Dacy

I know someone who talked to Leandro about this. He said it's impossible right now, coding being the way it is. For this as for so many other things, the editor would need to be completely rewritten, which I don't believe anyone is undertaking. I want this SO much, too... I've also heard that they are trying to get it so you place 1 NPC and then assign it's position, instead of selecting from a huge and yet incomplete menu of them. @Temyra, there is already snow. Check the tab "Ambient Fx". Some of the snow is a huge area, but some is localized. However, there is no snow ground cover, just like there is no sand. I've used...and yes, this is typical over the top me...the backs of the shower floors as snow cover. I think it's snow 3 that makes little piles of snow that appear and then fade on the ground, over and over. And, inactive arcane power crystals make passable ice, but they sway. The active ones glow and spin. Well, you can sink lights to light an area, but I'd LOVE this. Also giving items inherent light, so that when you're placing things with indoor lighting outside the base, you don't have to worry about lighting it. If they can't give us different areas designated indoor and outdoor, how about this?? I've long wanted string lights, or neon line lights in different colors, too. But, I'd be SO DANG HAPPY if they'd just give me some more basic building blocks. We have street signs, but no stop light nor streets nor street markings. We have no good indoor doors, and no usable door frames. I'd love to be able to insert a window in a wall without having to account for the different sized walls, if I want a window to see out of, and I'm tired of not having any pieces to cover over doors and windows. I know they are working on being able to give color and textures to different blank items so you can make about anything, but, in the meantime, couldn't we have just a few more basics? Please? Roads: Straight, curved, intersection. Stoplights. A beach. A section of wall with a window you can see through, all trimmed out (different sizes would be awesome). Much. Smaller. Wall. Segments. Half size with no trim would make me giddy with glee. DOORS, separate from their door jam, pls, and door jams. So many nice doors in Atlas Park, even RWZ...I want doors that are good for your average house/apt. Something nice, wooden, six paneled, etc. Oh, a thin wooden surface would be really nice. In different sizes, I could make larger tables, doors, etc. Metal railings for stairs, like you see in Brickstown, or heck, on the tram stations. More floors, there really aren't good options for tech or modern. More reflective/shiny things would be awesome, like mirrors, stone with a sheen, metal, etc. I just feel like it'd be nice if we had a solid basic assortment of items before we have everything else, from Hamidon Husks to dreidels to baby carriages. I am hoping that that texture/shape editor change is being worked on and is making good progress!!! -Dacy

Thank you!! It always makes my day to hear back. And doh! I put this in the index, but forgot to post it here; here’s the promised bit on terraforming: -Dacy

Love the handle! What’s the top of the pot, and what’s the top of the machine? -Dacy

