Building Tool Usability (Landmark)

Line tool is No. 1 on my list its updating is needed badly the others work semi ok but the line tool is in bad shape.

on my wish list would be a Move Tool so you could move a selection you've made around your claim, i know i can copy and paste, but its a finicky thing to do, i'm much rather just move what i've made around.

I'm not sure why you would do a poll since all the tools need to be worked on. Leaving out the cylinder shape, and not saving edge coordinates for one of two connected shapes, based on restrictions placed on the mmo space or the design in general, is going to be a big problem after you go live. The advertised intention of Landmark will never be realized! Then EQN will end up just another rehashed mmo.

You look across the forums and people generally discuss how to work around restrictions. How to use the smooth tool to get a smaller basic block. This is a fundamental problem. The line tool requires that one side be bigger than the other if the angle is not 90 degrees. Building a floor to hold an object because the object doesn't align with the natural flooring. Dropping a basic shape that doesn't draw correctly if it isn't large enough. It just doesn't make sense to me to just try to 'get by' as designers.

Provide tools that are at least as good as milkshape tools, or stop advertising that these tools will be used to shape EQN. With the tools as they are, you will have nothing but 1000 castle walls with various textures for sale in the 'shop'.

I would like to see a way to change the pivot point on a selection or paste action. Image how easy it would be to build the spiral staircases if you could offset the pivot point, rotate slightly and paste. Talking about easy stairs.

I voted for the smooth tool, because I feel sometimes all I want to do is smooth the surface appearance and because of the selection box I end up smoothing everything around/behind it as well.

I also feel the "Heal" tool needs work though, I find it really cumbersome to heal space I have cleared. It wants to default into existing land making it very cumbersome to heal above the land where you may have previously excavated.

I voted for line tool as well, just because of all the tools it delivers the most unexpected behaviour. Even with the color indicators taken into account there are many instances where a projected green line will show up weirdly or in some cases not at all.

So even though this could also counted as a "bug" i think it also falls into the usability category since right now you cannot trust it's outcomes, which is highly frustrating.

I would say somethin like Shadow Mode, Shadow Manipulation mode, or maybe Shadman Mode. Then again, I'm kinda stoopid.

I know this has been mention here in different ways, but I also am feeling a bit frustrated when attempting to build anything that involves a diagonal aspect. The other evening I spent a lot of time making a ceiling beam template for a cathedral style roof. This came out quite nicely. I placed a few on my build which also went well. Then I attempted to install some shingle templates I had created for this purpose, "wham! colliding voxels everywhere what a mess! This can be very frustrating. So I would also like to see a way to work with anything but straight up and down angles and not have the voxel collision artifact problem. The roof I ended up with came out pretty well. Had to go with no beams though because of fore mentioned issue.

Um. "Tweak mode" is certainly accurate

And that's a really good thing that we do need.

I would like to have a cylinder shape available in addition to the cube and the sphere, and while you're at it, I'd like the edges made to actually resemble a circle (or whatever).

I've made ONE arch that actually worked sort of okay. It actually mostly looks like an arch. I had to place the blocks to use PRECISELY where my smoothing volume was going to be, and while smoothing does work on a selection volume, it seems to work better when you smooth using a large cube as the smoothing volume. Not sure why.

Okay, so I made the arch, then I tried to cut one section out of it so I'd have a nice arch section to paste. What do I get? Cubes on the edges of the arch. Completely ruins the effect. A cylinder tool would solve this problem nicely. It would also solve the problem of trying to make circular towers from square blocks.

Another possibility is to have a tool like the line tool, but that literally creates an arch, and the user can change the height of the arch between its two end points; it would be a simple arc of a circle in shape. This would ALSO let one build circular towers, by creating two sideways arches facing each other.

Still another possibility would be to provide building blocks that are literally ARCH SECTIONS.

Just some thoughts.

If the following are already in the game, I haven't figured them out. If not I'd like to see the following to make the game tools more user friendly:

The line tool needs to be reconfigured so that it is fully functional at a one voxel resolution.

The move tool needs to be refined so that shifting between the vertical, horizontal, and rotate tools isn't so cumbersome.

The ability to Move and/or change the selection area needs to be added. And there needs to be a way to paste into a selected area.
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If these are already in the game, I'd really appriciate anyone that could help me with the above or direct me to a page with more specific instructions than is given in the tutorials.

