[Repro needed] Alignment of game assets

Why is it that None of the houses line up properly on their lots, or for instance the roadway pavers do not align at all? Is this something I'm doing wrong in my POT, or is Port addressing this? Its as if when creating these roadways they failed to attempt aligning them, or I'm failing horribly at deco. Please advise! Or do I need to post bug reports?

 

It isn't you. Most of the houses do not line up/are not symmetrical. They don't just not line up with the lot, but also aren't lined up against themselves (IE, from doorway, distance to wall to left is shorter than to right, or vice versa). This makes rug/paver placement especially annoying. There are also situations where certain walls (like in the ornate shogun pavilion) will allow deco and the exact identical wall right across from it, will not. I am not sure if this is by design or just an oversight when applying the flags to placeable surfaces. If we should be reporting these cases as bugs I'm also happy to oblige.

 

You need to do bug reports.

BUT!!!!!

There are a couple of things at hand here:

1. The lot sizes are 5m-based -BUT- the pavers are 4m-based. And the pallisades/castle walls are neither...
   Aaaaarrrrrghhh.
   Which means that you will never be able to fit roads and tracks around property as you are supposed to.
2. The sign stone blocks all the way through the edges of lot.
   Noooooooooooo.
   So you can never be able to have a road all the way up to a front of the house.
3. The flat map spaces in the POT template are usually never at 45'.
   Nononnononononononononoooooooo.
   So trying to align a lot border vs a flat areas border is dooooomed.
4. And finally since they are deliberately trying to make you crazy they sprinkly the slopes right next to flat areas with TREEEEEEEEES!!!!
   Blam!

But you can do some things about this

1. Craft a tinfoil hat.
2. In the settings for key binds there is a 15' rotate - I have set those on Alt+Q and Alt+E respectively.
3. The really long walkways/roads have very strange collissions, so if you know which one there are some which you can slide under anything - like lot borders and whatnot.
4. Drink excessively before doing any layout work- it won't help but it will dull the edges of insanity.

 

These have to be bugs? No way they intend to release a game, with a lot on concentration on deco even, with such laughable and obvious issues with their assets. Right!?

 

You do realize that only a few hundred people, few of whom will be among future players (at least until Episode 2 work begins), will have access to the POT deco system? Are you expecting them to go to great lengths to perfect this system before release?

 

Agreed. But...

Most of these issues are the same for all Village+ lot owners.
For instance the house not lining up vs the lot border. Lots of people have issues with placing deco due to that.
Same thing with the 5base vs 4base of lots and pavers. If you wanted a grand village lot by doing giant pavers all over then a village lot is 20x30 but the pavers are 8x8 so it can't be done on the long side.
Etc.
so the issues are commonly shared however for a governor it is multiplied by the number of lots and/or input from citizens.

Also letting us do custom design is saving a huge amount of Portalarium man hours visavi the promise of Dev made layouts. So the easier you make the choice to go custom the better.

 

How many people are going to want to place a house in a POT though? POT decorations affect those people too.

 

Any possibility we could get some Dev input on this issue please? @Chris @DarkStarr

 

At this moment everyone agrees when they login the game that changes can and will be made, even big changes, as we've seen. To fix the deco system things are going to have to be messed up, including individual houses as well as POT assets. These fixes, I assume, would cause a Lot of things to need to be redone, something that is not good to expect players to go through after launch. As of now its to be expected and if its not addressed, I honestly don't see it getting addressed as their excuse to date on many things has already been, "We can't do that because it will make everyone have to change things" e.g. the Devotionals. Do I expect them to Perfect this system before release, nay, address and at least get a road map to fixing it so changes are at the least be expected, I would hope so considering the focus this game has on deco, and their system is broke on the foremost fundamental building blocks, asset Creation. Proper care and time were not put in to asset creation. Given these facts, I do not think its too much to be expected, in my humble opinion. Especially considering the ramifications if it's not. Call me crazy.

 

@Spoon
I got my tinfoil fedora hat on

@Griffler
This is a weird one because it has always been difficult to align perfect angles due to a variety of in-game factors. But maybe we can find something to improve upon. I'll send something up for the dev to review.
Is there any chance you can get us a test example with details for us to do that? Coordinates, what was used, etc. Just use one example you have found yourself that will allow us to see exactly what you have seen. This way the dev has something to start with and we're not making any assumptions on what you are actually reporting. This request is open for anyone. Thanks!

