Wedge flooring is needed for diagonal walls.

Hi,

We have diagonal palisade walls, but you cannot fill them in with anything because there are no horizontal triangle shapes, also called wedges in order to fill in the gap between a diagonal wall and a neighbouring square block.

Best example of how wedge blocks are used: Wedge block foundations along with wedge corner pieces (that can also invert to fill upper ramparts if you build a diagonal foundation that builds towards the top). The top of the block will be fine, you can cover it with a square, but what about the bottom? The sides? Those can only be covered with inverted triangles.

These shapes are already present in game. They are used to fill in spaces created by ladders, etc, but there Is no functionality for them to fill in inverted foundations. No extended alignment option in their definitions.

For example, the angled wooden foundation is pretty much useless because there are no pieces you can combine with that block. No flooring fits it, wedge blocks are not present, and you cannot invert the current triangle pieces.

The angled foundation would be a lot more useful if it wasn't hollow. It is not possible to cover that foundation with planks, or walls, or pillars, because they cannot snap to angles.

The best example of how wedges work are in games like Conan Exiles and Rust, where you have wedge foundations and continue to build upon them with wedge and triangle tiles that snap together very naturally (less connection points than a square, ironically). This allows you to create very complex designs that look good, easily. Right now we are limited to square based designs. With some support for round things.

Currently, these games have much more advanced building systems because they are able to use wedges/angled foundations along with the regular, square style of block placement. These games are PVP games... We are not a PVP game, we are a dedicated building/engineering game. We are the ones who should have the superior building system, not they.

Our current angled foundation has almost zero support pieces... Other than the diagonal palisade, I can't think of one that actually works with it.

Also, the compound building is um, still problematic at the moment. You need to really loosen it up and just allow a consistent connection layer per "joint", instead of checking outer blocks for problems that often appear not to be problems at all. I constantly have to adjust my designs to work around "red clang". Eventually I have to go back and completely redo a finished piece because I've ran into a roadblock that cannot be overcome. Whether it's missing connection pieces or the proximity of other blocks, the intuitive compound building does not play nice sometimes.

A lot of the red can be fixed with re-arranging the blocks currently in a space, but there are instances where it just bugs out on a particular feature or proximity.

I think it is trying to do too many calculations. And the "errors" it finds stem from that. I say give it some leeway to place a block first, and then check to see if there is an error. Might eliminate a lot of the 'false positives'.

For example, today I had a palisade gate and I was working on towers on the side. I couldn't place a plank pillar in the corner of the outer towers, even though they were far from any contact with the gate. Just because the gate was there, not as a point of contact but as a box outline. The white outline of the gate was on the outer border where the plank was trying to fit. Even though it wasn't in the same box. Just on the outside edge of it was enough for it to put it in the red state.

If Conan Exiles can rip off ME and have a flawless compound building system that never gives you a "red", can't place block even though you can clearly do so, I have faith that you guys can too.

It tries to fight "a problem" before there even is one, resulting in very weird behaviour more often than not. And I hope that can be ironed out and we can get some of those fancy wedge shapes that all these other games have. It's probably the reason why you haven't added them already.

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Off topic of wedges per say,

I also suggest that being able to manually raise the elevation of where you are aiming at would be very helpful. Both for the player and the system in trying to guess what the player is trying to do. Being able to give it more precise information about the elevation you are trying to place a block in, would lead to much more consistent behaviour for the tool.

Also, the ghost preview is so transparent now that it may as well not be there at all. I am hardly able to see anything in ghost preview mode. (And if the lighting is bad, forget it.)

I orient mainly where the box is situated and where the red indicator is in order to judge where the connection point. Even then, I have to spin the block multiple times in order to get a read on it, since it is so transparent. Then I try to by reflex memory, not visually because it is unclear what you are looking at. Too many times I thought the ghost outline was on point only to click and find out I've gone completely out of alignment.

It needs to be brighter and less transparent. It needs to telegraph where it is trying to place the block very clearly.

Thanks!

 

+1 for wedge floors but also please to add diagonal walls for stone and wood. Massive amounts of creative potential in diagonal sets, like the angle block additions did for SE. Also diagonal batter if you are bored.