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Alrighty, so I'm pretty sure everyone who's had to place a slanted hull onto their ship has experienced, on some level, frustration at having to cycle through the 32 possible rotations of a slanted hull piece to get to the one specific one they need. And of course, if you have to place these slanted hull pieces in multiple positions or on multiple sides of your ship, you have to repeat the process quite a few times. Not only is this time consuming, but it is also, quite frankly, a royal pain in the arse. Therefore, I have come up with a suggestion for a new system to smooth over this tedious process and to make it a bit more intuitive.
In reality, it is a rather simple and easy-to-use system, but as it involves rotating a three-dimensional object, it's somewhat difficult to explain fully only using words and 2-D illustrations. Still, I shall try my best to explain it in a way that's easy to understand, and hopefully I'll be able to get my point across. Please feel free to post for clarification/critique down below.
As it is now, when you have a slanted hull piece selected in your toolbar and press L-Ctrl, the Advanced Building mode pops up. This will not change. However, instead of a 'preview' window with two arrows for cycling through the 32 different rotations, there will be two 'coordinate boxes' (I name them that because they will closely resemble the coordinate boxes in debug mode for Minecraft), and one box with the option to cycle between a 'true' and 'false' value. The end result, as I have envisioned it, will look like this:
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Tilted: > (if you click one of the arrows, the value will turn to 'True')
Rotate1: > (click the buttons to increase or decrease the value by 1)
Rotate2: > (Both Rotate1 and 2 have minimum values of 1, and maximum values of 4)
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As you can see, we have three basic variables here: 'Tilted', 'Rotate1', and 'Rotate2'. Now, allow me to explain exactly HOW these will affect how the cube is positioned. First, I'll start with explaining the Rotate1 and Rotate2 variables. We'll start with the Default value of the three fields, which is (T:F, R1:1, R2:1). Read this as: "Tilted is False, Rotate1 is at value '1', Rotate2 is at value '1'". When the Slanted Hull is in it's default rotation, it's just like it first is in-game (with lower end of the ramp facing the front of the ship).
With Rotate1, for every 1 increment in value, the block (Slanted Hull) is rotated 90 degrees to the right, like a merry-go-round. In the end, this results in 4 different positions. Then, for every increment in the value of Rotate2, the block is rotated 90 degrees forwards, like a waterwheel. Therefore, you end up with 4 different sets of 4 rotations, totalling up to 16 different ways to rotate the block. Of course, it would probably be best to chart these out in something like a spreadsheet for easy referrence.
Now, that only covers half of the possible rotations available to the block. To cover the rest of them are covered by the third element, the 'Tilted' variable. The Tilted variable, when set to 'True', is made to rotate 90 degrees to the side. To say it another way, instead of making the cube fall forward (like the waterwheel-Rotate2 does), it makes it fall to the side...like a sideways water-wheel. This gives us a whole 16 more rotations, and successfully covers all possible rotations for the cube (I might be wrong on this...comment below if I am).
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So there you have it! Comment below if you feel that I made a mistake...or maybe you just liked my suggestion. Or hey, you could be REALLY helpful and give a suggestion for my suggestion! Anyways, I'm looking forward to your comments.
Wear a seatbelt,
WelshHeron
In reality, it is a rather simple and easy-to-use system, but as it involves rotating a three-dimensional object, it's somewhat difficult to explain fully only using words and 2-D illustrations. Still, I shall try my best to explain it in a way that's easy to understand, and hopefully I'll be able to get my point across. Please feel free to post for clarification/critique down below.
As it is now, when you have a slanted hull piece selected in your toolbar and press L-Ctrl, the Advanced Building mode pops up. This will not change. However, instead of a 'preview' window with two arrows for cycling through the 32 different rotations, there will be two 'coordinate boxes' (I name them that because they will closely resemble the coordinate boxes in debug mode for Minecraft), and one box with the option to cycle between a 'true' and 'false' value. The end result, as I have envisioned it, will look like this:
--------------------------------------
Tilted: > (if you click one of the arrows, the value will turn to 'True')
Rotate1: > (click the buttons to increase or decrease the value by 1)
Rotate2: > (Both Rotate1 and 2 have minimum values of 1, and maximum values of 4)
--------------------------------------
As you can see, we have three basic variables here: 'Tilted', 'Rotate1', and 'Rotate2'. Now, allow me to explain exactly HOW these will affect how the cube is positioned. First, I'll start with explaining the Rotate1 and Rotate2 variables. We'll start with the Default value of the three fields, which is (T:F, R1:1, R2:1). Read this as: "Tilted is False, Rotate1 is at value '1', Rotate2 is at value '1'". When the Slanted Hull is in it's default rotation, it's just like it first is in-game (with lower end of the ramp facing the front of the ship).
With Rotate1, for every 1 increment in value, the block (Slanted Hull) is rotated 90 degrees to the right, like a merry-go-round. In the end, this results in 4 different positions. Then, for every increment in the value of Rotate2, the block is rotated 90 degrees forwards, like a waterwheel. Therefore, you end up with 4 different sets of 4 rotations, totalling up to 16 different ways to rotate the block. Of course, it would probably be best to chart these out in something like a spreadsheet for easy referrence.
Now, that only covers half of the possible rotations available to the block. To cover the rest of them are covered by the third element, the 'Tilted' variable. The Tilted variable, when set to 'True', is made to rotate 90 degrees to the side. To say it another way, instead of making the cube fall forward (like the waterwheel-Rotate2 does), it makes it fall to the side...like a sideways water-wheel. This gives us a whole 16 more rotations, and successfully covers all possible rotations for the cube (I might be wrong on this...comment below if I am).
--------------------------------------
So there you have it! Comment below if you feel that I made a mistake...or maybe you just liked my suggestion. Or hey, you could be REALLY helpful and give a suggestion for my suggestion! Anyways, I'm looking forward to your comments.
Wear a seatbelt,
WelshHeron
