Freeform Fences!

Hi Frontier!

So I was thinking about fences, as I don't think there has been any talk of fences for Planet Coaster yet...... ?

And I have come up with a possible idea for a "Freeform Fence Editor", as unlike buildings the placement of fences should be a bit more flexible. Now instead of having to place individual fence panels, which is often a very tedious job in these sort of games, I'd like to suggest the follow spline based fence editor which could work alongside the usual single fence panel placement tool.

First of all we have the basic spline control, which I think would be best if this control was locked to horizontal plane control only but will follow the contours of the landscape in the vertical direction. This will allow a simple and easy spline based "path" for the placement of the fences between points A and B (see figure 1), where additional nodes can be placed as well as control points. This should allow for the easy and simple creation of both straight and curved fences. As can be seen, the B-Spline control will work very well when placing a string of fence pieces between buildings or along paths etc, especially when fencing off ride or coaster areas so our guests can't wander off! Like buildings, this editor will allow editing of the fences after placing, which I believe will create a very powerful tool to go alongside the amazing features in the game.

NOTE: The nodes could also act is snapping points for creating fence intersections.

Figure 1 - B-Spline Control, top view (XY Plane).
CSf0Vmi.jpg


Next we have fence placement options, which could be a series of tick boxes or sliders similar to what we have now. To start I think 2 main options for panel placement on the splines should be enough, one being coincident points (fence posts) along the spline and the other being tangential centres (fence panel centres) on the spline. I think this will allow for a wide range of control over curves fence paths. For the tangential centre control, the ends of the fences should be locked to tangential positioning at the start and end of the spline.

Within these placement options we can also have fence panel width control, which would change the distance between fence posts (or the panel width).

Then obviously we have option to choose the type (and colour?) of our fence panels.....

Figure 2 - Fence Placement (the orange and blue lines represent individual fence panels), top view (XY Plane).
WOE9igV.jpg


Finally for the vertical placement consideration, please see figure 3. Now the spline control (and visual spline) is always locked to the terrain surface, as we don't really want floating fences.... Unless people want them, but this could be achieved via the single fence placement tool. But when the curvature and height of the terrain changes this will present a problem....

Now in real live, fence panels are cut to match the terrain or simply left as a parallelogram shape (square edges). So again as with the fence panel placement along the spline in the horizontal direction, we could have either coincident points or tangential centres along of the bottom edges of each panel in the vertical direction? Or maybe tick boxes to leave the panel "square" (parallelogram), or have the bottom edge intersect with the ground no matter how large the gap is underneath. Either way the fence "height" from the terrain surface will be left constant at each fence post.

Figure 3 - Placement of fence on non-flat terrain, side view (XZ or YZ Plane).
XRo9FJu.jpg


I hope this suggestion makes sense, and a hope it is of use.

Many thanks,
Laurence Coles [big grin]

Stream 4 - #CosmicCowWow
Stream 5 - #PirateKingParadise
Stream 6? - #KingCoasterCreations ???

#InfrontierWeTrust Fantastic work Frontier! [big grin]
 
Last edited:
I absolutely love this idea. Fences are a very important part of theme parks. Fences need to be done right and this right here is splendid idea[yesnod]
 
Thanks all! Glad to see people are liking my idea! [big grin]

I think this will be an elegant and flexible solution, which will be simple and easy to use! And also save sooooooo much time in larger parks!
 
In the same way that there is an option to smooth the roller coaster track, an option to smooth fencing would be really useful!
 
A great idea - being able to (sort of brush) a fence rather than doing piece by peice would be great. (same sort of thing could work with path lamps)
 
Cheers everyone! Good to get positive feedback!

And yes a smoothing option for your final fence spline would be great! The mathematics behind the B-Spline should ensure that the fences shall be smooth, but this depends on the placement of nodes and control points. So yes a smoothing option would help greatly! Sooooo ++++++++++1 from me, thanks for the suggestion valvino!

I hope we get options for benches, bins and lamps too David-T-Rex! #InFrontierWeTrust [big grin]
 
Top Bottom