[ 1474624 ] Cursor in buildings orients to ceiling

[thomash833152]

 Cursor in buildings orients to ceiling
I have noticed that the celection box behaves
differently in houses (possibly any space that has a
floor above it, I can't be sure). In houses, the box
orients itself to the ceiling, while outside it orients
to the floor. This sometimes makes it hard to select a
box, especially near the borders of inside/outside
areas. However, it is always possible to select the
box. It just takes some camera adjustment, sometimes.

While I like the idea of automatically working out where you're really trying to point the cursor, if it's inconsistent or a pain to make it do what you do really want it to, it's more of a handicap.
How about replacing "vec[2] += Grid_Height( map, pos );" in cmodel.c with "vec[2] += <selected height>;" where <selected height> is the view level you currently have selected from the 8 level buttons at the left of the screen?
Personally I'd prefer that.

Tom

[Hoehrer]

Sounds like a good solution to me.
If nobody has objections against it i'll change the code like that.

Werner

PS: in the future we might need to add an indicator for the cursor so you can see what level it is on.

[BTAxis]

I'm all in facor of that solution, so change it at your convenience.

I haven't had any problems so far with figuring out what level the box was on. Are there situations where it is unclear?

[Hoehrer]

I'm all in facor of that solution, so change it at your convenience.

I haven't had any problems so far with figuring out what level the box was on. Are there situations where it is unclear?

That's because currently the cursor is more or less on the lowest-possible visible level (e.g. the ground) and thus it's easy to figure out where it is.

After the above change it will float in the 'air' depending on what level you are on.
Given that we have an isometric view it's kinda hard to say what level that is exactly, so we might need an indicator [1] to show that if we make this change.

Werner

[1] Remember the 3D-cursor in UFO:EU & TFTD when you aimed somewhere into the air/nothing?

[BTAxis]

Oh, right. I forgot about that. You do need to be able to point into the air for flying units.

Maybe there should be an option to toggle between the two ways of calculating the cursor position? I can imagine people would like to be able to move their units at ground level, but still be able to see all the levels. An alternative is decoupling the level view and the level the cursor is on.