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[Damiac]

Bumping for great justice.

This is still a great suggestion.  Ignore the horse and buggy stuff.
Basically, allow designation of construction (including walls, floors, farms, drawbridges, and anything else that uses that horrible "Press U 10 times" interface.) in the same manner as designating a channel or mining.  Including allowing 3d designation.

There are problems with that, as brought up here:
1. Currently you can only designate construction where it's physically possible at the time.  This is due to the fact that each construction site (or just the one under the cursor) checks for available resources deliverable to that tile.
Possible solution: Allow selection of any material available in the stocks screen for construction, regardless of whether it can physically be brought there, and regadless of whether there's actually enough.   On top of that, an option like "Closest non-economic stone" or "closest stone block" would be nice.  I don't care if they're gabbro or granite, but don't build them out hematite or wood please...
2. If that solution were carried out, we then have to solve what to do when it's not possible to actually get stone there.  Cancellation spam? Auto-suspension of construction?
Possible solution: I would say auto suspend, and if we get a one time blast of cancellation spam, that's fine.  What would be nice to go with that is a mass un-suspend designation, like the mass-reclaim we already have.
3. In the background, construction works differently than designation, mainly due to the fact that you have to select materials after constructing.
I don't see a big problem here.  The code can stay the same after the designation of shape and size, although I would love to see my suggestions above.  But the base suggestion is just to get rid of the "U,H,K,M" style construction designation, and use the "Select one corner, select the other corner" style instead.  One way or another, the stone selection part is going to get a rectangle.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Global.
Warming.
And gas prices. For farmers, letting a horse graze on a few acres of land might be cheaper than buying gas, and the manure for when the horse is off-duty helps fertilize the land for when it is no longer fallow.

I didn't say that horses-and-buggies were superior, just that they weren't inferior in every way. Just like books have some advantages over computers even though computers have more advantages, or how spears have some over swords.

And if you disagree, I'll shut up and get on topic if you do.

Soil erosion.
Increased soil salinity (to name a few impacts of heavy farming).
And feed prices. For the modern human, keeping and maintaining a car on a few square feet of land might be cheaper than buying feed and sufficient space for a horse, and the car can travel farther and faster without need for resting.
I'm saying that horses-and-buggies are strictly inferior to the internal combustion engine. Just like stone tablets are strictly inferior to books, or how swords are strictly inferior to firearms.
In short, I disagree. Shut up and get back on topic.

What part of "if you do" is so hard to understand?
Soil erosion only happens with heavy grazing, soil salinity is unrelated to horses, horses can graze, and you didn't really explain why any of those are better in every way than the older things they replaced.
Yes, books are more convenient for us today. They have characteristics that make them superior, though, such as durability and ease of copying (just rub graphite or something over a piece of paper or something).
Swords are quieter than guns, and don't need reloading, and are easier to maintain.
In short, there are advantages to those older technologies, just ones that aren't as useful today.

A. The horse and buggy has some advantages over cars. Ask any environmentalist

Off topic, but this is very wrong.

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html

"The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day..."

-snip-

It's people like you that make the DF community so great. On most other forums this would have ended in some sort of personal attack. Not DF though. No, DF players do research on the most random things in order to prove an errant example wrong.

I didn't even remember how we got here.
Someone compared DF's walls to horses and buggies, in case anyone cares.

I'll shut up about the utility of obsolete technology if you guys do.

Damiac: The biggest issue with your idea is the coding hurdles. Although it's been said, many times, many ways, Toady's programming style puts features firmly above interface so he doesn't have to redo the interface stuff every time he redoes the underlying features. So, it'll happen...eventually. Maybe not this exact idea, but something like it.

[Damiac]

That's why it's in the suggestion forum.  If toady doesn't think it's a priority, fine. 

Toady's priorities are not my problem, or anyone elses, when they make suggestions.  That's Toady's call, not mine, and not yours. 
I'd rather just discuss what we would like, and refine the idea through the community.  Not try to guess whether Toady will do it or not.

And why on earth are you continuing that horse and buggy discussion from a year ago? Was that just a missed quote tag or something?

[GreatWyrmGold]

And why on earth are you continuing that horse and buggy discussion from a year ago? Was that just a missed quote tag or something?

Because he was factually wrong.

[Damiac]

OK... so you get annoyed someone brings up this topic in a new thread, because this thread already exists (albeit with a huge derail)
I try to bring this thread back, because I think it's still a good idea.
You then continue the derail from over a year ago.

Are you just so against anyone discussing making construction easier that you're actively sabotaging threads about it?

[GreatWyrmGold]

I did not continue the derail, I noticed that the other person did. Just like we're doing now.

I'm not opposed to the idea, I just like following the rules and don't like when people say factually wrong things unopposed.


Now are you going to complain about how I'm discussing the issue or are you going to discuss the issue? You seem to be so against me discussing the issue that you're actively sabotaging a thread to attack me. Not exactly, but the parallelism helps hammer the point in.

[10ebbor10]

Wouldn't a simple solution be to let you attach constructions to stockpiles, causing them to use the rocks that will be delivered there in the future.

[Sutremaine]

I did not continue the derail, I noticed that the other person did. Just like we're doing now.

"But it's okay when I do it!"

[Damiac]

ANYWAY...

To re-state the point of all this:
Currently, construction, especially for large structures, is a huge pain in the ass.  The biggest offender is the interface where you start with a 1 tile construction, then resize it with H, K, U, M.  There is a rather small max limit to this interface, further compounding the problem, because when you put down the next section, it again requires resizing.

So, the basic suggestion is:
Allow the 'corner' method of size designation.  Select one corner, select the other corner.  Rectangle, square, whatever, it all works the same.  No size limit.

Another issue with construction is material designation.  Currently materials are sorted by distance, and must actually be available at the time you specify the construction.  You must select a material for each block of the construction.  Fortunately (in most cases), the list does not re-sort itself within the same construction designation.  However, due to the fact that the list will be sorted differently for each construction, a macro cannot be used, because it will only select from the same position on the list every time, and not necessarily the same material.

Simply allowing construction without size restraints would take most of the pain out of this.  You still need to hit enter once for each block, but at least if you designate a long section of wall, or a big floor, you can easily continue selecting the material you want, once you find it in the list the first time.
A nice feature (unlikely though) would be options like: Use closest stone, use closest block, which only need to be selected once for the whole construction.
Being able to set a construction to take from a stockpile (or the other way around) would also work. 

Now, maybe this idea is a coding nightmare.  However, it seems to me that at least the first part (designation of construction in the standard, corner selecting way) isn't that difficult, since that interface already exists, and could then simply feed the resulting rectangle into the existing material selection dialog.

In my mind, this is a small change that would have a big impact, especially for players who like to make large constructions.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I did not continue the derail, I noticed that the other person did. Just like we're doing now.

"But it's okay when I do it!"

It's only okay because I didn't get a promise to stop the debate if they did, continue the debate, and then expect the other guy to shut up. That's really the only thing I seen wrong with Artanis00 continuing the debate.

Damiac: I agree with most of your statements, except the idea that selecting "closest stone/block" won't get added and the claim that this would be simple. It might be, I'm guessing it's not, but regardless Toady's likely going to go a bit farther with features before worrying about little UI things.

[Aquillion]

I suggested this (for roads) back before Dwarf Fortress was released, after seeing one of Toady's prerelease videos showing the complexity of making a long road.

I assume that it's more complicated to implement than it seems, anyway.