Alternative building control scheme

[darkhog]

Hello, Badspot.

I find Blockland control scheme a bit sturdy and non-intuitive at times when using it with mouse, namely block placing.

So, while leaving numpad control, as this is what most players are accustomed with, I'd like to propose some new ghost brick movement control as alternative.

CTRL-mousewheel - moving on X axis (think num4(wheeldown)/num6(wheelup)).
Shift+mousewheel - moving on Z axis (think num2/num8).
Alt+mousewheel - moving on Y axis (think num1/num3).
Ctrl+Shift+mousewheel - rotating brick left/right (think num7/num9).
If supershift is turned on, alt+mousewheel will behave like num5/numplus.


What do you think about it? It would make those control more fun and engaging, because you won't need to travel your hand from mouse to numpad to build stuff, you just rest your left hand on WSAD (or mouse if you're lefty) and right on mouse (or arrows if you're lefty). Actual brick placing can be bind to mouse (my personal fav is ctrl+LMB), so it will be more fun.

So how about it?

Also, good luck with your platformer thingy. Will buy it for sure. I hope it'll have modding as advanced as one in Blockland when the time comes.

[Ad Bot]

[Zeblote]

I think those controls would be complicated as hell to use, but who knows, you get used to it..

Also I see you decided to join the forums. :D

[darkhog]

Guess what, numpad control is complicated too. Plus you often need to travel your hand from mouse to numpad, especially if you often switch between hammer/wrench and bricks.

Also, this would be opt-in alternative in options, so folks who are more happy with current control scheme will be happy too.

[Wesley Williams]

I personally prefer using laptop building controls over the numpad- they're just at a better location.

I was thinking that a cool building system to implement would be one where you float above the build, and a ghost brick appears where your mouse is, which then is placed on click.

Then maybe the current controls could be used to spin and invert the brick.

[darkhog]

Yeah. Personally I think Minecraft got it right (even though it's just cubes), but MC fanboys are already bitching about BL being clone even if it isn't, so that would be another argument.

Also, while I don't like idea of ghost brick being ALWAYS pinned to the mouse cursor, as that may obstruct your view with larger blocks, I'd would like to be able to drag it around, instead just "click click click" thing. Then Ctrl+click to place.

I guess this is now brainstorming thread. I like it. Best things are coming out of those.

[Zeblote]

I was thinking that a cool building system to implement would be one where you float above the build, and a ghost brick appears where your mouse is, which then is placed on click.

This would require to run extremely inefficient maths stuff all the time or to have a client- and a server-sided part.

[Electrk]

Just so you know, Z is up and down in 3D, not Y.

Seems like a cool idea though.

[darkhog]

I was always taught that Z is depth, not height. And so it is in most sane 3D modelling software and game engines. The only engine/graphic software I've seen so far that uses Z as height is Blender and its Blender Game Engine. Maybe Torque does it too, I don't know never used it.

[Wesley Williams]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Z is almost always used to reference the vertical plane in games.  X and Y are for the horizontally based plane.

[MARBLE MAN]

This could be made client sided

[Daenth]

This would require to run extremely inefficient maths stuff all the time or to have a client- and a server-sided part.

I'm pretty sure the former isn't even possible as the server will never know where the client's mouse is, aside from the crosshair.

This is actually a really cool suggestion. I'm sure there are a million other ways Blockland's building control scheme can be improved.

EDIT: In response to your original suggestion, you can already rebind everything to do that. I have no idea how it would work out with things like crouching and changing things in your inventory though.

[darkhog]

So? Anyone gonna develop it, either as addon or part of the core game (latter would be cooler)?

[Greek2me]

You should talk to Nexus or somebody over at NARG - they're into this kind of thing.
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=161834.0

[darkhog]

Thanks, will link this topic there.

[ShadowZero]

This control scheme reminds me of the horrible building control scheme Roblox has, that makes it impossible to build.