Yes

Video Guide to Base Building This is a series of videos geared towards helping people with base building. All basics are covered, such as getting started, basic editing commands, building above and below the base, and dealing with some of the challenges the editor sometimes offers. There are more specific topics, too, such as guides for putting things together, what items to use, and where in the editor you will find those items. The videos are kept as short and concise as possible, and are not the highest quality to keep download times and memory usage to a minimum. Videos subject matter is selected based on questions I've seen or answered, or common problems facing anyone who's building a base. I've tried to include any tips or shortcuts I've discovered which have made my life easier when editing. Enjoy! Feel free to suggest a topic you'd like to see included. Introduction to Base Building Info on how to get started, video covers selecting a plot, placing rooms, and opening sky. Basic Base Editing Commands A look at how to rotate and place items, and basic base editing commands. Does not specifically include how to stack; I recommend just skip this and instead look at “Another Look At Base Editing Commands”. Another Look At Base Editing Commands Improved to cover slightly more, more concisely. Looks at setting up the editor to make editing as easy as possible, which keys to use to manipulate objects, and placing your base entry portal in or out of the base, and how to deal with the error when people get stuck in the entry portal when entering base. Building Above or Below Your Base A look at what you need to do and consider when choosing to build in, above, and below your base. Base Lighting Options It might seem unimportant as a topic you should visit before you start building, but how you choose to light your base has a big impact not only on how it looks, but impacts the decision on whether or not to build outside of the base walls. Know exactly what you're choosing if you choose to build above or below. Wall and Ceiling Options in Your Base A look at what your options are for walls, both as part of the base itself, or as in what items make good walls and ceilings, and where to find them. Dacy shares her favorite way to make straight white walls and ceilings. Make Your Base Work For You Setting up base functions: Storage, Rez Facilities, Teleporters, Services and Buffs. Dacy shows you what is available and where to find it, and how to set it up. She includes a trick she picked up to make storage units disappear. Making Base Function Look Fabulous A short tour of some bases for samples of what Dacy spoke of in "Make Your Base Work For You", in making your functional pieces look good, or seem to be part of your design, or even completely unnoticed. (Soon to be replaced, sound/video out of sync somewhat due to YouTube's garbage editor). Getting Familiar With The Editor The editor has quirks and outright bugs. This segment is a bit longer than others, but deals with negotiating these bugs and quirks. Why is your item jumping around? What do you do when things have shifted around from where you put them? How can you get rid of flicker? These and other problems are sorted out. Quick Tips to Fix Editor Errors For those who don't want to watch the longer, more complete "Getting Familiar with the Editor" and just want to know what they can do to avoid or fix a problem. Kitchens! A guide to putting together the appliances you've seen in my kitchen, with some options other than what's been shown. Windows You Can See Through, Plus More Construction tips for making windows you can see through, and a look at options the base editor offers for ready made windows; which walls are best for the outer walls of a house, and different door options. Creating Different Levels in Your Base A look at the different items you will need to create different levels in your base, how many levels you can put into the base within the walls, and different items you can use to achieve different looks. Base Sky Options Goes over some of the different base-wide sky options, and how they effect objects you place, plus, the place-able skies found in the "Skies" tab in the Place Item category. Terraforming Making higher grass hills, rock formations, and floating islands. Advanced Base Editing Techniques A few things I’ve learned that should help you edit some trickier things more easily. (references Building Material for the Outside of Bases, and/or Powergirls Base Tour) Roads and Cement Surfaces A look at good materials in the editor you can use for roads and other cement surfaces. Building Material for the Outside of Buildings A look at some materials good for the outside of buildings in actual finished buildings in a base. Both house and city buildings shown. Complete Guide to Building Above and Below Base Specifics on building above and below, including how to open the ceiling, move the entry portal, things to consider when deciding where to build, commands to use to edit when you are outside of the entry room, and how to lay down grass and water without flicker. Working With Water Placing water so it looks good, without flicker or gaps, which water plates need solid surfaces under them to prevent characters from falling through them if they are placed over air, and making pools and rivers and lakes. Building Complex Items Shows techniques I use in making complex items, with a demonstration build using the techniques. It seems like I almost always forget to mention something! Sometimes I will redo videos to include this information. Feel free to comment on what I missed. -Dacy

That’s so pretty, @BlackBlade! Well done! -Dacy

Perhaps submit this under Bugs category? Seems like they might like to know. -Dacy

Speaking of creating a certain look, the latest video looks at sky options, both base-wide and placed, and their effects. Terraforming video planned next. -Dacy

Sometimes effects linger, but. Skies are among the most difficult items to find without the "Current Room" function. So. I hope you only have one room, or you will have to repeat this for each and every room. On the left, you'll see the selections for "Create Room", "Pick Style", "Place Item", and at the bottom, "Current Room". Click on that, and slowly look for the Asteroids sky. Look at the words, because I've noticed of late that sometimes, the picture is wrong for the item, but the word description is not. You should not even see a picture for a sky, anyway. If you can find it there, delete it. Leave the base, let it reset (be out for 6 minutes at least), come back, see if you still see the asteroids. From the description of where you are seeing the asteroids, I'd suspect that the actual sky's placement is below your base somehow, or inverted, if that's even possible for that piece. If you can't find a sky that's been placed somewhere, I'm happy to come take a look and see if I can spot the problem. -Dacy Update: I went into a base and placed a Meteor Fall, which is the sky's name. The first thing I noticed was that it doesn't have a box. Every other sky up to that one has a defined box. The Meteor Fall, Sky Vortex 1 and 2, do not. These seem to be much larger fx; I know from a previous base I made on test, it's possible to get out of the range of this sky vertically, but it seems to have a wider area of effect than the other skies, so I'm not sure how far you'd have to go on the same plane to get away from the fx. The second thing I noticed was that the effects did not go away once I deleted the sky! I revise my former statement, tho, you definitely do get meteors streaming through the same level the fx is placed, so it's not likely below your base. So back to the "fx didn't stop" bit: As soon as I realized the fx were continuing, I went to Current Room to make sure I'd deleted it, and left the base for 10 minutes. When I came back, at least so far, no meteors. But I have no idea if the fx might have lingered if I'd left it in place longer, or if they may randomly show up like they do for you. If they do show up, we probably have a bug that needs attention. I really hope that you do have a hidden sky somewhere, and when you delete it and let the base reset, it goes away! Otherwise the both of us may be waiting on a bug fix to get rid of the silly things.

