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[cory]

Currently, to build a wall, you have to start out with a single tile and increase it's width and height, then place it.

I would like to be able to designate a wall to be built in the same way as an area to be mined out, by selecting one corner, then moving to the next corner, and hitting enter.
The game should then calculate how much material is needed for that rectangle, then proceed to the material selection screen as usual.

[JohnieRWilkins]

D... D... Designate sonny? Back in my day we put all constructions down one tile at a time. You kids just don't know how good you have it.

[IT 000]

Still, +1, my mod requires a lot of above ground construction. A designation function or the ability to make limitless length/width using the current system has my support.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't like this idea.
A. Designations don't work like buildings. It would require some major fiddling.
B. It only helps certain things.
C. After designating a line or rectangle of wall or whatever, you can instantly designate another; therefore, there is little benefit.
D. It works fine now.

[IT 000]

A. Designations don't work like buildings. It would require some major fiddling.

How so? Designating already works fine with digging. You just have to designate what you want, then a build menu comes up where you select the mineral you use, and then the dwarves build. Or just select the mineral, and have a count down on the side until said mineral is gone.
Finally I don't think it would take that much coding to at least remove the maximum 10 constructions you can build at a time.

B. It only helps certain things.

Certain things that can become tedious in the current format. Imagine digging like this, your fingers would be worn down to stumps.

C. After designating a line or rectangle of wall or whatever, you can instantly designate another; therefore, there is little benefit.

You don't have to hit the u h j and k keys five thousand times to make a pyramid. That's a great benefit on player time and my pointer finger.

D. It works fine now.

That is no excuse not to improve or add to things. It's like saying 'The Horse and Buggy works fine. Why buy a car?'

[GreatWyrmGold]

This is gonna be complicated.

A. Designations don't work like buildings. It would require some major fiddling.

How so? Designating already works fine with digging. You just have to designate what you want, then a build menu comes up where you select the mineral you use, and then the dwarves build. Or just select the mineral, and have a count down on the side until said mineral is gone.
Finally I don't think it would take that much coding to at least remove the maximum 10 constructions you can build at a time.

Maybe removing the maximum...but designations take effect immediately, and buildings require you to choose material. What? Are you going to have a separate command for each material?
Just...needs a lot of fiddlies that I don't think would be necessary.

B. It only helps certain things.

Certain things that can become tedious in the current format. Imagine digging like this, your fingers would be worn down to stumps.

C. After designating a line or rectangle of wall or whatever, you can instantly designate another; therefore, there is little benefit.

You don't have to hit the u h j and k keys five thousand times to make a pyramid. That's a great benefit on player time and my pointer finger.

A. How big of pyramids are you building?
B. How many players build constructions-reliant MPs?
C. Use at least two fingers, maybe three or four or all. It helps.
D. You do have a point, though.

D. It works fine now.

That is no excuse not to improve or add to things. It's like saying 'The Horse and Buggy works fine. Why buy a car?'

A. The horse and buggy has some advantages over cars. Ask any environmentalist, or someone who has to deal with rising gas prices. Just because the car is newer doesn't automatically make it better.
B. Maybe it does need to be changed, but designations are just the wrong tool for the job. Maybe a new method in the b-C menu that is similar to designations-but no, not the designation menu itself.

[IT 000]

Well good thing we can agree something needs to be changed.

Maybe removing the maximum...but designations take effect immediately, and buildings require you to choose material. What? Are you going to have a separate command for each material?

I was thinking more so you would designate, then chose your material, like when your building the actual constructions.

B. How many players build constructions-reliant MPs?

The question really is, who doesn't? Syrupleaf had a tower and a huge pyramid, Boatmurdered had the lizard made of bridges. Heck I don't know how the creator of Flarechannel managed to build all of that, must have went through eight keyboards. There was one really cool underground completely built cavern fort made back in 40d whose name escapes me, even though digging played a huge part, he had several other buildings inside and even a boat. Every MP could benefit from such a change regardless of what they are building.

[Sutremaine]

C. After designating a line or rectangle of wall or whatever, you can instantly designate another; therefore, there is little benefit.

Only if your dwarves can get to it. If you have a space you'd like to roof over and there's more than 20x20 space to be filled, you can't designate it all at once.

I wouldn't have liked doing that back when constructions were one tile at a time...

