Sir Derf
Adept
So, my city is currently 5x5 expansions (25x25 squares). At the current game and browser zoom settings, when I center my city on my screen, I can see and access my entire city within the window without needing to scroll around. However, my City Hall is located in the Northern corner, not in the center of my city. Any time I access a mode that takes up the whole screen (Research or World Map or visit neighbors), when I return to my city, it auto-scrolls my city to place my City Hall in the center. Which means I have to scroll my view to get the whole city back in view.
Now, I see the usefulness of centering the City Hall when visiting other cities from the World Map, to facilitate Neighborly Help. But, there is no real utility to quick access to my own City Hall after Researching or looking at the World Map.
I think I even see that when I visit cities in sequence that the game starts each city experience focused on the equivalent location that you just left in the previous city before auto-scrolling to the City Hall, especially noticeable if I've just scrolled to a treasure chest in a far corner of a city map. So, for some cases it's already remembering where the focus was, we just need to suppress the auto-scroll when returning.
A couple ways to implement...
1) Just flat-out suppress the auto-scroll when returning home from Research. The only way to get to Research is from home. Partial.
2) Maintain a boolean for whether you have visitied another city or not, cleared when you view your city, set when you view a foreign city. When returning to your city, if the boolean is clear, then the last city you were in was your own, don't autoscroll; if the boolean is set, then you were in someone else's city, maybe scrolled to an odd location, auto-scroll. Better.
3) Maintain a static variable that records the focus point of your city's view, and auto-scroll to that location every time you return to your city. Best.
Now, I see the usefulness of centering the City Hall when visiting other cities from the World Map, to facilitate Neighborly Help. But, there is no real utility to quick access to my own City Hall after Researching or looking at the World Map.
I think I even see that when I visit cities in sequence that the game starts each city experience focused on the equivalent location that you just left in the previous city before auto-scrolling to the City Hall, especially noticeable if I've just scrolled to a treasure chest in a far corner of a city map. So, for some cases it's already remembering where the focus was, we just need to suppress the auto-scroll when returning.
A couple ways to implement...
1) Just flat-out suppress the auto-scroll when returning home from Research. The only way to get to Research is from home. Partial.
2) Maintain a boolean for whether you have visitied another city or not, cleared when you view your city, set when you view a foreign city. When returning to your city, if the boolean is clear, then the last city you were in was your own, don't autoscroll; if the boolean is set, then you were in someone else's city, maybe scrolled to an odd location, auto-scroll. Better.
3) Maintain a static variable that records the focus point of your city's view, and auto-scroll to that location every time you return to your city. Best.