I have made a habit out of holding ctrl even when I'm not moving an item off of the floor, for this very reason. Items, when you lose track of them, usually have found some surface of the sort they are set to attach to, but I wouldn't have thought it would have gone to the inside of a filled base. However, I do know that they have messed with that programming, because you didn't used to be able to fill the entire base, including the entry room, and now you can. So there's apparently some loophole now that treats that area a bit differently. And, for some reason, ctrl/z does not, has never, worked on storage units of any sort. -Dacy

@ShardWarrior, thanks! Yeah, I have to think a lot of people are using those pieces now, they're just too pretty not to use! Looking forward to seeing yours. I really didn't want to put a mesh in between the grid lines, but, darn it, the glass just doesn't line up right. Oh, for triangular pieces!!! Or large circles. But I did try and make each floor a bit different. Hey, I think that error where the item won't go the full upright or flat on one side might have been fixed! Have you noticed? -Dacy

Heh, I love this concept! Very nice. 🙂 Of course you can steal the coffee maker. And the fridge. And the stove. This is why I posted exactly what you'd need to use to make them. 🙂 I show more details in my "Kitchens!" video, in the video guide. I'm putting this in here; this is not something I made, but rather one of the new objects that, when I saw it, I was like, how/who in the world could use THAT? Well...I did. This is the Hamidon husk. For scale, note the trees in back, and the base portal in the near left. I put the (bug themed) base inside the husk. It was a bit challenging in places, as the husk has structures you have to work around on the inside, as well, but I was really pleased with the aesthetic, overall. Got any pieces that, when you saw them in the editor, thought, "No way, how could anyone use that?" And then you did? -Dacy

Nice! Love the patterns you made, @Flashtoo, and that staircase is beautiful! You have a great eye for putting pieces together to make something much more pleasing. 🙂 @ShardWarrior, just incredible work. I know how long detail like that takes! 🙂 Just made a base for someone on Excelsior. This is A-Rise, ARISE2512-3725. Tech style, Night Ward sky, with central entry/portal room, outlying medical/buff, workshop, and a library. Main entry. The game machines made a nice, self-explanatory destination guide for teleporters. 🙂 A Magical portal and a black hole on the opposite side of the circle serve for magical/alternate dimensions destinations, and hazard zones. A view from above, central hub in sight, looking at the medical unit/empowerment buffs. The workshop area. It did not have to be large, as the storage requirements were minimal. Salvage bins are in the taller containers between the data computers, which house IO storage and the Merit vendor machine. IO work tables center. Library. No actual services, just atmosphere. 🙂 -Dacy

Not at this time. You can build above the base and set the lighting to “outdoor”, however, and this will lose the walls. -Dacy

D'aww, you guys make me smile so big! I'm so glad this is helping! Thanks for taking the time to tell me about it! -Dacy

And, the promised video on creating different levels in your base: -Dacy

Different people are, well, different! Some, if they have the time, will do things for free. Some might ask for whatever you feel it's worth, some may have figured out a fee schedule. Your particular request is on the easier side of the spectrum, wouldn't take long to knock out, and so, it shouldn't cost too much even if you went with someone you paid. I would venture to say that with just a little info on how to use the editor, you could likely do a good bit of it yourself. 🙂 -Dacy

I've heard a few people complain about the base entry problem where you get stuck in the entry portal, and /stuck doesn't help, so I remade my Base Commands video to include that, along with what I hope are more complete and concise demonstrations of base editing controls. A look at building stairs and multiple levels coming soon! -Dacy

