be used with a gui for selecting third-rail/catenary/cog and single/double track.

i was thinking, we could have both diagonal and curves, the user would drag the track as required, and then the game would turn the diagonal track into a curve if it was smaller than the maximum radius for curves, and there is enough room.

DominionSpy, very interesting idea. Tho you'd probably want several curve radiusses in case peeps want to build double track, or for speed-limit gameplay (smaller curves got lower speed limit).

Robotboy, dunno what you mean, TBH.

Purno wrote:DominionSpy, very interesting idea. Tho you'd probably want several curve radiusses in case peeps want to build double track, or for speed-limit gameplay (smaller curves got lower speed limit).

Yes, that's true.

You could have it so that once you've chosen the corner piece, you could choose the radius on this GUI window.

I wonder if robotboy is talking about a local smoothing algorithm where instead of one long curve (like in Arathorn's post), it would put in smaller curves. Look at the new blue line in this picture and see how I've put segments (similar to my suggested ones).

i was wondering... we could have 3 different lengths of curves and leave it at that

as well as having your straight peices in 8 directions and pieces for swithcing between parallel pieces of track

As noted above, this thread really need a split..

Secondly, I want to point out something that migt not be verry important for discussion about building-tools, but still not unimportant. That is how cells will be devided.

Zuu wrote:

Minutes for the FRD special meeting of Mars 12, 2005 wrote:

Code: Select all

        * VOTE: freedom or cell-based?
              A) True freedom: track endpoints can be placed anywhere
              B) Cell based: a limited set of track pieces are available, which can be placed on the cells of the map.
              C) "In between", as freedom, but the endpoints snap to a grid that is smaller or equal to the grid of the map.

                RESULT: a: 0 b: 0 c: 5
                
        * A long discussion about where to snap points will be located followed.
        * But we couldn't came to a decision, so we decided to postpone the decision until the coding phase.

(from the (current) end of this thread.)

I don't know if a meeting or the DC have changed any desicions from my active time here, but unless that, this decision should be vaild. Also, the wiki where the current DD is seam to be down at the moment.

can we have a hexagonal grid instead of square or triangular?
it might make some of the track laying easier...

(im sorry if this is in the wrong thread because i have no idea where to put it)

Square tiles have already been agreed on in the Design Document, AFAICT.

thats probably because the poll had only triangular or square tiles to choose from

M4rek wrote:thats probably because the poll had only triangular or square tiles to choose from

Nopes, no such a poll. Such things is decided upon in the meetings. No multiple-choice there.

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14202

perhaps this might have had something to do with it

Aye. Hmm... I guess we could bring it up in the meeting again, to see wether people find it necessary to vote again. I'd hereby invite you to the meetings.

yay!

whens the next meeting and where?

Aye, no topic about it. I'll create one tho.


The minutes of previous meeting ( http://www.tt-forums.net//files/minutes061025_614.txt ) say it's 11th November, 1800 GMT.