Poll: Base Editor Changes We'd Like to See

[Dacy]

People of Paragon!
This post and the following polls are designed to give a voice to the base building community, and all of those who use and enjoy the bases made possible by you, the developers.

 

We want to call attention to some things that are very important to us (additions that would make base building easier and more accessible for all.)  Currently, many people would like a wonderful base, but, there are not many who can spend the time and effort it currently takes to make a wonderful base. However, there are of course awesome bases, and a variety of bases from the personal use bases to the community zone bases, clubs, event bases such as the Witch’s House, and the many created for RP, all of which contribute to the game! From being able to store items and craft and access services from one location for average players, to community events, bases can and do affect the entire game and the entire player base.

 

Making base building better can make the game better for everyone. More people would build if some things were easier. There are many who try, and give up in frustration. Now, base building has improved significantly, in huge ways, since Live, and we appreciate that tremendously! And we certainly appreciate the additions to the library of objects we have to work with. However, we would like to see improvements in functionality in the editor; things that will make editing easier. We have a vast array of miscellaneous items, but few basic building blocks. I’ve seen many people give up building entirely from frustration due to base shift (objects shifting out of position); just getting rid of base shift would be HUGE for so many people. And we have lots of individual items, one example being walls, but these are thick and most are only in large segments, making smaller wall sections and things like the areas above doors and windows very challenging to create. Modular walls that are tint-able and include smaller segments and sections made to fill in over doors or windows would be awesome. These are just a couple of examples of things we’ve been asking for, but as individuals. We're trying to consolidate the things most often asked for into a focused message.

 

What follows are two polls: the first is listing things that would require a programming change.  (We don’t know if the things we are listing are possible, and if they are straight up impossible, please let us know so we can drop that and move to the more possible.) The second poll is related to items that could be created. Please look at the items and rank them according to your top 3. (Yes, we know we all want ALL the things, but we need focus.) Resources and time limit what we can possibly get, so, let’s see what the majority of us consider to be the most important.

 

Thanks!!

-Dacy and Easter Bunny

 

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Dacy
add link to other poll

[Greycat]

Heh. Mentioned those in the other one.

 

Yeah. I've built fences/walls/etc. and then noticed they were a *little* off (which might be a base shift) ... and then had to move them one by one, which is irksome.

[BlackSpectre]

If I were to choose 1 thing to change in the editor, it would be to make moving things smoother and easier. 
 

So often I attempt to move an object to a spot only to find that it won’t allow me to move it to that spot. So then I have to move the object all around the outside, behind the spot then around to the side and then down to the spot in order to place it. Sometimes I have to change the position of my character who is placing the item in order for the item to be able to be placed. Sometimes I attempt to move an item and it Just plain disappears out of sight… blinking to a far away location, but if I keep the mouse button pressed and move the mouse around, the item blinks back into range. 

Edited September 24, 2022 by BlackSpectre
Typos

[Dacy]

3 hours ago, BlackSpectre said:

If I were to choose 1 thing to change in the editor, it would be to make moving things smoother and easier. 
 

So often I attempt to move an object to a spot only to find that it won’t allow me to move it to that spot. So then I have to move the object all around the outside, behind the spot then around to the side and then down to the spot in order to place it. Sometimes I have to change the position of my character who is placing the item in order for the item to be able to be placed. Sometimes I attempt to move an item and it Just plain disappears out of sight… blinking to a far away location, but if I keep the mouse button pressed and move the mouse around, the item blinks back into range. 

 What you are describing would be a total reworking of the editor and how it processes item location.