You can edit away from the entry room by typing /editbase 1. Then you will find you’ve been moved to the entry room. To get back to the portal, type /stuck. You need to move the portal. There is a bug where it will make people get stuck when they enter the base, and typing/stuck does not help. This is usually because it is either not on something that the base recognizes as a floor, or it’s being interfered with by another object. You may have to move it other times as well; the error can be persistent. You are right to think that the rez unit won’t work because you removed power/control items. To confirm, look at the upper right bar of the base editor and/or the item window while in editing mode. If it’s red and flashing, it needs power and/or control. Power and control items can be anywhere in the base plot and still work, they don’t have to be interfering with your base design. You can sink them into the floor or put them far away. Also, don’t place a Rez unit too close to other things that teleport; I didn’t remember to note that in the video, but it’s a bug I discovered once. I’d get stuck when I rezzed, and I wouldn’t even be at the rezzer. Turns out the game gets confused as to which device you should be coming from, because my Rez unit was right next to my teleporters. Even though you don’t come into the base through the teleporters, they are a transportation type device, and the game apparently was having some problems with that. I don’t know what the minimum distance is that you have to have to place them successfully, but if you have problems getting stuck after you have powered your rez unit, I would definitely move it farther away from the entry portal or teleporter devices. For more details and a guide on how to do things you want, I would recommend my video guide series on base building. -Dacy

This is very cool, I adore it, and they are taking it away. Change is on test. -Dacy

Thanks for the kind words, @Tahliah, I'm so glad the vids were helpful! Isn't it a great feeling when you realize there's an easier way to do something? Of course, that's tempered by all the frustration you built up trying to accomplish something that was being difficult! I've had more than my share of "doh!" moments, trying to do something the hard way, myself, so I know what you mean. Thanks, @Votiga, yes, if you want to use the base decorating abilities, the only real way is by making rooms, or at least, raising walls in the one big room, which you can do, too. The nice thing about doing it that way is, you don't have those blank spaces where corners of rooms meet, where you can't place a doorway, but the base walls are so very thick, they are a bit cumbersome, and you can't raise part of a wall, it has to be all the way to the top of the room. However, I remember a base from Live that used those open spaces and created stairs going down under the base, to levels they'd build below the base. Most of the base was built above, so it was a neat trick, one it took me a long time to figure out. There is no way to create an open space like that otherwise, that allows someone to go down below the plot, within the walls of the base. But that is a very limited application, and this was before you could use a really huge room. The huge room avoids the problems of having gaps you can't build in, because you can't build in between rooms if there's no doorway, as I pointed out in the video. And you can place the big room, but still only build a little house or structure, and have the rest be atmosphere or even just blank, if it's above or below a base. But, again, it all depends on your plan. I've built a spaceship around a fairly small room, and used larger pieces to cover the walls, so that I could still use the base lighting inside, but not have to try and hide from a base that was still in the picture, looming above or below. From the outside, it looked like a space ship. Inside were three levels, for the most part, and on top of the base, I put a lounge/restaurant/bar with a view of the stars, and the space port/dock, which was how you could get out to see the outside of the ship, if you wished. It got out of hand in terms of memory use, with all the fx I used, so I'm going to remake it using some of the newer pieces, at some point. Hopefully I can make it with less of a memory bog, or else, just skip all the storage and function and have it only for looks. But I dislike doing that, a base should be functional as well as cool, imo. To get the narrowed effect in the front, the entry room is in the middle at the front of the plot. I chose the smallest plot I could that was rectangular, tho you could choose a bigger plot and create whatever pattern of rooms you wanted to build around, I suppose....my goal was to not let it get too big so I kept the room as small as I could, and according to item count, I was doing fine, but the fx still bogged down the memory use. So, well anyway. That's an example of a small base plot, where I built in and on the base itself, but extended large items out so they covered the outside of the base. More pictures can be seen in a topic here, Spaceships, Space Stations, Moonbases? so I won't clutter up this topic with more shots. 🙂 -Dacy

Thanks, @Votiga! You included some information that I did not, such as filling out the sg form, and placing several rooms in a base, vs. placing the one big one, and also the fact that you can come back at any time and change the size of you base plot. Good work! Next video in my series is up: Building Windows You Can See Through, plus more! -Dacy

Two more vids, one is a quicker, shorter, less informative version of "Getting to Know the Base Editor", focusing just on the bugs/problems with the editor and any solutions I've found for them: One is a look at how my kitchen appliances are made, and overall how I put together my kitchens. Video on making see through windows coming soon. -Dacy

See "VIdeo Guide to Base Building" in this topic, but yeah, here: -Dacy

Latest video covers problems, including this. When grabbing, click and hold mouse in place briefly before moving. It lets the editor confirm which object you have. If your editor prefers a certain object, you may have to check your target in the object window, and change position so you camera view gets past that other object. Hope this helps! Watch my latest video for other problem workarounds. 😊 -Dacy