Yes, i see what you mean here. I'm going to go try this now. Thank you.
Oh, someone else mentioned it but just in case anyone missed it, the accent lamps stack on itself like the safe so setting up the lamp column is very quick and easy.
And the floor tile stacks on itself without increasing the height, so you don't have to be careful in positioning it. If there's a gap, just stack another floor tile on the edge of the previous one and use that to fill in.
This is far more forgiving of mistakes than the desk method since items can be merged and you don't have to drag the floor tile to another room before you're able to move it unlike the desks.
Just find an open spot for the lamp column and go from there.
I've been using this to correct mistakes and gaps on the upper floors since it's no longer necessary to destroy everything below the mistake before you can do that.
This is really useful thank you for posting the screenies, I had been just using the accent lamps and floating over randomly but with the floor tile things can be a lot more crisp and precise and used as a great tool.
http://tiny.cc/ArcaneDefenseItems
This is a bug, nothing more. Please put away the tin-foil hats, there's nothing sinister going on here.-Protea
http://tiny.cc/WhatBeatsADragon
Yeah, the more i use it, the more useful and expedient it turned out to be.
[edit]That pic of that room in my test server base would've taken probably 30minutes at least to make those stacks. But that was probably 2 -3 minutes for all of that.[/edit]
I rebuilt my vg entry room with a couple floors and a platform from an empty room and it took about 2.5 hours. It would've been faster if i actually knew what i wanted. I was just freeforming ideas as i went along, which is something that would've been unwise with the previous stacking method.
Not having to be restricted to the top to bottom construction was a boon and also not needing to use the floor raising/lowering technique to do the incremental heights really helped.
I could start in the middle and actually build higher from there. I just needed s amll open space to still see the lamp and floortile to reposition.
And apparently with the large size of the floortile, a 2x2 room only needs to have the lamp column in the center to reach most of the room.
I'm actually rethinking my stance on demolishing my more elaborate rooms. 
Wow, you can stack on that floor tile? <Cries over the amount of time wasted using only floor safes>
Well then, now I know, and I hear that's half the battle, or so they keep telling me 
I'm 5-staring this thread and saving it as a favorite for reference in the near future. Thank you!
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Wow, you can stack on that floor tile? <Cries over the amount of time wasted using only floor safes>
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Yeah, i was surprised by how easy stacking is now.
And it doesn't show on that pic but using the lamp column to raise the floor tile enables you to stack from the smallest increment anywhere from the floor to the ceiling.
I was able to raise objects only 1/3 height of a desk from the lowest floor level. Couldn't do that with the old method.
I've been using floor safe + floor tile. Similar idea. I like your version better.
Quote:
|
Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson |
YUMMY Low-Hanging Fruit for BASE LUV
Hiya. Question here...can placing items underneath the floor tile work as well? Here's my dilema(sp?)...I'm building 'Club Lapine' the fuzziest bar around, and have the beginning of light poles using floodlights and pillars. I've managed to get one level of the things installed, I'd really like a few more levels though, for the 'disco' effect If I can get the tile to act as a 'ceiling', that would do wonders for this little project.
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Hiya. Question here...can placing items underneath the floor tile work as well?
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Well normally no, but i was somehow able to on a specific occassion put a recessed lighting item underneath it by accident.
I think it went like when i selected a recessed lighting item while looking down from an overhead view with the floor tile floated directly below, the light went under the tile instead of the ceiling and i was able to move it around until i viewed and moved it from a bottom up camera angle, then it finally attached to the ceiling.
Not sure if it's the floor tile or some other "quirk" but i let that go. Got too excited about redoing my rooms.
When i get home, i'll experiment to get a better idea about that.
I'll experiment on it meself. I do want those lighting poles to work. I was somehow, still not sure how, able to get some of the floodlights to float some twenty feet (game terms of course) below the ceiling, but couldn't get 'em to move up or down more than a foot. I shall get this to work, I swear it
Well it wasn't the floor tile that lowered the ceiling light, it was just the bug that lowers it when you select a ceiling item while the camera angle is pointing down.
But an alternative is using a column of large hanging lamps which is not quite as elegant as the accent lamp but it works similarly.
Start by stacking large ceiling lamps up to 9 from top to bottom to form the ceiling lamp column .
