GUI ~ Build Grid

Hey hey, just a small thought crossed my mind.

With SupCom, a minor annoyance was that I was never quite sure where I could or could not place buildings, sometimes a slight deformity in the terrain meant I couldn't go "sim-city-mode" on my base.


Any chance the native GUI would display a build grid when attempting construction?


Given the previous terrain renders, I think the Dev team is focusing a lot on transparency and proper conveyance to the player so it should be a lot more clear.
But it would still be awesome to have I think?
http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/str ... g_grid.jpg

PA will allow you to place and rotate building freely if I remember the Livestream correctly. So, no "Grid" at all.

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As a side note, would you mind scaling you images down to no wider than 800x800. This Message board doesn't expand very well to accommodate large images.

Most Image hosting sites allow you to scale as part of the upload.

hmm a grid will make things alot easier... especially if it comes down to block paths, and making paths to now blocking own units...
giving you to many obtions about placing buildings or having like 100+ different facing directions makes things harder imo.
I think grids are quite useful(they dont need to be squares, hexagons are quite nice)


PS: where did you got that screenshot from? looks like early alpha

Image from just random google search.

If you're building can do multiple directions (let's say a hex-grid), you should still get some sort of preview.
The building grid would be more for the surrounding areas and showing what terrain can/cannot be built upon.

Also, image turned into a link.

As I said. No grid. It's free rotation and free placement as far as I could tell from the Livestream.

You'd get a preview of the building and then left-click-drag to set the facing.

If you get an algorithm to produce homogeneous grids on spheres, i think you will be the next Fields Medalist.

It could be quite useful, yes

For people without imagination: try with a dot field instead.

Well, if there is no grid, ill try to make one xD

I'm not a fan of a grid, free placement of buildings just feels more satisfying because you feel you are in control of your base, and not have a pre planned building sites.

well i believe there are many ppl like you; personally i prefer grid tho... it just feels more organized and i believe many ppl feel the same.... so why not having both? like the windows desktop, you can have grid if you want and turn it off if you dont.

You cant really have a grid on a sphere. So I would guess there will be no grid and buildings will be placed freely. If they were to add a grid it would either not fit if you build stuff all around a planet or it would create horrible problems at some points of the planet.

Really... we're arguing over the grid.

ergh....

Not true. You can fill a ball with hexagons. They just need to be a little more "curvy". However you could also create obstacles wich makes the grid fits.

Grids are useful in Starcraft, when there is so much importance placed on blocking ramps, building things next to/near other things and building a certain distance from resources.

Pretty much non of those things matter in PA.

Mike

So all buildings need to have a "curvy" hexagonal base?

This would limit mapdesign just so we have a grid. Considering that knight is right and there is no reason to have a grid in the first place that is a high price to pay.

NO they just block this place for other buildings. (if you mean this by base... yeah youre right, but the visuals can be different)
I mean it would be helpful to get strucktured based(i feel like this is more clear;easier to manage base find buildings), also you wont accidently block your own units with several buildings.

Proof?

If you need ramps and buildings to block of early rushs like you need in SC2 people would get pretty angry at UBER for obvious reasons. I'd say that is "prove" enough.

@gruenerapfel:
This means you would have empty spaces between the buildings that cannot be filled. Wasting space like that is bad and unrealistic imho.

Nothing specific, but reading between the lines of all the Dev comments and Confirmed things that's what it's looking like.

Do you know of any comments that would say(directly or indirectly) otherwise?

Mike

Why not just have the best of both worlds, and allow people the option of having a 'snap-to' grid when placing buildings?

We're not talking about limiting people to only a particular orientation or location, just about a visual aid to see where buildings CAN be placed, and possibly guides to help players place their buildings in an organised fashion.

There's a good argument to be made that organizing your base according to a grid makes it easier to visually identify units and structures within the base. Doesn't mean that you must force players into a world-wide grid that must match up across the entire sphere.