How To: Layout Editor in Bite Sized Tutorials

Discussion in 'Norrathian Homeshow' started by Jazabelle, Nov 9, 2012.

  1. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Hey, dudes! Not sure if you and your buddy are still in game, but there is a way to sorta kinda see what's going on in-game: for one thing, there's the relatively new in-game Decorating Mode (Ctrl+e for that default; there's also a li'l house icon button that comes up when you're in a house that you own or are Trustee for that will enable/disable it) that helps, though it can be a bit clugey, and I've always just used the Notepad (text) Method, where you can make the Notepad window small enough to play about in it and watch the results in-game when you do Load Layout in the house. No, it's not in "real-time," but it's close enough for my tastes. ;->

    That being said, the Layout Editor is pretty amazing for easily doing stuff very quickly it would take minutes->hours to do any other way. ;->

    Uwk
    a big fan of numbers!
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  2. Jazabelle Well-Known Member

    Added the following two videos to the main post:



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  3. Jazabelle Well-Known Member

  4. Niboota Well-Known Member

    Oh how to replace items!! I never learned how to do that, and I totally need to know how to do that.... because I change my mind a lot ;).
  5. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    It's actually kind of easy-ish, even in Notepad; what I do there is if I want to replace a Starry Tile, say, with a Snowy one, I just put down a Snowy Tile anywhere in the house, then go in and copy the line describing the existing Starry (just the decimal numbers) and set the Starry to "true" instead of "false," which puts it in the Moving Crate. ;->

    But I'm sure it's easier in Layout Editor. ;->

    Uwk
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  6. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    I have a question about Grouping (which I could probably learn the answer to by watching the videos, but I'm lazy, am coming down from an all-nighter, and...I actually don't have any other excuse at the moment ;->): if you're in a "problem house" that eats things, and you've got objects in a Group, would that "protect" any individual part of that Group from being eaten? :-/

    Uwk
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  7. Merriel Well-Known Member

    I just want to say thank you, Jazabelle, for these tutorials.

    There is still so much for me to learn how to use the layout editor, but I've at least learned how to use the diff button and to be able to move things N/S/E/W. Unfortunately, I learned in decorating the Gorowyn large house for the SSHHS that everything is on wierd angles in that house, NE/NW/SE/SW and is a lot more complicated to line things up in there because of this. So everything just got laid manually and lined up as best I could, lol. I doubt I will ever figure this out on my own, so I'll probably just not use it for wierd angles like that, but I still want to learn all the rest of the wonderful things your tutorials teach, such as building lovely straight and circular staircases, etc. Thank you again, for taking time out to do these wonderful tutorials for us. :)
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  8. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Oohhh, yeah, I've had Gorowyn places for a long time (since 2007), and known how aggravating they are...if I'd known we'd be getting Rounded Tiles in the future, for the sake of Gorowyn decorating I would've squawked long, loud, and hard for making them either octagonal (8-sided) or dodecagonal (12-sided) instead of the decagons (10-sided) we got (far better the number of sides be divisible by 4). I think it's infinitely easier to do weird directions (NE/NW/SE/SW) by going through the middle of a side's face than a teeny little point, which is all we have on those. :-/

    That being said, what I've seen of the videos in the past is awesome (are we still on the same version of Layout Method, or is there a new one?), as always, and I guess I better do a search somewhere for Grouping and stop being lazy. ;)

    Uwk
    who may have gotten an "A" in geometry, but that was long ago and far away and in another area and the mensch is probably dead of old age by now...
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  9. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Another question: if we have a layout file already, and it's been ravished a few times by Notepad, is there any way to export that file into Layout Editor, or would it just be best to save the layout in Layout Editor the minute we walk in the front door? I know it's the same layout file the game uses; just curious...I know the format's a bit different in what you see on the screen of the Layout Editor as opposed to the open file in Notepad, especially with the various ID numbers being in different locations. ;->

    Uwk
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  10. Merriel Well-Known Member

    Hmm I wonder if you wouldn't be able to do a tutorial on how to rotate AND flip a grouping. I am currently working on a project where I have two sections in the house that need to be duplicated and flipped on the opposite side of the room.

    The first grouping is a series of benches with a ramp on the left side and blocks forming tiers on the right side. This group needs to be duplicated and rotated to the opposite side of the room, but then it needs flipped so that the ramp in the second group is on the right side and the blocks are on the left side.

    The other grouping is a set of stairs that bends to the left, and needs to be duplicated and rotated to the other end of the room, but the bend in the second set of stairs needs to bend right. So in both cases, I need the groups not just to be duplicated and rotated, but also flipped, and I have no idea how to go about this (if it just needed duplicated and rotated, it would be no problem).
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  11. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Hmm...why not just do the duplications and rotations first and then flip?

    Uwk
    who has no idea how difficult/impossible that could be, admittedly... :-/
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  12. Merriel Well-Known Member

    Cause I don't know how to flip it, and if I just duplicate and rotate it, part of the second groups will end up buried in the wall. :)
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  13. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Hmm, okay, then flip that bunch first...by "flip," do you mean 90 degrees (from facing North, say, to facing East) or 180 degrees (from North to South)? That should be just Rotate once you've got it where you want it? :-/

    Uwk
    whose ignorance is showing... :oops:
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  14. Llaine Member

    It sounds like what you need is the "mirror" function. Rather than rotating and flipping the group, you can simply mirror it across an axis (where the value on the axis you need to input is the centre point around which the group is mirrored).

    I will refer you to this post with a similar question and some feedback by JesDyr, the creator of the editor, to set you up.
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  15. JesDyr Well-Known Member

    I agree :) ... What Mirror does is takes some items and builds a mirrored copy of them. I never made a tutorial on how to use it, but it is not all that complex really. It works much like the Duplicate only it also does all the math to do the mirror.

    This is the house I built using Mirror and Offsets.


    Offset is just a convenience thing when building something like that. It allows you to make the editor pretend the center point of the zone is wherever you want. So if the center of a structure you want to build is is at -134,20,56 in game , you could use that as your offset and all items in the editor will display their XYZ value relative to that point. So an item at -124,20,56 would show up as 10,0,0 in the editor.
  16. Merriel Well-Known Member

    I tried to reply to this the other day but due to the DDOS attacks, I was not able to do so, and could not get into the forums for a few days. Now I will be busy at least until the 5th, then I intend to fully attack this and learn how to use that mirror function, which is exactly what I do need for this project. Thank you very much, Llaine and JesDyr!

    Btw, JesDyr, that place you decorated looks AMAZING! I will definitely have to come tour it in person. I was floored when I watched the short video you posted. :)
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  17. Sharann Well-Known Member

    Oh wow this is clearly another level of decorating competency. Thanks a lot JesDyr!
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  18. Eradani Well-Known Member

    another way to learn about mirroring and rotating is to use M$Paint. copy / paste a section of an image, then before you deselect the pasted section, goto the Image menu where you can mirror your selection (or whole image) horizontally or vertically and move it to where you want.
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  19. Eradani Well-Known Member

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  20. Merriel Well-Known Member

    Oh, I can mirror things in paint easy enough, but it's a far cry from mirroring things in the layout editor and EQII housing. :D

    I may take more steps and do things more simplified, in order to mirror things in paint, but I can do it successfully every time. I just had no idea how to tackle it using the layout editor in my Mistmoore Crags Estate. I knew it had to be possible, but I just wasn't sure how, until JesDyr and Llaine posted. :)
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