mic### [at] enterprisenet (Michael Kent) wrote:

>Hi Everyone,
>
>Well, lots of ideas and opinions have been put forward here, and I
>would like to gather them all together before changing the rules for
>POVRayCity.  The main issues, as I see it are :-
>
>1: Scale.  Is 1 unit =25m to tight?  If so what about 1 unit = 10 m,
>or  1 unit = 1 m.?

I would suggest 1 unit = 1 [foot, meter, yard, whatever]. One to one
makes it easier to calculate in your head.

>2: Detail level.  I understand and share the concerns about the amount
>of detail, and how this could affect rendering as the city grows.
>Especially, as has been mentioned, when people start to grow trees
>etc.  Personally I favour the idea of "distance from camera" related
>detail levels,( as described by Fran Firman) but it would have to be
>done in such a manner that relatively inexperienced contributors could
>understand.  I also think that the "distance would have to be
>definable in one place so that people can easily tweak it to suit.

It looks like there have been a number of reasonable suggestions so
far. 

>3: The Plane (grass in the basement)  I'll cut a hole in it, and give
>a box as a standard floor which people can cut through and build
>around as they wish.

A Box sounds good. This would allow for differing 'lawns', basements,
and even underground utility runs.

>4: Are the plots the right size ?  At current scale they are about 225
>m square.

If you change the scale you might want to change the plots to a
'round' number, i.e. 200m sq., again just to make calculations 'in the
head' easier. Although the present system gives you nice even
coordinates yet still leaves space for the 'roads'.

>5: It has been pointed out that excluding image maps will be a real
>pain for certain things.  How best can these be controlled so as to
>avoid duplicate file names?

As has been suggested elsewhere go with a subdirectory structure for
each plot. I would suggest using first initial, middle initial, then
last name, i.e. 'jsfetzik' in my case. It is less likely then just
initials to repeat, but still gives things the 'personal' touch that
coordinate based names would not.

I would also suggest that the same naming convention be used for a
persons objects to be consistent, i.e. jsfetzik_object1.

>6: There are several include files which people heve written and
>released for public use.  I am happy for these to be included in the
>baseline to save people duplicating them, and to make it easier for
>everyone in general.
>I am happy to add anything that a contributor asks for, as long as the
>author has no objections, assuming that it is not too vast.

This sounds like a good idea. I am sure many of these will get used.
Tell everyone that you will take requests. If more then 2 people
request the same include I would consider it for addition. You might
want to make the inclusion conditional in the main file so that
someone can 'turn them off' by just changing one setting.


>Good ideas are always welcome, and may be stolen if not nailed down
>:-))

Might I suggest some form of macro for a plots coordinates. So that
you can relocate a plot without needing to can the 'residents' files.
I am not experienced enough with POV to know how easy or useful this
would be, but it sure could save headaches later.

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