Indomitus

The new grid for aiming the Pick is an improvement (in my opinion, at least). Could we have a similar way to aim the Mining Drill? Especially since it digs much faster, and if our aim is wrong, it could ruin a nice straight tunnel.

The new Logic Label is very useful. I have a couple requests/suggestions for it (if these are possible): 1. Could we allow selecting Logic objects from the listing at right of the screen? Sometimes the objects are scattered across a map, or there are large numbers of them. In those cases, it would be much easier to use the Game Logic list instead. 2. This one would probably be more difficult, but could it be possible for the Logic Label (and maybe the Entity Label) to be able to select multiple objects, then drag and drop onto the Label Object to add them to the list?

The ship keeps moving, even though it's anchored. I had a lantern that I had placed on my dock, but the game thought it was part of the boat (ship grid vs world grid problem). As I was adding parts to my ship, I noticed the lantern had moved a few meters along the dock. And when placing a couple of parts, I noticed the ship buck a little bit in response. This is actually the exact reason why I completed my ship in the Editor.

I've encountered a couple of flying bears. And while my sharks might not fly anymore, they do occasionally come ashore to sunbathe.

I don't think 1st Person could help with this issue, honestly. A precise view doesn't help if we don't have precise movement. I like the idea of having an Expert mode that we could toggle into, kind of like toggling into Free Placing mode. The basic building would auto-snap, and have minimal controls for manually moving the pieces. Expert building mode would turn off auto-snap completely, and have dedicated controls for moving pieces along each axis. It could be mouse movements, keyboard controls, or even the Move widget like in the Editor. In Expert mode, there would be no automatic placement of pieces, only messages if it can't be placed in the current location ("Not enough room" or "Must touch the ground or another block"). As for the system's confusion over Ship grid vs World grid, if the building is happening in a location where they overlap, it either needs to look at the context of structures that it's closest to, or maybe it can prompt us to choose the correct one in some way. edit: Thank you for the response, @equieri. This is definitely a topic we feel strongly about. It is good to see that better controls will be returning soon. As for the behavior I experienced in the Editor, I will work with it some more this weekend and see if I can describe it better.

If it were rebuilt to include harvesting plants as an option, a "take all" button would certainly be useful. For smaller piles, or if it were auto-stacked, I can see not needing it. For example: While playing yesterday, I had planted a very large amount of Flax for the sails on my ship. Nearly 600 of them. That was almost 600 clicks to harvest all of them, several minutes of nothing except spamming mouse clicks.

The new system also can't seem to tell the difference between a ship's grid and the world grid right beside the ship. While building a ship, I decided to extend my dock a little bit, and it kept attaching the blocks to the ship, even though they weren't even remotely touching each other. Then a bit later I decided to free place a couple lanterns on my dock. The one placed near the ship moved when the ship moved. In addition, my ship which was anchored, kept moving each time a block was added, which eventually meant some blocks refused to align with it correctly. I had to build my ship in the Editor. AND... In the Editor, Duplicate is NOT working right. I press CTRL+D, and duplicates, I move the new ones to the location, and it WILL NOT let me release them. I end up having to button-mash to try and drop them, so I have no clue what button is actually making it happen. edit: Apparently, it's a right-click on the mouse that release them in the Editor. This is starting to get annoying. Building 2.0 is BROKEN.

So far I'm not really impressed by it (in Explore mode). By removing the "G" option which could restrict it to a single X, Y or Z axis, we've lost a lot of precise control over the blocks. The CTRL+mouse scroll option doesn't move the object flat across the grid, but rather on a straight vector towards or away from the player based on the camera. There's also nothing to allow precise movement to the sides if the player can't move around (like on a narrow pathway or on a ship), and the auto-placement logic still tries to interfere with manual placement. I have quite a few thoughts on it, but for certain there needs to be some specific dedicated control for moving straight along each axis, and some way (active or in the background when we hold a certain key) to deactivate or override the auto-alignment.

Kind of similar to the feature that already exists that allows us to show/hide things like terrain, objects, water, and so on. It would be nice to be able to highlight or show/hide objects based on their Pickable and Indestructible attributes. And possibly other object attributes as well. It would help a lot when designing a large structure and we want to make sure every piece is indestructible or unpickable, or only the right pieces are pickable.

If the label is referenced within its own list (which is currently possible) then an inexperienced creator could easily build into such a situation. It might be enough to disallow selecting a label into its own list.

To answer my own question, it seems a Logic Label can currently be added to itself. No idea yet what actual effects that would have on code. Also, in Explore, the wide range of effect from the power attack can be used to cut down multiple trees at once if they're close together.

I've only been playing in Explore so far, but I do look forward to playing in the Editor and using the new Logic Labels. I guess someone saw my code, with all the arrays containing logics, and decided there was a better way to do that. Very much appreciated. edit: Hmmm... Can labels be attached to other labels? That could cause really bad recursion if possible to do and used recklessly.