Thanks

Although it is not on the list, the "tweak" mode (placement mode is a better name) would be the first thing I would like to see.

Honestly, I would like to see a Voxel tool that allows us to manipulate the so-called micro voxels. Currently, we are doing some amazing things with them but it is a tedious job of repeatedly copy-and-pasting to get them to seemingly randomly get into the shape we want. If we could select one voxel then adjust it manually I think the results would be even better then what we have today.

personally would love to see the selection tool separated and an additional 'MOVE' tool which im sure isnt the first time, aside that I would love to see the smoothing tool have a bit of an overhaul...just because of the difficulty of use. Now we've all used it for awhile, but the new people here and in-the future may come in and be like...ive just got this...its useless....without the proper time spent it's awkward to use.

maybe just inputting a tutorial to the ui when u get a new tool?

I'd suggest, context sensitive and aware smoothing, so each angel allows smoothing from that angle, this would allow precision and easier use...however the coding for that would be a nightmare....

hopefully thats ok <3

I'm not much of a forum guy, so I'm putting a couple of things out at once.

For the line tool, it would be great to have more control over the line end sizes (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,etc. instead of 1,3,9,etc.), as well as the ability to control the height and the width of the line end separately (e.g. 1x2 instead of just 1x1).

Also, I would love to see paste function have a feature that would allow a paste without inadvertently deleting existing voxels. As is, creating curved stairs has to be done within a tower, since pasting them in afterwards would delete the outside of the tower.

Also, when pasting larger and more complex designs, the ghostly representation of the object sometimes makes it difficult to line up. It would be great if the actual paste was shown and the edges of the voxels that the shape is lined up with would be highlighted. The existing way is just very clunky and prone to many misclicks and frustration.

Lastly, when pasting, I would love the option to disable mouse placement and only use the fine tune controls to move the object. This way I can move around the object and make sure it's placed correctly. If this was done, then my previous paragraph would be much less necessary.

The selection tool is very powerful and well designed. I would hate to see any changes made to what it already does, except maybe make the arrows be easier to select for translating.

Will there ever be the ability to create custom primitives to be used in deleting? The existing batch is great if you only need 45 degree angles. A cylinder would be lovely as well.

Was wondering how much of a performance killer it would be to simply have 2 layers of voxels inside claims. By alternating between layers, the voxel bleed-distortion could maybe be avoided?

Lastly, will we ever have a grid we can see? If not a floating grid, then just a grid over the existing voxels within a certain range of the avatar.

Sorry for all this at once, but I have thought these out.

In recent days I have been working to detail my buildings, and with the difficulty of acquiring rare wood for decoration and the massive amounts needed for tool making it would be nice to have a "hollow" tool option as when making a sloped roof of a large size the process of cleaning out the interior of the volume to recover unseen resources is tie consuming and makes for a sloppy appearance unless it is covered over. Also a 45 degree rotation of voxel's would be a miracle tools. I imagine it to beyond the pale for us to acquire such a fantastic control function. The game engine uses a smoothing technology to form the world and wonder if the smooth tool is a micro version of that. I have on occasion turned off all cache to make false deposit finds less problematic and accidentally turned off the smoothing and have seen the world as steps. Other issues involve the placement of single 1x1 voxel heals or additions when there is a missing spot as along a slope of ground meeting a wall and have to use the select tool to create an over lapping region/volume to be able to repair or fix the intersect. The single size refuses to go into the empty space. However, overall I have had little issue with most functions and am happy with the way things are progressing. After building maps for Doom and Quake series games, this is a piece of cake. Thanks for the chance to be part of this amazing game.

Willing to beg and/or send cookies for:

Reselect -- Need an undo if you misclick something else much like Photoshop's Shift+Ctrl+D so you can go back to what you had selected before.

Select-Inverse -- so you can grab the rest of your claim for templating quickly

Select-by-Name -- function for props AND templates on claims. Just to be able to go down a list and pick up 20 bar mugs at once or grab the chandelier you accidentally stuck behind stone or be able yoink out all templates of "ugly sofa" and "my first window." Might be difficult for templates you'd either have to track what was a template out of the whole or do a check what still matches the template. **

Select-by-Material -- would be awesome as well so you could replace all sand with granite, all plain wood with burled once you collect enough etc. **Would also need a subtract-from-selection and add-to-selection ability.