 

What's happening is, the editor is determining the location of the item you have in play on an axis, and that axis is determined by the placement of three things: 1) your camera angle 2) your mouse pointer location, and 3) the location of whatever surface your item attaches to.   So, if you are looking  at something from next to it, the angle for the camera view is essentially straight out towards the horizon; the mouse pointer determines where the editor will search for the designated attachment. So, if your item (like most items) attaches to the floor, and the nearest floor is way below you on the base because you're above the base, or the line to that floor is uninterrupted because there are no walls to intersect and claim the placement, your item will attempt to go way out there. That is why you have to change your character's camera position to be able to direct the object where you want it to go; looking down makes the angle much more acute and so, the pointer will be directing the editor to a different attachment surface, again, whatever is closest. When floors are a different height, you get items that seem to jump and shift all over the place as you move the mouse, because it's intersecting with the camera angle at different heights, which changes the axes points. If you hold control as you move an item, at the least, it won't go down to the attachment point, it will stay on the same level, albeit sometimes far in the distance, depending on your camera angle. This is why I'm usually above my work when editing, or there is a floor very close underneath where I am working. Now, I'm no programmer, but I'm pretty sure that that particular system of choosing placement is very much a part of this editor as a whole, and I don't know as it could be changed without a complete rewrite.

 

I hope that my explanation will help you control things better while editing. Describing things that should be visual sucks, but I did my best. 🙂

 

-Dacy

[Zappalina]

I would like it so when layering things/placing them inside of the floor and raising it up, and then sticking a storage item near the space where I have done that, if removing or adding items to that storage item then didn't for about a millisecond mapserver me but not actually dc me from the game just the 'mapserver' word pops up.  It consistently happens with an inspiration storage bin. 

I'm assuming it's because it dislikes the inspirations bins that are near items that are plentiful and layered in the build, (items stacked) inside of the base.

[Dacy]

The devs would like this too; one told me that was the thing that should have been first on my list that I didn't know to ask for. Here's the thing: base storage is currently written into the base itself. EVERY time you access storage in the base, the base rewrites itself. The larger the base, the bigger the disruption. The editor is apparently very prone to errors when it comes to storage items and can do very bad things, so, this is why when you grab a storage item by accident and move it,  you can't undo it. That's a safeguard. Also why you can't move a room with storage in it. So the thing you're actually asking for, what I was told needs to happen, is that the storage needs to be separate from the base, like our vault storage is now separate from bases or banks.

 

Doing this thing would resolve many errors that are currently possible, and would eliminate the brief mapserve when you access storage (and if you're in a large and heavily populated base, accessing the storage has an EXCELLENT CHANCE of mapserving EVERYONE out of the base! (I did this last year in the Witch's House by accident).

 

-Dacy

 

[Zappalina]

12 hours ago, Dacy said:

The devs would like this too; one told me that was the thing that should have been first on my list that I didn't know to ask for. Here's the thing: base storage is currently written into the base itself. EVERY time you access storage in the base, the base rewrites itself. The larger the base, the bigger the disruption. The editor is apparently very prone to errors when it comes to storage items and can do very bad things, so, this is why when you grab a storage item by accident and move it,  you can't undo it. That's a safeguard. Also why you can't move a room with storage in it. So the thing you're actually asking for, what I was told needs to happen, is that the storage needs to be separate from the base, like our vault storage is now separate from bases or banks.

 

Doing this thing would resolve many errors that are currently possible, and would eliminate the brief mapserve when you access storage (and if you're in a large and heavily populated base, accessing the storage has an EXCELLENT CHANCE of mapserving EVERYONE out of the base! (I did this last year in the Witch's House by accident).

 

-Dacy

 

Thanks Dacy

[Enchantment]

I'd like to be able to select an object and tick a box on the item panel to lock it from being moved until that tick has been removed from the box. You could still select the item, but you couldn't move/rotate/delete/etc. I'd also like it if objects locked in this way were lower priority for being selected if multiple objects overlap the same space.

[Pengy]

I wish I could manually enter coordinates to move an object to.

[agentx5]

How is this poll topic not stickied/pinned?
Really great information and thought-out suggestions @Dacy, as usual 😃

[twozerofoxtrot]

Personally I'd like a save/load state feature, even if it only had one slot.

 

That way you could go in and tinker, and if you realized you totally made a mess of things you could reset the base to the saved state.

 

No idea how'd this would work but if it was similar to saving costumes that would be really nice. Especially once people figure out how to edit the client side file to tweak their bases to perfection. 

[agentx5]

14 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Personally I'd like a save/load state feature, even if it only had one slot.

 

That way you could go in and tinker, and if you realized you totally made a mess of things you could reset the base to the saved state.

