Quick question about auto screenshots - when you build far out enough, the mod automatically adapts by zooming out to capture the whole base. I was wondering if there is any way to reset the zoom, for instance, if I explore and place a turret 3 miles out east but remove it, and now my capture is completely zoomed out and my base is virtually invisible.
Cheers!

This is not possible so far. I never thought about it, but this is a great feature!

I will add this rather soon. Currently I am still occupied with a different project, but as soon as I work on this I will treat this with a rather high priority.

Thanks for the input.

Legend, thanks a bunch! :)

Another question (perhaps it would be advisable for me to open a new thread) - would it be possible to manually set the centre "anchor" point for auto screenshots? Currently it seems that it always anchors on 0,0 which definitely helps with timelapses, but for instance, in Space Exploration there are asteroid belts which extend only in one direction, and if I start at -2000, 0 for a resource deposit, we have a similar zoom issue.

Thanks again!

TLDR

Not in any user friendly manner that fits in the limited time budget a mod like this written in my personal free time has. I think I have an approach, but I still have to think it through.

Long version

The centering point issue is as old as this mod itself. I started with 0,0 to get a quicker "minimal viable product" out, but dropped the idea to change it.

My first approach was to always center the image perfectly on the base (aligned on chunk corners) so the resolution would always be utilized perfectly. This would have the downside of timelapses "jumping" all over the place as the center would move very often, rendering the timelapses unusable.

My second approach was to center the screenshots automatically on the position of the first entity you place. This was dropped as this would result on basically the same images as 0,0 on a default nauvis run with no other surfaces. At that time I didn't even really understand how surfaces worked.

My third approach was to somehow get a centroid or average position of every block on a surface to center the screenshots kinda automatically on the center of the base. But when expanding straight upwards this would still result in almost empty images. Also, this would be very expensive to calculate compared to the very simple calculations I currently do everytime the player builds or the ones I do everytime screenshots are initiated.

My fourth approach was pretty much your suggestion of simply setting the center manually, and defaulting to 0,0. My idea was to open a window that has the pixelated version of the map in it and showing the center, as well as the outline of the area that would be screenshotted. Unfortunately, the game does not allow to draw on map elements like that. This is also the reason why the area for the area screenshot is not drawn when the map is pixelated. Without this very user friendly approach I have no idea how to do this without being veeeery unintuitive. I could show a bunch of numbers like "chunks left to the chosen center" for all four directions, but that would still be very unintuitive. Also, this would require manual work, which is tedious.

Last but not least, one of the challenges as a coder that takes feature requests is that what a user says they want is very often not what they actually want, as it is already quite merged with their initial approach. You say you want a way to manually set the center of the screenshots, but I think your actual problem you want to be solved is misaligned screenshot centers.

Solution idea

After thinking about your input for a bit now I think the best approach would be a combination of my second and third approach.

The center of the screenshots will start at the center of all generated chunks. Every time screenshots are started an additional check will be run if a screenshot would be empty on more than 20% or so to one side of the image. If so, the image would be centered based on the base limits again. The check would be necessary a second time for the other axis as well.

There should be certain rules and settings: * never zoom back in once zoom was already increased, this would look... weird and jumpy in timelapses * setting to lock the screenshots to 0,0, being on by default if upgrading from an older version of the mod to avoid breaking timelapses, whilst also warning the user about the new feature * maybe a setting to change threshhold * maybe an additional setting to truly be able to manually change the center * a setting to zoom back in once entities were removed, which would reduce the base limits.

This might sound rather trivial, but it affects almost all parts of the mod. This feature will definitely come with 3.0, when I redo the whole UI. Before that I will only add the feature that the zoom will be adjusted if deconstructing of entities reduces the base limits.

Certainly not trivial, and I understand the need for centering automatically.
However, I do wonder if you would be able to implement the 4th option as an advanced setting just for the users who need it and might not necessarily desire the automatic functionality of your other approaches. (I would still like having straight outwards zoom without center adjustment, just on a different anchor point). Some ideas could involve the GPS tags (when you Ctrl + Alt + click a point on the map) - I'm not sure if the API provides some way to create those tags to mark the centre location on the map. At the moment, if I had the option, I would simply create a GPS marker on the location I want to centre the screenshot on (using the Ctrl Alt click), then input those coordinates into the mod.
Of course, I understand that my needs are not always what is best for development, but I thought I'd throw an idea out there :)

I don't know if I can place a GPS marker but I definitely can add labels and icons to the map. That might be a nice idea, I'll see what I can do.

To satisfy your specific needs I will add a button that centers the screenshots on the surface you are currently looking at to the exact middle of the built entities. That is the least amount of work and can be done the quickest.

Awesome, appreciate your work a lot.

Hey again! Just wanted to follow up on the original suggestion in this post (the zoom reset, not the centring). I am aware you are still working on the UI rework but thought I'd inquire if this is still something that will be implemented before then :)