Snap To Grid Construction

[Zoliea]

Hiya,
I personally dont have the game yet, planning to get it in a week or 2 after next payday.
I however noticed in letsplays and streams of the game that you cant be precise with the position of objects that attach to walls. I see that walls can snap to grid based on local position of the main structure....however for things like Windows you can place them however you wish at whatever rotation you want but there is no snap grid for these. Me as someone who loves to be as perfect as possible would love a system to help make sure all my windows are the same height and rotation.

Another game comes to mine "Secondlife" that has a prim based construction model that allows you to snap to a positional grid based on location in the world or location based on the objects current place. It would let you even decide which grid to use being World or Local as well as how big of a grid you want...be it you want it to snap every 0.010 meters to 100.000 meters in all directions. The snap would also be based on the position of the mouse so you could eyeball the objects location or rotation or move the mouse slightly up into the snap pattern to snap it to the grid.

Rotation also worked but was not affected by the snap grids size but gave you plenty of snaps for rotation.

I think that would really help us who love precision.

Picture references:

 

[Curlyriff]

The key part I like this with is what could be used as world grid. What I would like to see is a transparent grid shown when creating the path. This would be the world grid. You could then snap sections of path to grid and free from between these sections or free form across the whole grid if you so wished.

With the path system you would then be able to have grid shown at every 0.1m to 1m lines. Angle snap could be included to allow varying degree of snap at say every 5 degrees from a grid point. Yes it would limit the free form we currently have however due to the nature of what is being built and how it is being built, increments of 0.1m (100mm) would be more than ample for the detail that is required and produced in this game for the path and world positions.

It might be when you select path you can have slider options in a context menu appear to adjust accordingly.

Then you would have you local grid as current but again with the ability to change the grid both in both plan and on elevation of the structure at the same minimum 0.1m increments to maximum 1m increments. This way you would be able to snap for instance windows to the 1m wall sections effectively. I believe walls are currently 0.1m thick which means you would be able to line corners up with columns much easier also.

Then once you have created the building/scenery you can have an align too where you select the building edge and align to the world grid. This way you can make you buildings on a grid edge of the path or set them away at 0.1m increments. If you have selected the path to run at one of the 5 degree increments and free formed the corner between then it would also allow you to rotate the building to the same 5 degree increment.

Corners that are free formed between these sections can either be chosen to be chamfered, curved or squared off. This would be done by selecting that path section and selecting the desired design option in a drop down menu.

It means that buildings can be connected to the same grid corner and then rotated at 5 degree to 355 degree if so wished from that point with the path lining up direct too it and thus not trying to free flow buildings together on curves. Although this free form option would also be applicable if desired.

Regards,

Adam

 

[Zoliea]

An easy way to allow placement of buildings next to each other could be allowing us to hold a particular button when hovering over a building with another building selected. Say you select to move building A and then hover over Building B and press Shift (Or which ever, still dont have the game so cant say which button to use.) Then as you hold it a grid from Building B will be shown allowing you to snap Building A say up to 5 grids away so you can have perfectly strait buildings. The same function might be neat for keeping roads snapped up.

Overall the more snapping and the more grid options we get the better the base construction of the game can be. I love the fact objects and buildings can be placed anywere without a grid, that is a great function. I would just love to see more snaps and grid functionality. Would be the best of both worlds and please a lot of people.