More house shape options

Request changes or additions in functionality.

Moderator: Kyete

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Tiffany Munro
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2021 7:48 pm

More house shape options

Post by Tiffany Munro » Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:53 am

It would be nice to have more options in the house tool.

1) Ability to make a house on a bend, such as an L shape, or an H shape, or an angled house. I imagine being able to place a roof like the stairs tool, so you can split it into any angle.

2) A roof type that automatically adds things like balconies, chimneys, secondary roof projections... I've always felt that it really limits the type of roof I can build when I can't even direct which way the split line will go.

I've pushed the house tool to its absolute limit.
city map preview.jpg
city map preview.jpg (64.23 KiB) Viewed 2502 times
And every time I do, I feel like I have to get so creative with laying out the roofs I make to make interesting varied houses. I would love if a house shape came that automatically placed dormer windows or bay windows. Chimney would be awesome; even better if it can do random smoke.

3) I would love if I could cycle through random house / roof shapes and also through random colors / textures. Ideally set a color pallet that it draws from and a folder or set that it selects from.

4) I would love if I could set my own house .svg lineart and create a collection of my own houses, and have some way of communicating (maybe via a specific color?) which part should get the 'shade' direction.

Uldar
Posts: 35
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:46 am

Re: More house shape options

Post by Uldar » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:33 am

Great ideas and great looking map. I've pushed the housing tool to the limits as well, and it's very difficult to fit them together without some sort of natural curvature fitting angle options.

Yes to dormers automatically, please. And chimneys! I've made so many custom balconies and railings and accoutrements, I wish this were an expansion option as well.

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Kyete
Site Moderator
Posts: 237
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:52 pm

Re: More house shape options

Post by Kyete » Mon Jan 17, 2022 2:03 pm

First off, your map looks amazing! The city tools are some of the last we added and they definitely need some work. I'll add all these to our list, though some might take a few versions to finish.

1) We can definitely add a line & bezier pen, like the stairs tool has, with a merge option so you can do branching buildings.

2) The additions will mostly be a UI challenge, but we will find a way to add as many of those as possible. They might come out in stages as we figure out how to handle each thing individually.

3) We'll look into creating some kind of list cycling. Again the challenge is mostly UI since it will involve randomizing the drawing shape and properties.

4) This one will be the most difficult, so probably won't be seen for a while. For the time being, you could import the .svg as a feature if there was something you wanted to use that the building tool can't do. It won't do the shading, but if the lineart is white filled you could colorize it to get different buildings in a unique style.

Thank you for all the great feedback and let us know if there's anything else!
-Katie

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