Codefarts

The future of Grid Mapping

For the purposes of transparency here are a list of future ideas and features that may or may not be coming down the pipe. *Listed in no particular order.

1. Grid Mapping needs a auto expanding tree selection for prefab categories etc that can be displayed like a tree or like tiles and when clicked the tile navigates to the tree node and shows more tiles. Maybe have a back tile as the first tile. Then you can also have icons for each tree node etc with default icon as a folder or some such.
2. Grid Mapping could have a view port like selecting a camera that allows clicking to move the view to a position on the map. Think starcraft mini map click to see that part of map
3. Grid Mapping needs feature to highlight grid cell prefabs that are completely surrounded by other prefabs. and the option to optimize the map by removing them etc
4. need Flood fill  type tools for Grid mapping
5. ability to show all layers where each layer had a grid drawn for it
6. ability to change a layer thickness or offset for each individual layer
7. ability to prevent the guideline from drawing a layer guideline
8. ability to quickly snap rotate the view when editing so u can change your perspective make this a quick tools feature separate from grid mapping find the point on the layer where the view is focused on and rotate around that point snap rotations around 45 degrees but have setting so users can change the 45 degrees 
9. need ability to set weather drawing prefabs will be placed mid center like they do now or weather they are placed on top of the layer so the bottom y values are all lined up along the layer depth. also need a setting for this.
10. show what row & column number the marker is over in scene view as well as where it's placed in scene view
11. Need an gui editor for the prefabs list so users don't have to edit by hand
12. Ability to select a rectangle of blocks and move them by dragging them to a different location
13. drawing with blue hexagon you should also be able to draw with currently selected material
14. Editor & runtime API's for grid mapping
15. Prefab creation via select a rectangle of blocks and convert to prefab
16.  Isolation of an area to make a blocks easier to edit
17. Grid mapping needs a slight fix for recent material list when remove button is visible and displayed as list of buttons each entry in the list does not expand the the dimensions of the inspector window but extends passed the right edge. i think it may have somthing to do with how layout works with images and text. It's a minior graphical anomaly.
18. come up with a way of organizing materials and selecting them other then having to use unity asset selection window. selecting assets with unity is too slow
19. grid mapping should not have ability to auto size based on weather the user draws outside of the grid.
20. grid mapping should have eye dropper feature where you can hold a combo of alt ctrl shift etc and click a tile to use it's material as the current material
21. when a recompile occurs in unity recent material and prefabs are lost use object finalize cleanup to store the list and retrieve it later
22. grid mapping needs feature to be able to auto scale any existing prefabs drawn on the map like when user changes cell size or ability to auto scale the selected prefabs
23. when using the mouse wheel to scroll the inspector if the scrolling action causes the mouse to be positioned over one of the recently used lists or the list of layers inspector scrolling stops. This is an undesired effect. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to address this at the moment.
24. clicking button in recent prefab or material lists should move that button to front of list keeping most commonly used items near the top
25. mine craft style drawing where user is able to draw on different layers automatically without having to explicitly set the active layer they are wish to work on
26. grid mapping needs a clone layer feature
27. need setting to determine if all actions requires the mouse to be positioned over the active layer or not ala "if (this.IsMouseOnLayer())".
28. need setting to determine if drawn prefabs should have there name included at beginning of the format string "_l{0}_c{1}_r{2}" or rather have user specify the format string them selves
29. consider adding preset area in the settings to allow auto setting all the settings to preset values by reading a setting file or something. Also have feature to reset settings to there default values
30. need ability to paint onto a layer and have the existing prefabs move vertically up and down to make prefabs different heights along the layer
31. setting that allows the user so specify how the mouse wheel direction will affect changing the active layer
32. ability to change settings for marker size offset, or weather it's filled or wire frame or shows preview of the current prefab to be drawn
33. left or right mouse buttons can be mapped to either draw or erase and each button can be used to draw a different prefab
34. DrawMapInfo method needs code simplification work
35. Need utility that can scan a scene and check for materials that do not have an associated asset file. And have ability to generate actual asset files for those materials update the scene to point to the newly saved asset.
36. SelectOutputFolderControl need ability to restrict to only folders that are under the assets folder.
37. Tools for compressing images using on line services like http://punypng.com/ & http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/
38. Grid Mapping needs replace material drawing tool
39. Simple utility to import a texture and a reference xml file that turns the colors of the texture into a grid map using the pixel color that references a prefab. Can also have option to save grid map as a texture.
40. Grid Mapping Automatic material creation, and General Tools Tile material Creation need a checker board background for the preview texture so transparent areas are made visible.

41. GridMapping need performance optimizations drawing a filled rectangle on a 100x100 map is agonizingly painful. Drawing regular individual prefabs is still usable.

    With the current version of grid mapping if you include a PERFORMANCE debug symbol in the player settings you should see a developer tools in the Codefarts menu for performance testing select methods of the grid mapping code.

42. Need mono behavior that can be used to store and retrieve values by name. That also uses generics for then name.
43. Grid Mapping Automatic material creation needs orientation popup like the General Tools version

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