Talk:Pillars

Base Units?

Recently Arcane and here had Tyrak add 'unit' measurements to the pages describing the size of the base items. I've rechecked the base editor and no where I can find has any measurement for the objects in it (much less anything on how big a unit would be). If any one has any information where this measurement comes from, please leave a note here or I'm afraid the recently added sections on this will have to be reverted.

@.@ oh, also, please note that if said 'unit' does exist, the height info on pillars is incorrect as they're variable based on the floor and ceiling heights and would have to be fixed. --Sleepykitty 00:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

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When you place an item, you are limited to discrete locations. As you move an item around, you can count the possible positions; all bounding box dimensions are whole number increments of these positions, and every base square measures 32 of these positions on a side. Place a floor safe, and then place a second one in front of it but lined up with the first one. Then move the second one slowly to the side, and you will see that it has a measureable width. Do the same moving the second safe back until it lines up and you can measure the depth. Lift an object vertically and you can measure height. Presumably each unit is equal to a foot... if you measure the height of a single floor section, you will find it is four units. Then walk up to it with a four-foot tall character on a lower section, and you will see that the character is almost exactly the same height.

As far as pillars go, they are all always 48 units in height. Raise the floor and lower the ceiling in a section, place a pillar, and then move the camera around. You can see that the top and bottom caps are not on the ends of the pillar. Instead they are placed so that they will be flush with the ceiling and floor. The pillar itself extends from the very bottom of the base to the very top. Currently it only matters for a couple of minor visual effects you can achieve using slow fields to make certain floor styles transparent, since when not in edit mode you don't normally see beyond the floor, ceiling and walls of the base. But it may be useful for people to know.

Bear in mind that the base editor has no documentation to speak of; there are key commands (very few) for base editing but none of them are listed in the keymapping, the rulebook, or any online source that I've found. --Tyrak

@.@ oh lovely, logging all of those would drive anyone nutty... So, a few questions I guess:

• >.> you said "every base square measures 32" on a side, are you sure that the 'base squares' are actually, truly square and not actually 32x31 or something? (that is, have you checked) A number of the base builder bits where fudged to save time back in i6, and that's not really the sort that they could fix later.

• <.< I can believe you easily, now that its explained, on the horizontal count, but, given that there are only 3 ways to get vertical (2 diff lights and dumping things on stackable desks/cabinets/whatnot), how can you have a decent set Y axis unit? particularly since the light ladders I suspect you use for this have notches at different spots?

• • o.o subQ, and if you have a reliable testing for this, are the units perfect squares, or rectangles? I ask because rectangles would seem to be my experience with the builder.

now that I have those out of the way (pardon my rambling ^^ pls).. "Presumably each unit is equal to a foot" err.. I really wouldn't presume that they're that big since there are several in the length of where your char would stand while editing said object, and 2-3ft wide characters (shoulder to shoulder) aren't the norm. There's probably some overly complicated way we could find out though using chars at exact set heights and comparing their height to width..

o.o anyway, last bit (and hopefully a couple other admin besides myself will chime in here with their opinions), the wiki is certainly the place for esoteric information.. so this sort of info and observation should be on a page here. Its whether it should be entered into every page on bases is the question. If it is going in though (and I certainly don't mind as long as formatting is observed (ie, in a notes or similar section)) we'll need to toss up a page explaining what 'unit' is and have every or many of the times its used on a page as a [[unit]] type link.

>.> and on that note, we would also need to figure out a name thats a bit less generic, as naming a page 'unit' doesn't just invite silly Dr. Who jokes, but also has a decent change of ending up as a disambiguation page. Perhaps something like 'base unit' or 'floor unit'. --Sleepykitty 08:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)