tldr
Make biome elevations sizes, slice visions and grid snapping all multiples of 4 instead of 5. For consistency, and simplicity.
So, this is a pretty big change.
Mining tool:
It snaps horizontally in a grid in multiples of 4, everyone loves that:
But vertically we see this strange behavior, a gap between each “4x4 block”, because in that axis it is split in multiples of 5:
So, if we fix that, it would really be nice. But other things would also need to change.
Biomes:
They are also based in multiples of 5. It would then be out of sync with the new mining tool change. So, to fix this, biomes would need to use multiples of 4 too. Which is a nice thing.
Different elevations would not be so far apart, and we would be able to better tune the biome size. All elevations would be even, instead of some being odd (5 or 15). Even the dirt stripes would now sync with the mining tool and the terrain in general.
That fixed, we would now need one last fix.
Slice tool:
The slice tool, would also be out of sync with the new biome elevations rules. Again, just change it to a multiple of 4.
1 Like
The thing about the existing/previous system is that it’s built around the natural use case of mining at those specific levels (4 of the blocks out of every slice of 5), which allows you to effortlessly mine tunnels without worrying about whether there’s a floor. The new mining tool has started chipping away ( >.> ) at that behavior, but the need for having a floor to your tunnels hasn’t gone away. If you take out the automatic floor system, I think a lot of people are going to be upset at how much of a pain it becomes to cut tunnels through mountains.
Now, given that the new mining tool does exist (alongside the old one), and people can mine these tunnels at any elevation, it would be nice if the slice tool were a little more flexible. It could still have the +/-5 voxels buttons, but also being able to adjust it by 1 voxel at a time would be very useful.
But why a tunnel right above another?
For rooms, isn’t it going to get a new floor anyway? Isn’t 4 tall small for that?
For mining, why the floor between instead of mining it all?
I think what bother me is the inconsistency.
The slice tool has numbers like 39, who likes that? We need round number, 40, 45, 50…
Then we have the biomes, split into chunk of 16x16, features are placed in chunks of 8x8, but the elevations are in 5s? So you have a 16x16x15? Don’t you feel angry? hahaha
And of course the mining tool, that I’m unsure if it is like that to fit the other two systems or the opposite. You have a nice grid, but then only in one axis you don’t have it anymore. But wait, if you try to mine from above a grass layer your tool now is 4x4x5 instead of 4x4x4. ?
Well, when mining from above, you’re mining out the current floor layer. And when mining following ore veins, it’s quite normal to mine at different levels without mining out the whole thing, since ore veins are only horizontal. And with the current mining system, you can’t effectively mine upward, so you’d have to only mine from the top, which would be a lot more troublesome, especially if you’re not planning out all of your mining right from the beginning.
For the slice tool, a simple solution to having numbers like 39 would be to just add one more layer at the bottom, no? 