I really like the idea, but there are a couple things I would change. The nature of what I would change, would probably require a full rewrite of the feature or at least a lot of re-coding. 1. I think it should be separate from the Inventory screen. Entering that screen requires an extra button press, and while in that screen the player is not able to see or move around. I would separate the vicinity looting from the Inventory screen, and make it a completely separate feature. I would add a new key command that activates the Vicinity Looting interface, and make it an overlay on top of the regular camera view, allowing the player to move around. This would also require that the item grid is fully dynamic and auto-updates as the player moves. 2. It would be nice to also have a similar feature for harvesting. It could be an alternate mode of the Vicinity Looting interface, which would detect pickable plants or lootable bushes that are within the same range. I would not include picking wood pieces from trees in this. Such accuracy would help, for example, if we have planted a garden and we want to harvest the ones that are ready without accidentally picking the "young" or "seedling" ones in the area. I used GIMP to create a mock-up of roughly what I would imagine it looking like:

That's what I'm seeing too. In the panel at the right, they will be stacked the same as they are on the ground. In some cases, that means "not at all." I guess it does gain a little more accuracy for what you can choose to pick up, but that is debatable. I think it seems promising, but needs some work. For example, the range is limited (especially dealing with the large drop area of a chopped tree) but because it is in the Inventory menu, you can't move and adjust your position without exiting and going back in.

In addition to the logs from cut trees, once or twice I've seen the tree itself drop just below the surface as I was chopping it. And I suspect some of my mined resources have as well, but those are harder to see if it happens. I have started using freecamera to peek below the ground and see if I have missed any pieces. Should not need to do this.

It's certainly not what we're used to. I'm trying not to be too harsh, though, because it is clear they are trying to make real improvements, even if some of the ideas don't quite work.

Auto-placement is still imprecise enough to need manual movement controls. Some are there- and I'll try your suggestion next time I play- and others are missing. Plus the auto-placement will sometimes interfere with manual placement. If we want it to be mouse-based, how about: CTRL+Scroll = up/down. CTRL+mouse move = forward/back and left/right. It seems to me that it would be sensible for the basic block movement controls to be all on keyboard or all on mouse (or even better, to offer the player to choose either option).

If you stand near the items and enter your inventory, at the right you will see a grid with all items that are pickable near you. You can click there to pick them up, or drag items there to drop them. It works for loose items only, and not for harvesting plants or berries. It also seems to have an issue recognizing items that are just below ground level.

There are a few issues. One is as described by Antimidation. There does not appear to be a control to precisely move blocks into position. G no longer works. I have also noticed that blocks will not snap onto any faces that are away from the player. This causes problems with building UP (such as tall posts) or AWAY (such as floors, balconies, or docks). If it can not be made to automatically snap on faces away from the player (which would be understandable) then we need to have precise movement controls. Perhaps they can be bound to Player movement + SHIFT keys? (example: Shift + W moves block forward away from player) Or combined with CTRL, if Shift is a problem.

I see this as well. They fall through, just below, and the new UI does not "see" them. This is just after cutting a Tall Conifer: This is after I used the new system to pick up everything that it would allow: I decided to dig, to see how much is there. After digging, they became visible to the new UI.

One question I have for this is: Are the boundaries stored as absolute coordinates with the game logic, or are they stored as a relative offset from the center? If they are offset, then perhaps the zone could have a "center offset" vector that could effectively move the boundaries without moving the game logic object itself.

If it's not happening the same every time, maybe when you select, it is selecting the reference point as the last item sometimes, and sometimes not. To rotate around a reference point (or any point you choose) that object needs to be the last object selected. You can force this by holding CTRL and clicking the reference point to un-select it, then hold CTRL and click it again to re-select it. This forces it to be the last item selected in the bunch of objects, and it will be the rotation point when you hold down V, as spyler says.

I think both of those would be better served by the (suggested) feature of being able to make notes on maps. Here's hoping we'll get to see that eventually.

Very nice, can't wait. The first few items on that list have me really excited for this update. and... He likes painting the vegetation so much, he listed it twice.

It seems to me that, apart from a few who play 1st Person at all times, most of us are concerned about specific situations where the 3rd Person camera either fails or is not accurate enough. It sounds like BI is trying to correct the camera (or surrounding game mechanics) for those cases, which is definitely a good thing. Ylands is a casual game, and the majority of casual gamers either prefer or are perfectly fine with 3rd Person. It makes sense to make that the dev's focus in this case. The fact that we have to switch cameras so much just points to why it needs to be done. We shouldn't have to rely on that to play the game. I'm not 100% in agreement with removing 1st Person entirely. As was pointed out a couple times already, maybe it could be a hidden option with warnings that it's not fully supported yet. That way the players who prefer 1st Person could still have it, and just deal with the accompanying bugs for a while. And for the rest of us, I think we can give the update a workout and let BI know about some specific cases where it might not be good enough yet, so they can get the 3rd Person camera working as well as possible before the full launch. I'm sure it would be not problem for us to do some extensive testing on precision digging (like clearing floating bits), tunneling, building, planting, picking, and so on, and let them know what still needs to be improved.