About those walls - If you haven't come up with an idea...

[Crocodillius]

I personally suggest making it so you enter some sort of Wall Building Mode. From there you'd just drag and drop a basic frame until you've designated the area you want walled. Then you select where you want a gate or gates and it places the gate on that part of the frame. Then have it be built in sections. That way I'm sure it'd be considerably easier to have it auto sort out which way the walls and gates face as well as being able to set up the detection for stuff being inside a fully walled base.

On the other hand you could just create a Flag or Monument type thing to be the Centre of the fort then either let the player set the size and shape of the fort himself or make it so there's a maximum size then make it so you can only build within that boundary and then when you want to wall off your fort it just auto builds the wall based on the boundary.

While the second would be easier to implement I imagine that there will eventually be people who want to construct 'interesting' (aka weird) designs and may not want a limitation.

In the end it's only a suggestion, I'm not a programmer and whatever you choose to do will be what you feel is in Kenshi's best interest.

Keep it up! Loving the game.

Edit: Thinking about it I wonder if this should have been under 'Gameplay' rather than 'Feature Request'.

[dungeons0]

Good suggestions from OP.

I was thinking something similar to Battle for middle earth 2's way of constructing walls where they lock onto anchor points. I don't know how difficult it would be to reproduce, but personally i think it's one of the most intuitive ways of dealing with wall-building.

[Tolwrath]

Not telling Chris to plagiarize code or anything, but he should definitely look at the wall construction from Black & White 2 by Lionhead Studios. You can drag a wall in curved paths, and then connect the ends without trouble because it auto calculates towers. Then you can install a gate into an existing wall, and it'll even flatten out the wall so the gate won't have issues with being attached to a curved surface. It also manages to properly assign direction so that you can only get on top of the wall from inside the wall (ladders, grappling hooks, and siege towers excluded).

There's a problems with these walls though, compared to what Chris wants:
The gate can only be opened/closed by the player. This means that your characters aren't able to open the gate, and that you could accidentally close yourself off to trade if you don't pay attention to the gate.

[iSuck345]

I support this, I'm thinking of when I get Kenshi I will build a star fort.

[Elderath]

I was thinking of something like dungeon0 suggests as well.

• Walls begin by constructing at least two anchor points, like a tower or gatehouse.
• Once those are done, you select an anchor point.
• Within the building's window, you click on a Wall button placed similarly to the Upgrade button.
• This creates a preview of the wall, extending from the anchor point to your cursor.
• Drag the wall over to the desired anchor point.
• Highlight red and prevent construction if the wall passes through/over obstructions or unacceptable terrain, like other buildings or sheer cliffs. If you want to limit the length of a wall between anchor points, you may do the same thing. (Though if you could anchor to a cliff, it would allow you to seal off the settlement while using the cliff as a natural barrier).
• Click once to lock the wall to that anchor. At this point we should still be in preview mode.
• Now hover the cursor to either side of the wall to determine which side it's facing (this should help with the inside-out problem).
• Click again to lock the facing of the wall.
• Calculate material and labour costs.
• The wall scaffolding should be in place now and ready for construction.

Additional suggestions for this method of wall construction:

When choosing where to place a wall anchor, indicate which other nearby anchors can have a wall connected to that location before you place the anchor. This should save time and frustration by letting players know in advance if they will or won't be able to build a wall there.

To go off of what Tolwrath suggests, you may consider allowing construction of gates from existing walls. If you do this, players will want to know when walls are long enough to support gates.

For longer walls, you may want to break the scaffolding down into smaller segments. This allows the wall to be constructed in parts so it doesn't take forever, and it allows destruction of walls in segments by invaders (if you choose to use such a feature later). If you allow walls to be destroyed, you can use a Rubble or Breach building in place of a segment to allow passage of characters while preserving the location of the wall segment for later reconstruction.

To make linking between anchors smarter, you might have the wall preview detect when the mouse cursor hovers close to an available anchor, then automatically extend the wall to that anchor, but not locked until the player clicks. If the cursor moves outside of range, extend the wall back to the cursor. If you think the distance at which this occurs would become problematic in places where multiple anchors are tightly grouped, you may allow players to adjust this distance through their game options.

[Tolwrath]

Actually, thinking about it, that FR someone put in about adding arrows to build mode to show what direction an object is facing and where it can be used from would easily eliminate problems with building your walls inside out. After that, there'd just be the AI/pathing issues to deal with.

Edit: it would also be possible to ditch directional walls entirely (you'd still need directional gates though) by simply including a second building option for getting your troops on top of the wall, like the Ramps and Bridges FR.

Links:
Arrow Indicator for Interior Objects
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=2487

Ramps and Bridges.
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=2677

[Crocodillius]

Re-reading my post I can see where I would have been misunderstood... In my first suggestion I was actually referring to the method Tolwrath described (though he did so in much better detail). While I am unfamiliar with the specific game I imagine that there would be a way to have it so if a Faction whose relationship is below 0 gets within x metres of the gate that it automatically closes as well as have an option to close it manually. Or perhaps only have it automatically close and open if there is someone manning the gate.

Regardless.

I thank everyone for going into expanding on and going into detail. From everyone's responses it seems like no-one minds having to layout the entire wall and gates in one go. It may be just my misunderstanding but I think doing it like that will also help with path-finding.

[Tolwrath]

The only real problem with laying out your walls all in one go that I can think of is if you ever feel like expanding your town/walls, you might have to demolish and rebuild the whole wall. That would leave you vulnerable for far too long, so you'd need some method of destroying only chunks, and then stretching your old wall to encompass the new area.

[Hatsune_Neko]

not sure if this is a stupid thing to say or not ( im sure it will be in the future lol )
ever think of looking into the Second Life code??? they are open source. not sure how well it would work for here and all since i am not a programmer in any way.

Just an idea. and most likely a stupid one

[Tolwrath]

My only knowledge of Second Life is the Something Awful trolls, the population is largely furry, and the 2 biggest industries are porn and real-estate. Quite frankly, I hope to never lookat it again. But how about describing how the walls in it work, for our benefit.

[iSuck345]

My only knowledge of Second Life is the Something Awful trolls, the population is largely furry, and the 2 biggest industries are porn and real-estate.

Wait, there is a porn industry? I never knew that.

[Clawdius Talonious]

The problem with the walls is largely not exactly related to the walls. The AI was having pathing issues and strange interactions with walls and gates, there were a few crashes to be sure but the walls system worked. However in order to straighten out the way the NPCs and players units interact with walls and gates the player creates, as well as allow for gatehouses and inner keeps and outer walls and all of that fun stuff the AI is in need of a significant revamp. Chris has been working on that alongside the other content patches I believe, as there have been a number of useful AI improvements with regards to container priorities and such.

[Hatsune_Neko]

My only knowledge of Second Life is the Something Awful trolls, the population is largely furry,

its actually Human, Neko, Shemale, Beasts, Furry, Child and troll is near the bottom of the list
[/quote]

and the 2 biggest industries are porn and real-estate. Quite frankly, I hope to never lookat it again. But how about describing how the walls in it work, for our benefit.

How it works im not fully sure. ( said i wasn't a programmer ) but i think it sets out objects to be a simple question. Is this solid or not. There is a option in the build mode where you can set your building items to be solid or not. maybe one of the secondary Viewer Client Makers know more ( im sure they do )

And omg theres Porn in there?? where!! giggles
I spend to much time in Kenshi these days