Then use it like the accent lamp column by dragging the ceiling item up and down, making sure the mouse cursor is tracing along the lamp column to set the ceiling item height . Afterwards the item height stays put as you drag the item around the room, unless you view up to show the ceiling or the mouse cursor runs across the lamp column again.
Keep your viewing angle pointing down and/or not showing the ceiling whenever you want to drag the ceiling item around.
Add more items by repeating the process .
And you can end up with a UFO type floating steps .
This seems to work for any ceiling item like the arcane ceiling dome
Apparently the stacking surface item has to match the type of item (floor/ceiling/wall) you're stacking. The ceiling lamp won't float floor items and the safe/desk can't float wall/ceiling items etc.
Nice. yet another tool for base building. This and the "favorite i13 rooms" thread have a lot of nice tips on moderate to advanced buildling.
Thanks for the post.
QFT... awesome tips! Thanks!!! This makes my life so much easier and base building faster!
@Tax E - RIP CoH 2012
Yeah, that's what I wound up doing last night actually. Happily the hanging lamps (not large, just hanging) turned out to give me just the right amount of descent for what I wanted. I couldn't quite master the process of moving them around the room and keeping 'em the same height, but it was easy enough to 'embed' the lights inside the columns and go that way. Worked for my 'disco lights' anyway.
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Wow, you can stack on that floor tile? <Cries over the amount of time wasted using only floor safes>
Well then, now I know, and I hear that's half the battle, or so they keep telling me
I'm 5-staring this thread and saving it as a favorite for reference in the near future. Thank you!
[/ QUOTE ]
This. I was making a room into a two story duplex of sorts using floor safes and desks. However once i saw the floor tile trick, i could accomplish hours of work in a few minutes. Well done on this find!
Nerf Blaster Controllers!!!!
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Ok have to say, i am enjoying stacking more now. Aside from the other quirks that's making interesting designs possible, i like how you can use 5 stacked large accent lamps in combination with the floor tile in room details as a vertical placement tool with built in height ruler.
Both act like a virtual floor slider where you set the height, place your objects on the tile then reset for a new height and repeat item placement. As long as you make sure when dragging the tile to a new height, the mouse cursor stays on the column of lamps from your viewing angle and it should easily go up or down.
A bonus is each segment of the lamp is about the same length as a grid square. [edit]Meant the increments when raising the tile...the graphics of the segments don't actually match the grid squares but they're close.[/edit]
1 plot square = 32x32 grid squares. The entire height of the room with floor and ceiling removed is 48 grid squares high.
I can even merge the lamps a bit so there's no gaps but that was a bit tricky and unnecessary since the gaps still work as 2 lamp segments.
A column of floor safes is usable also but have to stack 12 of them to span floor to ceiling instead of just the 5 lamps.
This shaves a lot of time off the prep work.
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On a side note, has anyone done any testing with targeting through all these items that are invisible from a certain vantage point? The floor tile for example, is invisible if viewed from below, i wonder if you can target people standing on it (like with a heal\buff) and if they can or cant target you. That would be a serious line of base defense if\when base raiding comes back
Nerf Blaster Controllers!!!!
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, that's what I wound up doing last night actually. Happily the hanging lamps (not large, just hanging) turned out to give me just the right amount of descent for what I wanted. I couldn't quite master the process of moving them around the room and keeping 'em the same height, but it was easy enough to 'embed' the lights inside the columns and go that way. Worked for my 'disco lights' anyway.
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Yeah it doesn't have the benefit of the floor tile as a height marker and the graphical segments don't match the actual height increments.
What you can do though is set up the accent lamp column right next to the hanging lamp one and set the floor tile as a visual guide. It's extra steps but it helps that unlike the floor tile, you don't have to have it nearby. You can set up the column and raise/lower the item height anywhere in the room because you can drag the item afterwards without changing the height. It won't snap back to the ceiling as long as your viewing angle while dragging is pointing downwards and/or not showing any ceiling.
If you want to change camera angle to get a better view just let go of the item first.
And the regular hanging lamp works too. I just like the larger one because there's less to stack to span the entire height of the room. They both actually raise/lower the height in the same increments (1 grid square or 1/4 height of a safe) the larger lamp just has more graphical surface to drag the mouse over.
