Feature request - auto placement of buildings

[munch]

Thanks guys for the newly improved F2 "where you can place your building" that renders so much faster. I do occasionally find I miss the old one when I'm trying to e.g. do mex placements for Con-airs on a map like Mars. Still it makes F2 more useable.

What I was wondering is, if you've already gone to the trouble of writing the code to do that - why not auto place buildings? What I mean is if you try to place a mex or an HLT or something and the ground immediately below is too bumpy, why not have the engine automatically place the building at a nearby alternative point? Instead of showing you a red "you can't place that building here" graphic, it would just snap to the nearest location where you could place the building, only going red, if there was nowhere nearby that was suitable.

Just a nice to have I guess, but if it's easy to put in - it would be kind of slick.

Cheers

Munch

[mongus]

I will kick my tower if it gets to place a lab in front of a mountain or such.

The current placemap is very usefull... maybe it could be an overlay.. and with much very lower effective radius? like.. not all map is calculated (or not inmediatly), ..

so select the building and.. this has been discused before eh?

edit:

The current placemap is very usefull... maybe it could be an overlay.. and with much very lower effective radius? like.. not all map is calculated (or not inmediatly), ..

you know.. that exactly how it works actually... didnt realize.. i was too zoomed in last times i did it..

[zwzsg]

I would really hate that if I tried to lay a building without any valable space for miles around, it would be snapped to the other side of the map. If ever snapping to nearest flat and free enough place is coded, please make it disableable.

[FizWizz]

I would really hate that if I tried to lay a building without any valable space for miles around, it would be snapped to the other side of the map. If ever snapping to nearest flat and free enough place is coded, please make it disableable.

what he said. I think I can handle hitting F2 and looking for green rather than having the code do it for me.

[jcnossen]

You can limit such things, just make it able to snap up to a distance of 400 or something.

[Torrasque]

It could be cool to have a function like f2, but smooth and quick.
To achieve such goal, perhaps you can retrict the computation to a 300 pixel radius around the building

[AF]

We have a function that does all this written sepcifically for the AI itnerface but it's not a very ncie function, Zaphod re-implemented it, adn me and cain are suffering the consequences of our AI's relying on it for building placement.

This would be easily implemented with GroupAI but I warn you stay away from such features!

[mongus]

It could be cool to have a function like f2, but smooth and quick.
To achieve such goal, perhaps you can retrict the computation to a 300 pixel radius around the building

it works that way actually.

it only looks for viable places in a radius(small radius :D).

In small games it works very fast, but i had some large battles at river dale and it took its time to show.