PC1
Answear: A brush system is super easy. Have you ever used Microsoft Paint? and drawed with the basic brush tool? Well if you can do that, you would be able to use this tool. The only different is that the brusch tool for Planet-coaster would be painting roads, thats the only different. In paint you draw ... for example black lines however you want, in this game you would paint raods.
Its so simple. Pick the brush tool, and start painting the road however you want it.
Why bruschtool? It will give the player maximum flexibility for reasons like:
- You can now draw whatever shape or size of the road you want. You dont have to be restricted to the raods predetermined size, change sizes, or other rules that the splinebased system puts on you. You can instead just paint the road alittle wider wherever you want it wider. Like in paint, if you want a little more black color, you just paint it there... same in planet coaster and a brush tool, if you want a wider raod size at some place, just paint it there - no biggy. If you want to paint a raod that looks like the shape of a dinousary, shure, if you can paint it with your mouse, you can paint it with a brush tool.
Why is it better?
- Today the roadsystem is based on a spline system. That means that the game draws a line in the middle of the road that you accually want, that line in the middle of the road calculate the rest of the raods shape. Its like saying the spline is in the middle of the road. Of course i´m not 100% shure im right about this, there may be different code behind it all, but just to get an idea. But as you seen in the game, when you build a road, and you want to attach a road to it, you attach the road to its spline (to the middle point of the road)... And also, becouse its spline based, it has to calculate the roads chapes by mathimatical formulas. Whats the bad thing about this? Well have you tryed making a shape that you imagine in your brain, but the game doesnt really do that exact shape for you? Well thats the calculation behind the spline system. Its trying to geuss what what shape you want to paint.
Also, its really hard to make the exact shapes that you want. Lets say you want to make a big square that people can walk around in, and at some random places there should be small holes in the ground for threes to grow. Well, good luck doing that with the spline based system, in an easy way. You as a player would have to think how to achive this goal with the tool. The tool would limit you, maybe not even make it possible or really hard. If it where brush tool, you would just paint the shape you want, leave some holes wherever you like. And even here could be a brush "remove" tool (eraser) that would work the same but remove the road.
What happenes if I want to make a straight line, or even raise the road?
- Well, One idea is to let the player press the left mouse button, and then put the mouse where you want the end to be and press the mouse button again, and it will draw a straight road between these points. Becouse then you could press at the ground at one place, and raise the height and press at another place and it would create a road in between those points with a gradually height change. And if you want to paint you just hold the left mouse button and paint instead. Im not 100% shure it should be done like this, but its an idea atleast.
Could they improve the spline system?
- Of course. There is many things with the spline system today that is very bad, but that they could fix quite easy. For example, when you draw a road, they could make it more so it draws where the mouse is, and not so much based on pre-detarmaned spline grades. Becouse today, even if you hold the mouse where you want the road to be drawened, it doesnt draw it to there, it chooses somewhere else (near your mouse, but still not exactly where you want it). Its like trying to do its own thing
. So that could be worked on.
But as someone here mentioned before, its still just a spline system and that has its negatives for the player that is hard to work around.
Anyway, however they choose to do the tecnical part of the raod system is their expertice, but one thing is shure. A brush tool, or something that is equal to that is needed. The player should be able to make the raods exactly as he or she can imagine, without thinking how to do it. A brush road system would achive this and be so freaking easy for the player that the creations people would be able to do is ridiculous.
