What do you wish you knew sooner?

[Forager]

What's a piece of advice a beginner can use, but it took you a long time to figure it out?

 

It didn't take too long to figure out exactly how to accurately move things that are attached to the floor, but not actually on the floor. It's a bit how you use the shadow of a finger to point in a display case.

 

But what I didn't fully grasp was how powerful moving the camera instead of your character is. You can put it at crazy angles, move through things, get very close and find clipped things.

 

I've been working on a base for quite awhile, and I just figured out how to really make the camera work for me.

[Glacier Peak]

Base Entrance Teleporters always make you enter facing South.

[Forager]

That's a great one! I would add to the list that teleport points within a base face you whatever direction you were facing originally (which I also just figured out this week).

[chuckv3]

I wish I had known about the F keys, and a the rotation shifts. Now I do, so life is much easier to do creative weird things.

 

F1 - toggle the grid SNAP (1/2x1/2 or 1/4x1/4 help make the TINY fonts not look ridiculous, whereas 2x2 or 4x4 is better for large grass tiles and such)

F3 - enable/disable clipping, so you can place things sticking out of the room (in game people only see what's IN the room)

F2 - toggle rotation SNAP (45, 30, 15, 10, 5, 1, none iirc). Very useful for rotating things the amount you want (without guessing)

F5 - change attachment type while dragging or placing.

 

ALT-mouse-drag, rotates items on the floor (XY axis?)

CTRL-ALT-mouse drag rotates around XZ

SHIFT-ALT-mouse drag rotates around YZ

(i don't really know if N/S is Y or X, but you get the idea. if one doesn't work, use the other)

 

 

Edited May 14 by chuckv3

[Dacy]

And...this is why I've done so many videos.

[Forager]

On 5/11/2024 at 7:18 PM, chuckv3 said:

I wish I had known about the F keys, and a the rotation shifts. Now I do, so life is much easier to do creative weird things.

 

F1 - toggle the grid SNAP (1/2x1/2 or 1/4x1/4 help make the TINY fonts not look ridiculous, whereas 2x2 or 4x4 is better for large grass tiles and such)

F3 - enable/disable clipping, so you can place things sticking out of the room (in game people only see what's IN the room)

F5 - toggle rotation SNAP (45, 30, 15, 10, 5, 1, none iirc). Very useful for rotating things the amount you want (without guessing)

 

ALT-mouse-drag, rotates items on the floor (XY axis?)

CTRL-ALT-mouse drag rotates around XZ

SHIFT-ALT-mouse drag rotates around YZ

(i don't really know if N/S is Y or X, but you get the idea. if one doesn't work, use the other)

 

 

 

F2 for and angle and F5 for attachment, but yeah.

 

I also didn't know there was a redo command for way too long. I knew undo because CTRL-Z is a habit, but didn't know CTRL-Y was redo.

 

Super handy when you miss a click-drag and you're not sure what, if anything, you actually grabbed and moved or where it went.

Edited May 14 by Forager

[Dacy]

Add to this: <esc> to let go of something like you never grabbed it. Especially handy for storage, because there is no undo for that.

 

Hold control to keep things on the same level/height they are currently while moving an item.

 

Hold shift when tabbing to select the item behind the item you're clicking on.

 

Put your character near the item you wish to select and hit tab, will usually select that item within a few tabs.

 

Hold control when you want to select the base section, not the items in front of them.

 

Get rid of flicker by disabling anglesnap, then angling the offending piece on the shortest or least noticeable direction possible, for the smallest amount of movement possible (it usually will move the item twice as far as the minimum, on the first try, so keep that in mind).

 

Surface tiles are a great tool for building on multiple levels, or for placing items at a particular height repeatedly. Surface towers are all seen as one big floor by the editor, so you can put things at whatever height you wish with a tower, then use control to move it over to where you want to have it stay.

 

Glass Windows don't make anything disappear. Glass dividers, sometimes do. And they have stripes, where glass windows do not.