What I'd like:

Essential

• Make undo apply to selection changes.
• Make the selection resizable when you're inside it.
• A way to minimize the claim and build tool popups. Perhaps shrink them to a few pixels and only open them when the pointer hits the edge of the screen.

Quality of life

• Keyboard shortcuts for add/remove/heal/smooth on selection.
• Pretend smooth buffer. Perhaps this is part of the smooth tool fixes you're already doing. It would be nice to be able to have the smooth tool act as though there was a buffer region around the selection. This would be better than a command to expand the selection by 1 voxel, IMO.
• Rotate selection feature.
• Show the volume of the selection in voxels.

Nice to have

• Selection stack. The ability to go back to an old selection without having to undo all the changes I made since them would be nice.
• A keyboard-based way to extend/contract the selection along each face, and moving/rotating the selection along each axis. That's a lot of shortcuts! Needs careful planning.

Well here are the things I want to be added.

when adding a simple shape with the add tool I want to be able to place it in the air if I want not having to place it on the ground or on another voxel. if this is done by the mouse wheel like how you currently do with the copy and past or insert a template fine. but I hate having to start on the ground build up and delete so I don't get voxel warp.
(would also like the issue of the voxel being put down not to influence the shading voxel next to it)

The ability to not to have to worry about mouse curser movement once you start adding/extruding ( this is initially what got me with the selection tool and where I hated using that tool granted its not really a function of the tool but it sure didn't seem like that at the start since its more of a pasting/extruding issue and took me a while to get what was happening not to intuitive)

The ability to disconnect my camera so I can move around to make sure I have it positioned correctly. Sometimes the angle you are looking at it looks ok but since you may have had to be in a funky angle to get the part to start in some what of the right area and you can't really tell that once of the axis is off.

when building the ability to turn on full light some times the day night cycle its hard to see what your building or shadows (you can turn those mostly off) can get in the way as well. so the ability to have a full light mode maybe it just makes light from the 8 corners of your claim (or a claim you have build rights on) that can only be seen by you when on your claim (or a claim you have build rights on) and your in build mode or what ever you call it.

The ability to scale templates. that or a real circle tool circles are a standard primitive shape used to build with but our add tool does not have that. Right now we are using the selection tool to smooth and make circles, then making a template of it so that you can get a nice circle for towers. but what if you want to make it bigger? Right now you have to do it again ,and it can take a good while to get the right pixel block out line to get a good smooth circle. While yes it can be done it take a lot longer and a lot of finagling then it should.


As far as the shapes I wish they could be set down closer to the 1 voxel we have right now (maybe made out of the micro voxels?

The ability so select transparency (maybe coming I dunno)

HOW DO I LOG INTO BETA. PLEASE I PAID FOR THE 99.00 AND SHOULD BE ABLE TO ON BOTH OF MY PAID ACCOUNTS.

Personally I would like to see the following:
* copy/past: option to include/exclude empty space, sometimes its just very handy to copy/paste empty space, and other times, especially with small work, its a nightmare.
* line tool: make a selection box rather then placing materials, that way it can be modified and also used to delete bits
* voxel blend mode on/off toggle, it is very annoying having voxels interact the way they do in certain builds, and sometimes it is a great tool. But I would like to toggle it on or off.
* different geometric shapes: pyramid, cylinder, prisms , but rather then placing the material, I'd like them to be a selection (or have the option to make them a selection) so we can modify these (ie the increase the size of the base of the pyramid).

It would also be great to be able to pick-up and move templated items. Alternatively, the ability to add your home-created props. I.e. I don't like the look of the mugs, I'll make my own. Imagine the creations you could get then.

I would hava added the rounding tool, but this is already being addressed by you.
To me, (some of) these changes would make a massive difference in the building potential.

I would like to see the Line Tool end point not have to be attached to something. It would be awesome for creating spires and spikes.

It'd be great if you could "clone" something with the selection tool, and it'd overlay the clone in the exact same space as the parent object. This would allow you to use the placement arrows to easily stack the exact same object on top of the current with a simple mouse wheel spin, or at a set distance around or don. Would make things a ton easier! Copy and paste puts the pasted object 100 yard away and under the terrain, then you have to move around and try to get it JUST right, which can be a pain.

If such a feature already exists, would love to hear how it works!