 

Oh, I do have @Spoon's info noted, those are some great observations. I'll add it to the report once I get test case example that I can pass on to the dev.

 

Goto the addon store, get a roadway pavers set, try to lay them down and get the lines in the pavers to line up with another paver you've set down. Feel free to go to my POT, Rinzai nested in Desolis, I've paid $120 for roadway paver sets that are impossible to line up properly. Same with Hedges, any thing you've got to put down and align with other assets of the same type, no snap points exist obviously and would be Hugely helpful, its as if there were no intentions for them to line up properly, or at least look decent lined up. I'm literally flabbergasted this is not a known issue and more data is needed. IF you're honestly needing info for this, I will dust off my single player game and go to town, but I'd be much more psyched to help out if we were to get some positive feedback from the devs. Houses are not symmetrical to themselves, houses do not even fit in the exact middle of the lots themselves. I could make a full time job for a week outta gathering this type of information if it'll actually be blessed with the devs attention and used.

@Lexie Please Advise!!

 

Most of the examples that I can think of involve the lack of symmetry/alignment with specific houses, and as such, changing them at this stage would likely cause problems for people who already have these placed and decorated. I experienced this when the wizard tower village home was 'adjusted' and all of my deco ended up under the floor, for example.

Some examples of what I mean -

• Lord Marshall Benefactor (Town) house - entrance of house is not centered - if you go in and try to place down rugs (or anything) you'll end up with one side of the house being wider than the other.
• Village Pavilion - same issue, not symmetrical, placed areas not symmetrical. Also house not centered on lot, wider on left than right (from standing at front)
• Tower Village - entrance not centered (not even remotely!) to the lot, which makes pavering/hedging problematic as you end up with uneven mess.
• Shogun Ornate Pavilion - this is a weird one. Some of the interior top 'wall' bits will allow placement of weapons, letters, I e "wall things" but others mysteriously will not. Likewise, some deco that displays on 'one' side has to be 'placed' on the other side, its a bit...weird. Also the four 'exits' aren't quite the same size (width). Specifically if you go up the stairs to the second floor and turn so you're facing away from the ladder, I could put sticky items on the wall on the right, but not the left. Example @ Rinzai.
• Edelmann Benefactor (Village) - placing letters/items on exterior wall causes them to 'sink in' underneath what looks like the plaster and you have to randomly click the invisible spots to try and reclaim said items..
• Viking Town Stronghold - the rooms on the left and right side of the center are not the same dimensions. Bafflingly, there's only doors on the right side (go up stairs to 2nd floor...). We use one of these for the crafting museum and have found all sorts of baffling placement inconsistencies. Because we were going for a museum display, we measured rugs and tables and such on one side but were completely unable to duplicate this on the other side as its just not wide enough.
• Shogun Town House - the 'wood base' bit on the left is wider than the right - ie, If you put a planting bed on it, on one side there's a path wide enough to walk, on the other side there isn't.

A lot of this its a bit late to do anything about, though some of the wall-related issues can be addressed. I appreciate its a bit late for floor dimensions without messing people's existing deco arrangements up. Its more of a cautionary tale/warning/request for future housing design. I know in some cases symmetry may not be desired due to the look/feel of the home, but in other cases its "close, but not quite" which just leads to decorator frustration. It "looks" symmetrical right up until you try to decorate it. The width of a paver, for example, is something that's fairly fixed (although the crafted 'walkway' pavers are thinner, and can overlap pavers, but that's a different story...). But it would perhaps be intuitive that, when choosing the size of a houses 'footprint' on the lot, that perhaps a 'paver width' be used as a unit of measurement to the lot border. Most walls/fences/etc. will go on top of pavers (sort of) but as pointed out above, if you try to use giant pavers on any lot they don't ever provide complete cover, and most houses you can't provide paver cover to the edge without leaving large gaps - which you could artistically deal with, but they are always wider on one side than the other! Argh!!

Most players have found creative ways to deal with all of these issues, through trial, error, and hours upon hours spend fiddling with things, but for the less invested decorator, a lot of it ends in frustration.