 

No idea how'd this would work but if it was similar to saving costumes that would be really nice. Especially once people figure out how to edit the client side file to tweak their bases to perfection. 

 

OMH yes!  Especially imagine if you could load bases on other servers, that way you can share your architecture artwork with the other shards/servers!  It wouldn't duplicate your storage items of course (because that'd exploitable), just the physical base object position architecture.  But that alone would be amazing.  Imagine your favorite base, and you could save it on Everlasting and load the save to import it on Indomitable so people could have fun using it for PvP or something. Or like you said, if you made some design mistakes and want to revert back to a previous save.

[Dacy]

See, right now, base storage is completely meshed in a base, so right there, that's not possible, you'd have to clear the storage before a base could be copied. Hopefully, one day sooner rather than later, they will extricate storage from the base information.

 

Yes, a save feature would be great. Until and unless, of course, it's like a document you're working on where nothing is saved until you save it..and then you get mapserved and everything you were doing is now gone.

 

-Dacy

[UltraAlt]

7 hours ago, agentx5 said:

OMH yes!  Especially imagine if you could load bases on other servers, that way you can share your architecture artwork with the other shards/servers! 

 

I'm really not seeing how hard it is to make level 1 character on another server if you want to go check out a base on a server that you don't have a character on yet.

 

I can't understand not wanting to move characters across servers and potentially lose the character name transferring out or back.

[Dacy]

21 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I'm really not seeing how hard it is to make level 1 character on another server if you want to go check out a base on a server that you don't have a character on yet.

I don't see the problem, either, but many people just won't do it. I'd love an easy way to talk/cross promote events over shards as well, that way people could know what was going on on other shards and perhaps we'd get more cross traffic.  There are awesome bases on all the servers that deserve to be seen! Plus other stuffs. 🙂

 

-Dacy

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, Dacy said:

There are awesome bases on all the servers that deserve to be seen! Plus other stuffs.

 

And that's the reason I have multiple characters on every server.

[Darmian]

Not on the list, and not a priority, BUT...I for one would love to be able to load my alts' costumes/looks onto in base NPCS.  Get a group photo of them all together.  Now, I can do a version of this using Demorecord and replacing the code but my god is that time consuming!

 

 

[MHertz]

All of the above, yes please.

 

Additionally, it would be lovely to:

• lock an item from being accidentally moved or rotated
• rename an object or add a note so you remember which one is which
• a “building base AFK” message

[Zep]

In Path of Exile you can save your base layout to a file and share it with other people.

 

I'd love to see something like that here.

[Dacy]

You can actually save your base. Type /demorecord  zepbase (or whatever your base name is or whatever you want to call the file) and it will record the textfile, for that is all it is. You can then type /demostop . It takes no real time to do the recording, so you can type the stop command right away. Now, there currently is no way to share that base....yet....but there may well be someday, maybe even someday soon.

 

And, if there's a problem with your base and the file gets corrupted later, you would have this for resetting it.

 

-Dacy

[momentarygrace]

On 11/10/2022 at 10:02 PM, Dacy said:

You can actually save your base. Type /demorecord  zepbase (or whatever your base name is or whatever you want to call the file) and it will record the textfile, for that is all it is. You can then type /demostop . It takes no real time to do the recording, so you can type the stop command right away. Now, there currently is no way to share that base....yet....but there may well be someday, maybe even someday soon.

 

And, if there's a problem with your base and the file gets corrupted later, you would have this for resetting it.

 

-Dacy

 

How would you use the demorecord to reset a corrupt base file?

 

[Dacy]

You follow the directions listed above, the file goes to where your other City files are under "demorecord" or something like that.  It's a small text file. You would contact the HC team through a GM if your base was corrupted, and they would get it to a dev who can work their magic to reset it.  The only thing you can actually do is have the recording and give it to them, there's nothing you can personally do to restore a corrupted file on the server.

 

-Dacy

[Snarky]

dance floor.  with npc dancers we can put in.  customizable.  

[biostem]

34 minutes ago, Snarky said:

dance floor.  with npc dancers we can put in.  customizable.  

And blackjack, and h...

[Andreah]

I'd like to see a fix to the bug where on larger monitors half or more of the screen is a dead zone for placing objects.