[Lav]

Actually, a simpler suggestion:

1. Remove a 10-tile limit on size when building walls, floors and other similar junk. The restriction may be left in place for bridges, though.

2. Do NOT immediately claim stones for construction. Instead just ask what kind of stone will be used for the construction: "granite", "any violet", "any for 3$" or "any for 6$". When a dwarf decides to build a piece of construction, he selects any closest matching stone and claims it. Not only this will make constructions much easier, this will also prevent most of the clashes "first construction suspended because space occupied by stone allocated for another construction which is also suspended because space occupied by stone allocated for the first construction". Not all of them, but most.

[Reelyanoob]

The most annoying part of above ground construction is the constant need to cycle through the large and growing list of potential building materials. I could forbid most of them, but they are things like logs etc which are being used by other parts of the fortress. Also annoying is how the building material I want constantly shifts position in the list based on distance, sometimes I have to go back and forth to find what I want, time consuming and not fun.

Heaven forbid that the fact I've just designated 70 10-long wall sections from granite means (a piddling amount of aboveground defence, really) that I just might like to build the 71st wall section out of granite too.

And occasionally trying to get through all these designations quickly i accidentally hit for example Shift-F rather than just F and get a section, maybe 10x10 of fortification which takes a LOT longer (q and x 100 buildings) to un-designate than it did to designate, all this time I basically can't be playing the game as such.

We should be able to create 'brushes' e.g. select Granite Walls, and be able to lay down many sections of the same thing (with a counter showing how much material of that type is left). There'd be a control for material and form, so you could leave granite on and switch between eg wall mode and floor mode. This would speed things up immensely, and save spamming the materials list constantly for the two or three materials you probably use the most of. Selecting materials beforehand would also reduce the times you waste time trying and build something, only to discover you're one or two blocks short of what you need.

 It wouldn't matter so much that the sizes were limited if this was taken care of, though being able to at least use umhk to put a 1 x 100 Wall up would be nice..

[Elone]

Fully support this. The point was well made, all that time could be better spent playing the game than planting constructions in the current manner. It is not fun. It's tedious.

"But you ARE playing the game!"

1. The whole game pauses while you do this, no other progress happens and planting tiles like this is boring, so might as well speed it up.
2. It feels like a chore, so might as well speed it up.

"But you dont remember the old times!"

Glad I dont. It would feel even more silly and jarring if that part was never, actually, improved yet.

[Marauder Moe]

Definitely like the idea of removing the size limit on constructions.  If I want to make a 25x25 floor, let me!

I also like the idea of not claiming the resources immediately.  Also, when making new constructions, it should default to selecting the same material as the last thing you constructed.

I'd also like it if your designation pattern could be hollow.  Like, if I want to make a 10x10 building now, usually (assuming an excess of stones) I'll make a 10x10 block of walls, then cancel the inner ones tile by tile.  Would be nice if I could just designate a hollow square, then all I have to do is cancel the tiles where I want my doors.

It would also be cool to designate shapes besides squares.  Circles, octagons, angled walls sections...

[iron_general]

While I like the notion of dwaves not claiming building items immediatly there could be problems with other dwarves using the stone you want for the wall especally in the beginning of the game when one has little available stone. To exemplify, if you have a dwarf making stone crafts while you've also designated a wall, it is possile the crafter will use up the type of stone you want for the wall. I don't think this is very likely, but such a situation would be very annoying.

[JanusTwoface]

That could be at least mostly alleviated by either:
- Make workshops have specific jobs for specific materials (ie Make Marble Crafts)
- Add a filter to workshops that either allows or denies stone at that workshop (could also be done on a jobwise basis in the manager)

Both of which have been suggested before, but work well here as well.

[GreatWyrmGold]

To all of the people who disagree with my disagreeing with this idea:
Maybe if constructions had a designation-type interface, but were not on the actual designations menu and stayed in their b-C menu, then that seems like it would keep the good of the old and add the good of the new.

Now, if Toady thinks it's as simple as we think it is, and that he doesn't have other, more important things to code, and he notices this thread (probable, but possible that he did not), this may come out next release.

That could be at least mostly alleviated by either:
- Make workshops have specific jobs for specific materials (ie Make Marble Crafts)
- Add a filter to workshops that either allows or denies stone at that workshop (could also be done on a jobwise basis in the manager)

Both of which have been suggested before, but work well here as well.

Off-topic, yeah, these sound good.