With regards to specific deco:

• Many 'wall placed' items place 'behind' the interior 'beams' - ie, look at shogun row house, paintings/tapestries/any sort of wall item ends up glitching behind the decorative 'beams' which are not actually solid - this happens in many many houses.
• Hedge Archways still have an invisible 'footprint' surrounding them that makes them nearly impossible to line up to hedges without some really clever "put deco on other deco then remove deco" fiddling
• Granite Blocks in general have really wonky physics and are not of even heights - granite-work "stoneworking" has become something of an art form as players have had to puzzle out which ones look like the same height, but aren't, and where the sticky bits are.
• 'Walkway Pavers' are not the same width as regular pavers and overlap/underlap existing deco in strange and mysterious ways.
• Many ground items (particularly rugs) when placed even on a lot which should be uniformly flat will flash/clip/have terrain showing through.
• Many ground items will allow themselves to be placed on top of pavers/rugs "floor things" but only at strange angles, this is awkward when trying to place a large item (such as a hedge) on a small paver or row of small pavers. This used to be less of an issue before the change that required so much of the 'on top' item to be supported by the lower item - ie, several releases ago, it wasn't uncommon to see people using rugs as 'extenders' - while I don't disagree with the change per se, that was around the time that lining things up on placed 'ground' items started to become quite frustrating.
• Granite Blocks and stages - some items can go on them, and some can't, despite the size/support base being more than adequate. Also small deco items such as candles 'sink in' to the top of granite blocks.
• Crafted roadway pavers are completely different sizes than the addon store equivalent - I mean, they aren't even close. When we were laying out the town, we were using the crafted roads as placeholders until fancier ones could be purchased, and we had to completely redo the road design - things like the 'turnabout' and curve pieces are completely different sizes, the addon-store ones are about 30% smaller, so its not a small difference.

With regards to the pot, most of my issues have been due to "not quite flat terrain" where a paver looks like it should go, but wont, or if it does, you get grass and stuff sticking through it until you wiggle it a lot. On these not-flat areas sometimes deco will allow itself to be placed but it will appear to have parts of it 'hovering off the ground'. I haven't tried the new 'lawnmower' invisible things at all, as deco slots are too precious to waste on such things, and in cases where trees were going through houses we've already learned to fix these problems by 'plowing' the tree with a paver or fountain or something which achieves the same effect.

This is just the stuff that comes to mind at the moment; I do a LOT of decorating (if that isn't evident, lol) - if I should be reporting each individual placement failure/awkwardness as a bug, I can certainly start doing that if its something that needs to be flagged. While not "broken" per se, some of the things that work, or don't work, can be quite illogical.

 

THIS. So annoying.

 

Duke Founder City Home - the two alcoves by the front entrance are different siizes; one can fit a tree, the other can't.

 

I don't remember what size trees I'm thinking of, btw; I don't have the house up now. I think maybe 2 or 3; nonetheless the front entrance would look good with two decent sized trees in those alcoves (I tried with oak), and I was disappointed that I could only put the tree I wanted up on one side only.

 

Umber Roadway Pavers...



the tiles on the edge of the roadway(to the left/right) do note even match up with themselves in the same asset. When you place a roadway intersecting with another(top), these tiles match up on ONE tile, then every other tile will be off. The asset does not match itself in the same asset... The asset does not match other assets of the same type when you try to align them. The curved roads, heck every piece in this collection has issues, again if we need to document every single infraction let us know. But a graphics designer should have zero issues picked out whats wrong with these if they just look at them.

 

Did you try rotating every other tile 180°?

 

You do realize those few hundred are probably going to be the same few hundred still playing a few months after release so it would behoove of them to focus on that!

 

Need reproduction? Look at any player house and see how misaligned everything is. I submit my ENTIRE row lot in Insulam de Nocte for GM review of this matter:

Area: POT_forest_metropolis_01b_template/Insulam de Nocte
Area Display Name: Insulam de Nocte
Loc: (47.6, 38.3, 285.4)

My fancy Obsidian tower is more crooked than dog's hind leg. Nothing lines up at all, not the planter boxes in the backyard to the wall of the keep, the keep itself, the fencing sections surrounding the lot... and I place my house items normally using CTRL E or Q, which rotates the objects through a 45-degree rotation, left or right. Everything should align when I set stuff at 90-degree angles, but nothing does. I then sort of try to "eyeball" it straight, but even the most careful per-pixel adjustment won't straighten anything out. I sort of like the Halloween pledge fencing for this reason - the fence is bushy, so it hides "alignment errors."