Yeah, wasn't it Simon who once said how he hates it when computer tries to be smart in guessing what the user wants and takes away the choice from the user?
Or something like that.
Nonetheless, a manual setting remains complexity
Please don't abuse the word.
Implementation cost by itself is not complexity. Of course any feature will require code to implement, that in and of itself is not complexity.
I'm just not particularly convinced that in this particular case there is anything complex about it, relative to everything in the game that has already been implemented. If anything, the automatic algorithm that has already been implemented seem to be the more complex thing compare to obeying a setting in the level.
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Anyway, I was almost going to say that it's probably okay to drop it, and then I looked at my own levels. Applying the centering algorithm to my Brickout level in 640x400 (or whatever the viewport's size is in C++ Lix), and I think it ends up with a small portion of the leftmost area of the level unnecessarily cut off. It's certainly cosmetic and you can argue it won't happen anyway with a larger viewport that would be more likely given the typical display resolutions of today, but it does seem to highlight that sometimes it's nice to be able to override an algorithm.
I'll definitely agree that it's of lower priority, and because it's strictly cosmetic, you can most definitely get away with dropping it regardless of how people feel (ie. I'm pretty sure in the end, no one will refuse to make or release a level in Lix purely because of this; even I can live with the automatic algorithm on Brickout if that's how things land.)
Nepster's also makes a good point that the algorithm as stated seem to be not smart enough. I think most can agree that it's desirable to help ensure the first lix out is not offscreen, so for an automatic algorithm, we probably want to keep the first hatch visible if nothing else. Funny enough, this appears to add some complexity (well, at least more code) to the algorithm, complexity that one can replace instead by providing the option for manual override. Hmm......