(05-27-2020, 01:35 PM)3Rat Wrote:(05-25-2020, 05:37 AM)Deantwo Wrote: I don't know if the designer needs a whole overhaul...
Okay I just went back into the game to try the designer system again and I actually cannot believe how hard some people are pushing against its changing. The designer is hell to use, even when I try to design objects in blender and then paste them in the system supports little to no drag and drop functionality and the face recoloring is impossible to manage without going through four face edits UI screens and having to mess around with transparency just to find the wrapping nodes of all the objects you need. I can't see how anyone at all can say that this designer is a positive development for Hazeron with just how hard it is to get things made in the system.
On top of that with things being as hard as they are to design, making objects for every building type is awful too, the volume system also messes up the entire city building math and forces you to make huge skyscraper-like abominations that take thousands of resources just to get made, and I'm supposed to make these four football stadium sized power plants when I'm a new town? Half of the building types don't even have models, they have maybe stand-ins that are created for a different building entirely and have to be jurry rigged to pretend to be a police station or a factory because there's all of maybe two suitable blueprint for most of the building types and they're either the rectangle aircraft factory or the overly complex Victorian style homes made by the small handful of people that don't want to rip out their hair while trying to make this system work. On top of that the 250 building limitation is going to force people to only build bigger and more complex models that make it so there can be no city sprawl and no ability to fully colonize a planet. We are stuck making one city per planet and we can't even build it to proper max efficiency even on a moon without making giant high-rises that house at least 200-300 citizens each.
We simply do not, and will not ever have the blueprint library necessary for people to make cities so long as the designer and city management system is like this.
I cannot express how badly this system needs to be changed, how badly it needs to be tossed out and replaced with something similar to the already great system we had. Anyone who says this is easy is either a liar or doesn't actually use the designer, and anyone trying to approach this lightly isn't telling Haxus the truth. We need this changed, and we need it changed as soon as physically possible. Please do anything to fix this system because it's going to kill Hazeron.
I agree that the designer is awful in general, but I disagree pretty strongly about how you paint the citybuilding situation.
I played back when the buildings were all same-models with levels tacked on, and when planets were grids-- and I'll admit I hated the new system and wanted the levels back....at first.
Once you get past the initial shock of having to relearn how it works, there are some great user-submitted designs (Henri, Jack Katogh, Vooker525 looking at yours, among others! Thank you) that cover every building you'd need. And IMO they make up for the building designer's shortcomings.
As for the 'being forced to build bigger and more complex models to colonize a moon', have you actually tried doing that? You will quickly discover that you run into the building volume limit quite easily when building larger structures, especially on a moon. Sometimes a floating platform + biodome + the basics can just about fill the volume if it's a gas giant.
A tip if you are struggling: what I like to do is just add a 100m-deep 'basement' beneath the existing structure. It is a simple cube shape that no one will see. That way you can keep it looking a normal scale while gaining a lot of volume. Learning how to do this in the designer took me less than 2 hours (starting from 0 experience). There are people in discord who can help you if you run into any issues. And you probably will. It's buggy as hell.
That said, there is one thing that I really miss about the old citybuilding and it is road snapping to grids. Why. Can't. They. Just. Snap?! Ughh...
But I agree wholeheartedly about the SHIP designer. I have made some cool things in it using imported meshes, but then when I have to design the interiors myself I just can't bring myself to do it. I have to steal ones from other ships. And it's a painful process even then, sometimes taking an hour or longer to merely calculate the volume while making my computer scream in agony. If I didn't have a decent PC it would not even be possible to run, which is a huge problem in terms of fairness. Needs a major rework imo. I would take the old ship designer back in a heartbeat.