Path building, part I

Laying a path in your park is the first step to getting visitors. In the past weeks I have been busy implementing creation of paths. At the right you can see the first result.

When you open the path build window, the cursor changes to a white (rotated) square, and allows you to select a starting tile or path.

Then you can select a build direction with the arrows in the gui which is shown as a flashing arrow in the world display. The arrows at the gui always correspond with what you see at the display, even if you rotate the world.

Next you can press a slope button (at the top of the gui). (I do have sprites for them, but they were not loaded yet.) If you click at another tile or path, the build continues there.

Finally, by pressing 'Buy' you buy the path, and the white square and the arrow move onto the new path (so you can 'buy' again).

I called this entry "part I" as the gui is not finished yet. The other buttons currently do not work, path sprites are not extended to their neighbours, and they need platforms to the ground, and a bar so people don't fall off.

Let there be widgets

Filling the windows with some (inter-active) content was the next step. As you can see in the picture, the toolbar at the left now has two buttons. If you click at the right one, the window at the right is opened (a first version of the path building interface).

The sizes and positions of all widget elements are computed automatically, so if you change the text (eg use a different language than English) or if you use different arrow sprites, everything is moved around to fit the new sizes.

Note that the slightly shorter titlebar of the path build window is not a bug. The system thinks an 'X' close button is located there, but since there are no graphics for it yet, you cannot see it :)

Adding paths to the program would be a nice next step perhaps. I don't really like the 'build single path tile with each click' idea, so I am still pondering a better system, in particular for building in the air.