Hello, and welcome to my tutorial on basic building for all new players who need tips, building techniques, and an overall understanding of how to build.
Please note that this tutorial is for new builders, such as players who need to get used to the number pad controls, need some help with tools, or need tips for their builds.
If you are an experienced builder, this tutorial is not for you! -Captain Obvious 2015
Opening a Single Player Server Let us begin with clicking
Start A Game on the Blockland Home Screen, you can either select
Freebuild or
Custom. If you have not downloaded any addons or brick packs, I recommend choosing
Freebuild, however if you have downloaded any addon, select
Custom and activate the addon(s) you have downloaded. Then click
Next in the bottom right corner. A customization menu should appear. All you have to do, is click
Single Player. Then click
Start in the bottom right corner. Then wait for your game to load.
The Build Menu and Building Once you have created your game and spawned. Open your bricks menu, it will be the
B key on your keyboard by default. A menu will pop up, this menu contains all of the bricks available to you. You can look through all of this later, click on the
Clear Cart button on the bottom left, this will clear all of the default bricks out of your inventory. Next, click on the
Baseplates tab. Lastly, double click on the
16x16 Baseplate. It will appear in your empty inventory. All you have to do now is hit the
ESC key, this will take you out of the bricks menu. Now you are back in your normal view, scroll with your mouse to select the 16x16 brick you just added to your inventory. And then click on the ground, a
Ghost Brick will appear, the ghost brick is a marker for where your brick will be placed. Now press
Enter on your number pad. Bam! you have planted a brick! Press
0 on your number pad to get rid of the ghost brick. Press
Q twice to get rid of the inventory bar.
The Paint Can The paint can is here to make sure your build looks creative and colorful. You can use it to color any brick instantly, isn't that just handy? All you have to do is press E once to pull up the GUI.
Here are the controls for the Paint Can.
Ctrl E Scrolls horizontally to the left. Mouse Wheel Scrolls Vertically. E First use: Pulls up the paint can GUI. Second use: Scrolls horizontally to the right.
There can only be 64 total colors you can choose from, however your default paint can only has 32. You can download a color set to get more.Press
Q Twice to get rid of your paint can GUI.
Thank you AdinX for suggesting this to be added.
The Number Pad
This is by far the most useful mechanic for building. Your number pad controls the rotation, height, and direction of your brick. Here is a key that I have put together.
7 Rotate a brick to the left. 8 Make a brick go forward. 9 Rotate a brick to the right.
4 Moves a brick to the left. 5 Makes a brick go down. 6 Moves a brick to the right.
1 Edges a brick down. 2 Moves a brick backwards. 3 Edges a brick up.
0 Clears your ghost brick. + Makes a brick go up. ENTER Plants a brick.
These controls allow to you control a brick's orientation without having to manually walk over and click on the ground yourself. All experienced builders use the number pad to help them construct fantastic builds.
The Number Pad-Continued
I am aware that not all of you may have number pads, but don't worry! I have those controls too.
U Rotates a brick to the left. I Moves a brick forward. O Rotates a brick to the right.
J Moves a brick to the left. K Moves a brick backwards. L Moves a brick to the right.
P Makes a brick go up. ; Makes a brick go down. . Edges a brick up. ,
Edges a brick down. ENTER Plants a brick.
Thank you Setro and Hawt for helping me with these controls.
Clearing your ghost brick isn't here by default, bind this in your controls!
Super Shift Super shift allows you to move bricks much further, with the help of the number pad. To toggle Super Shift, press
Alt on your keyboard, once you press this, a small icon in the bottom right corner will appear, it is bold and yellow, and says SUPERSHIFT in all capitals. Super Shift moves a brick its entire length, instead of just a single stud. Why have this feature? Well, some of Blockland's bricks are massive compared to the player, so it's nice having super shift to give you lots of extra time, instead of holding down a key until it gets there.
Here is an example of moving a brick without super shift, and with it toggled.Without Super Shift ToggledWith Super Shift Toggled
The Tools Press Q to open up your item inventory, this should appear on the right side of your screen. What are these three strange items that we have? The black mallet is the Hammer, the grey wrench is the Wrench, and the white alien gun is the Printer. What do each of them do? These items help you build, customize, and destroy. Lets look at them.
The Hammer This one is pretty simple, all it does it destroy bricks that you have placed. But you need to apply to the laws of gravity, you can't have a hovering brick. If you placed two bricks on top of each other, you wouldn't be able to destroy the brick on the bottom without getting rid of the one on the top. Here is a picture of the hammer destroying a 1x1 brick.
The WrenchThe symbol of events, the wrench! The most complicated item in the game. If you click on a brick with the wrench, it opens a small menu. This menu is so complex, that I will save you some time and let you do a simple action with the wrench. Click on the
Items Tab, a list of items will drop down, choose anything you'd like to use. Once you've chosen, click on the item in the list, and click
Send in the bottom right corner of the menu. Now your selected item will hover over the brick! You can experiment with the wrench's complexity as much as you'd like. But the tutorial will still be continuing.
The Wrench in action.
The Printer An interesting tool no doubt, it's not as complicated as the wrench, but is still more complex than the hammer. The Printer has no effect on ordinary bricks, instead, select a
Print Brick in the bricks menu. It looks as though it has stripes on it.
Once you place the print brick for the first time, it will have an
A on it. Now, with the printer, click on the brick.
A menu should appear on the side of your screen, it is full of symbols and letters. You can select any symbol or letter in this menu, and the brick will change at your command.
If you want to quickly change a letter, you can use your
Keyboard to select letters or symbols automatically.
Combining multiple bricks will allow you to form words. Such as this.
The Duplorcator/Duplicator The Duplorcator is an add-on that allows to to copy large amounts of bricks, if you have the duplorcator downloaded we can continue, if not, download it
Here Let us get started by taking a
16x16 baseplate, now, build randomness all over, just make sure the bricks you plant are within the baseplate. Now, type
/dup, /duplorcator, or /duplicator. Now, click the baseplate with the duplorcator in your hand, the baseplate and all of its contents will turn blue, and then just become ghost bricks. Using number pad controls, move the new ghost bricks out of the way of the original.
As we can see, it's a very simple wall, there are no details whatsoever. However, we see that the bricks are all lined up in columns, this is the wall's flaw. This makes it hard to create windows without first making a roof, not only this, but if this wall style is continued around the baseplate, some of the bricks will go over the baseplate. We do not want this, lets look at the second wall.
We can clearly see here that these bricks are
overlapping. We can put holes in the walls easily without first creating a roof, and this style will not exit the baseplate. This is what we want. Overlapping bricks are easy to create, you will see this style in almost every build. But what if we don't like the way the wall looks? What if we wanted a smoother surface? Lets look at this wall.
We see that this
5x1x12 brick is being placed with two
2x2x5 bricks. This wall is smooth, and easy to recreate.
Thank you for reading the beginner's guide to basic building. Seriously, thank you for taking your time to read this.
I hope this topic helps new players, so they won't be insulted for bad building skills or lack of Blockland knowledge, and yes, I know that the tutorial gamemode covers half of this, but I really thought it would be helpful for new players to get a detailed tutorial on all of the basics.
-ßløçks
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