Edited May 13 by Dacy

[Forager]

Dacy I got one from one of your videos recently:  I wish I had thought to attach surface towers to ceiling the ceiling instead of shift-dragging it down a million times. That's one of those simple ones that would have saved me a lot of time and energy. I'm mad I didn't think of it. 

[chuckv3]

18 hours ago, Forager said:

 

F2 for and angle and F5 for attachment, but yeah.

 

I also didn't know there was a redo command for way too long. I knew undo because CTRL-Z is a habit, but didn't know CTRL-Y was redo.

 

Super handy when you miss a click-drag and you're not sure what, if anything, you actually grabbed and moved or where it went.

corrected it (thanks!) too sleepy when I wrote that

[Jacktar]

On 5/10/2024 at 2:40 AM, Glacier Peak said:

Base Entrance Teleporters always make you enter facing South.

Total Base Builder rookie with new base so question is can I rotate the entry tp so I can face into my base on arrival?

Thanks and apologies if this is a dumb question.

Thanks

Edited June 19 by Jacktar

[On-Fire Dude]

2 hours ago, Jacktar said:

Total Base Builder rookie with new base so question is can I rotate the entry tp so I can face into my base on arrival?

Thanks and apologies if this is a dumb question.

Thanks

Sadly, no. You will always spawn from the entry portal facing South...

[Dacy]

18 hours ago, Jacktar said:

Total Base Builder rookie with new base so question is can I rotate the entry tp so I can face into my base on arrival?

Thanks and apologies if this is a dumb question

It's not a dumb question 🙂 You cannot rotate the entry, so you need to rotate the BASE. Build with the knowledge that  you will enter the base facing south every single time.

 

This video will tell you all you need to know to get started on the right foot.

 

[Jacktar]

Hi Dacy, thank you so much for your time and kind thoughts and very constructive suggestions and ideas, all very gratefully received 🌟

Using that info I have now successfully moved  my entrance portal and unsealed the wall into the entrance room which has been repurposed.

I have also set up a macro to enter the base editor system so I do not have to wander over to the distant entry room just to get the popup.

I am much better with real hammers and spanners and will endevour to keep the electronic building witchcraftery to a minumum 😂🥴

Thanks again, keep safe.

[Kheprera]

That if you're on a laptop, you may have to use the FN key with the Function keys to get them to work. I had to go to Google to understand this seemingly minor tidbit.

[uninventive]

On 6/21/2024 at 2:28 PM, Kheprera said:

That if you're on a laptop, you may have to use the FN key with the Function keys to get them to work. I had to go to Google to understand this seemingly minor tidbit.

 

All those attractive four-row mechanical keyboards that lack space for such a row makes this a crapshoot, too. 

 

In other words, don't toss out that clunky wired keyboard that you replaced with a groovier and smaller wireless, aluminum, and/or mechanical one.  (Because not having carpal tunnel syndrome by avoiding three or four finger chord presses to hit F5 is an adulting goal.)

[Akisan]

14 hours ago, uninventive said:

(Because not having carpal tunnel syndrome by avoiding three or four finger chord presses to hit F5 is an adulting goal.)

 

You're absolutely right - it needs to be at least 5 keys for proper nerd cred.

 

From my base building days back on Live - knowing exactly which pieces hid things, or allowed the camera to pass through would have been nice.  I'd made an obstacle course of several kinds of crystals & rocks, and didn't learn until testing it that A) it was nearly unrunnable due to the camera jumping in and out as I ran the course, and B) nearly all of said camera jumps caused my skirt to disappear (most translucent things did back then, including water.  My Sailor Moon inspired quintet avoided IP and FF like the plague back then).

 

And more recently - some base objects emit sound.  I had no idea, as most of my base editing consists of me turning off CoH sounds and turning on my music.  At least I got lucky, and my base is pretty quiet as-is (no need to go around fixing the sound).

[Truepenny]

I wish I'd known to use a bunch of little rooms to make a base instead of one big room. Build lag seems to function based on the number of items rendered in the room you're in, so when I'm placing items in a room with 100 items, there's a lot less lag than when I place stuff in a room with 5000.