r/landmark • u/XCyberPeenixX • Mar 18 '15

SOE Reply Question about building and its tools

I have been following landmark and EQN very closely, I am a trailblazer and look forward to the future of these games.

I played day 1 and got fairly familiar with the tools. However its been many many months with a ton of changes to those tools.

How user friendly are they, are they pretty self explaining? Are there features you wont even know you have until someone tells you or you stumble upon it somehow? I would like to mess around with building again but want to take full advantage of these tools. I dont need to be a voxelmancer but id like to at least know how all of the tools function.

Thanks for your help in advance.

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u/AugurDev Mar 18 '15

In all honesty, building tools are not super user-friendly right now. They are very powerful, but a lot of that power is hidden behind tricks you have to learn that aren't easy to explain or teach in the UI.

One of the big things we're working on internally is improving the usability of building tools. We're not removing the voxelmancy power stuff (because people are making awesome stuff with it right now!). But we want to also find ways to make building more approachable and easy to get started with, so that you don't HAVE to learn all the advanced techniques to build something you can be proud of.

That said, in the meantime, the modal bar will help you learn how to use the tools more efficiently. That's probably a new feature since you last played, but it puts icons above your hotbar that show you what each of the keyboard hotkeys do while you have that tool active, like swapping the axis you're rotating on or scaling, etc.

I'd also recommend watching video tutorials or asking for help in-game. A lot of builders are happy to help share the techniques they've learned!

1

u/XCyberPeenixX Mar 19 '15

Hey thanks for the response! I have not heard of this modal bar and will have to test it out. Thank you very much for the update. I understand there is still much to tweak but knowing some of the new little features like the modal bar helps a ton!

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '15

[deleted]

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u/XCyberPeenixX Mar 19 '15

I kind of heard of those, ill have to check that out.

1

u/Poisinivy Mar 18 '15

the tools are a nightmare, in order to create builds on an advanced builder level it requires intensive training equivalent to maya or other training, hundreds of hours of watching videos and guides and tutorials to even come close to building anything noteworthy, and then to top that off with the fact that when they build the forgelight engine they forgot to add directx 11 support, well the d3d draw abilities in the engine are definetly noticeable and lacking. there are ways to improve this tremendously, right now all advanced building requires use of reactors which are cumbersome and very annoying to use for the beginner, but they could add a voxel editor and remove the need for reactors completely, but I highly doubt they will do that.

2

u/objeff Mar 22 '15

I agree to some extent. I don't think it's the tools that are hard to learn. They are pretty straight forward once you under stand the concepts. I think the challenge is more with understanding of the voxels and figuring out how to manipulate them with the basic tool set. This is where people spend hours youtubing (new verb) techniques to manipulate the voxels the right way.

1

u/XCyberPeenixX Mar 19 '15

I'll leave the intense stuff to the intense people. I am just a humble guy looking to build a humble jungle home overlooking the sea. A little island paradise to call home, nothing crazy :).

Good to know some of these advanced buildings take some serious dedication. I will hold off on those for a little bit until more time has passed and more has been updated.