Also, because the lamp column has large gaps, so when raising/lower make sure the mouse cursor is closer to the center of the column. You can try merging the lamps so there's no gaps but seems more trouble than just keeping the mouse cursor in the center as you change heights.
Question for you guys, have you found any way around the floor tile being invisible from below? Or have you found anything that looks good beneath it? I've seen several people use things like book shelves, even with some alternating patterns, and I'm willing to do that, but trying to explore my options a bit more. Thanks!
@Incarnadine - 50s on Victory:
Electric-Boogaloo (Electric/Psy Dominator) | Floating Flame (Fire/Psy Blaster) | Guldo Golem (Stone/Mace Tanker) | Hornak (Elec/Elec Brute) | Insatiable Greed (Demon/Dark Mastermind) | Solar Explorer (Plant/Thermal Controller) | TimeTraveler (Kin/Ice Defender) | Verranil (Emp/Archery Defender)
Now that you can make the grey desks overlap their bounding box, they actually make a decent floor/ceiling.
[ QUOTE ]
Question for you guys, have you found any way around the floor tile being invisible from below? Or have you found anything that looks good beneath it? I've seen several people use things like book shelves, even with some alternating patterns, and I'm willing to do that, but trying to explore my options a bit more. Thanks!
[/ QUOTE ]
Im partial to the desk items. I use either the wood or the greyish blue ones. Still DL update, so cant give you names. The wood ones stack nicely and actually have a grainy feel to them that you can play with for a varied texture look, the greyish-blue have white borders, which imo, match tech bases very well.
You can also lay down desk items as flooring, and put the floor tile on top (not to mention a plethora of other items)
Nerf Blaster Controllers!!!!
A very nice tip there! I had to link this thread into the guide I wrote for I13 floating. It certainly makes the whole process a ton easier!
I believe you're referring to the 'rustic desks'...I used those extensively for our 'treasure room' (presently in renovations, I'm trying to improve the stairs). Though I may yet switch that out in favor of arcane items, haven't decided...the 'wood beam' look *does* look so classy, and has a nice golden glow in the torchlight. Still thinking on it.
Thanks for the advice guys, that helps a lot!
I will also mention, for anyone who hasnt figured this out yet, stairs have become much easier since you can merge them, if you line things up right you will hardly even notice the second staircase, or not notice it at all, depending on which ones you are using. I was VERY happy with that.
Also found that if you do use desks, sometimes it is easier then the lights as it is a set height, you can stack the desk ontop of itself to minimize the number of desks you have to have moved around.
@Incarnadine - 50s on Victory:
Electric-Boogaloo (Electric/Psy Dominator) | Floating Flame (Fire/Psy Blaster) | Guldo Golem (Stone/Mace Tanker) | Hornak (Elec/Elec Brute) | Insatiable Greed (Demon/Dark Mastermind) | Solar Explorer (Plant/Thermal Controller) | TimeTraveler (Kin/Ice Defender) | Verranil (Emp/Archery Defender)
I am currently using (for my huge building project to be revealed in the next week or two) safes and floor tiles. These are the large white square floor tiles. It works well and allows me to stack multiple items at once. Occasionally I will use a desk if I want to stack some small items on top of another (as in my guide).
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
Ok have to say, i am enjoying stacking more now. Aside from the other quirks that's making interesting designs possible, i like how you can use 5 stacked large accent lamps in combination with the floor tile in room details as a vertical placement tool with built in height ruler.
Both act like a virtual floor slider where you set the height, place your objects on the tile then reset for a new height and repeat item placement. As long as you make sure when dragging the tile to a new height, the mouse cursor stays on the column of lamps from your viewing angle and it should easily go up or down.
A bonus is each segment of the lamp is about the same length as a grid square. [edit]Meant the increments when raising the tile...the graphics of the segments don't actually match the grid squares but they're close.[/edit]
1 plot square = 32x32 grid squares. The entire height of the room with floor and ceiling removed is 48 grid squares high.
I can even merge the lamps a bit so there's no gaps but that was a bit tricky and unnecessary since the gaps still work as 2 lamp segments.
A column of floor safes is usable also but have to stack 12 of them to span floor to ceiling instead of just the 5 lamps.
This shaves a lot of time off the prep work.
EDIT: Lowering / stacking ceiling items method is further in this thread but thought i'd insert a direct link for convenience.