Now the first couple I've lumped together. How do you make self supporting ramps? And why did I do my foundations like I did?
Well for starters I started doing my foundation work to match what I planned to have above. This does require some forward thinking and/or testing to get what you are after.
Top left of the collage above is how I prefer to do my self supporting ramps. I place a wall on the bottom level and lean a ramp against it. Place a ceiling at the top and repeat. You can fill in the sides with sloped walls and the underside with roofs making a tidy structure. I've done a number of variations of these but they all have the same core structures. Now you will notice that my foundations are positioned to match the ramps. This is so that at the top everything all still lines up. The top right shows how things should look when lined up. The bottom left shows I've built a platform between the two. The bottom right image shows how far you can take it. This is the same principle as my spiral towers where I use tri ceilings to turn the ramp in stages.
This image shows the use of a different pattern of foundation work. Each row outwards swaps from tri to square and back. Now I don't like this pattern for many reasons. Its a great way to expand things but if you plan to build structures on it then it can be problematic with walls constantly needing to change direction. You will notice that the two self supporting ramps while made the same way as the others do not line up with one another. I'm not saying its impossible to line it up in this fashion (I've achieved it only once before) but its so much of a hassle I won't bother with it. Another reason I avoid this pattern is I don't like using massive behe gates in my actual bases but I like for most (if not all) dinos to access my base. Instead of a behe gate I use an XL hatchframes with a ramp which requires a 4 wide path for the ramp and hatch.
Setting up for a specific purpose like the XL hatch makes life easier in my opinion. I will place 4 squares then a tri and repeat until I have a 'circle'. The image above I capped to show something to keep in mind. If like me you chose to build the outer ring size you want first only seperated by a tri anything within that 'circle' will always have to be in the tri. Any time you only use the single tri to seperate the squares this will occur. The above example shows 2 sizes and as you can see within this only tri will fit tidily. I'm rather OCD about getting the foundations right. If you do a really good job of the foundation work then the rest of the build will go much more smoothly. I have a friend that will make his outer foundation line then just overlay as many square tiles to fill in the space and it drives my OCD nuts!!! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE ;) This makes snapping anything within the space considerably more hassle when you undertake any alterations or additions.
Now I've seen plenty of Youtubers complaining about the multiple snap points when placing a wall on a ceiling that has another wall below it. There is a very specific reason for this feature. I always do my best to drop the wall below the ceiling and connect to the wall below. In fact sometimes I will remove a ceiling just to be sure I'm hitting the right snap point. This means nice flush walls on the outside. I've got a base on a backed up SP that I expanded and altered a number of times before I understood all this and I will never be able to fix the holes properly. What holes you ask? Well I will give you an example. Build 4 walls high then near it build a wall then snap a ceiling the a wall etc until you have 4 walls high and compare the heights.
You should come out with something like this. Notice I've not placed the walls on the same side of the ceilings. I did this to show a worse case and to lead onto another thing I discovered. I call this "Stretching a Snap Point" because if you remove walls and ceiling just from the stretched side you will notice...
It stays connected! Finding it hard to see what I mean? Lets try another angle so you can see it a little better...
Talk about a gap! I've used this stretched snap a couple of times but I've yet to find a really great use for it. I suspect in PvP it could be VERY useful. I'll come back to that in a moment. What can you do with it? Well how about this...
So you could make a low gradient custom staircase. Wow a straight gradient how exciting. How about a custom spiral ramp?
Now were are getting something a little more interesting. And would you believe it there is enough space between them to walk up it! I worked this out quite some time back but to be honest I've never worked out anything decent to use it for. Now I mentioned PvP earlier. Why might this be better for PvP? Well how about because you can use it as a layering system?
So for every third step you can layer it over the first. I've not played PvP but I know layering is a huge advantage in defence. I would love to see someone manage to use this technique for something interesting. If anyone does manage to use it advantageously PLEASE screencap it and let me know!
Next on the list: How do I connect a 'round' tower to a square base? Round peg square hole so to speak. Well actually that's prob one of the easiest things you can do. During your builds I'm sure you have snapped ceilings over the top of each other by mistake. Well its a matter of doing it on purpose.
I removed 2 square tiles to make this stand out more. In the gap I snapped 3 tri's in place and added walls. I then carefully watching the snaps placed a mirrored 3 into the squares the original 3 were snapped to. Re place the 2 square ceilings and your done. As long as one of the 4 square tiles its on remains the tri's shouldn't disconnect. You can use this technique for MANY problems. Sometimes you have a gap that you can't quite fill and by overlaying a tri ceiling you can snap a wall in a way that fills it in.
Another problem that can be a huge pain when building in tri is staircases. I tend to use a hex shaft with stairs inside it as it fits pretty well and if your super fast and run off the edge there is no where to go. An S+ staircase pivots 90 degrees each time so as long as your floors are an even number of walls apart this is no problem. But when you have an odd number you end up with a gap that can be annoying. This can be solved in an easy manner with the overlaying technique mentioned above.
I built this particular stair from the top down. Now I could put a tri in place but the back of the stairs would then have an overlap of ceiling that looks silly (for my OCD at least). Instead simply snap a square on to the adjacent tri and it will fill it in nicely.
So that covers a number of questions and building tricks I've been asked about. I wanted to cover as many in one post as possible so they are easier to find. If this helps even one person with their building then it was worth it :)
No comments:
Post a Comment