It works in little 8^3 cells (12 total). Put down a beacon block, then use the plotter to place your remaining 11 cells. These cells are all identical and do not morph. Cells must be connected to a physical beacon. You use the beacon block to handle permissions inside the beacon by adding other player’s tokens to your beacon. So far, beacons only prohibit break/place. To remove a cell, click and hold on a beacon cell with the plotter until it turns red, then release. To remove an entire group of cells, destroy all beacon blocks inside the group.
Sorry, without a visual I have no idea what the “plotter” looks like. Is it a gridded dialog window? All I see is a green ghosted outline of the volume around the beacon block, but there’s no obvious way to move or place it. As I said, aiming at the edge of the beacon (which I assume means the block, not the first owned volume) and right-clicking either produces a block or does nothing, depending on what I’m holding.
The “Beacon Plotter” is a Tool that you Craft from Stone and Glass (the same ingredients as go to make up a Beacon Block)
You then hold the “Beacon Plotter” to add or remove “Plots” from your Beacon that you started by putting down a Beacon Block.
Ah. I forgot rule #1: RTFM. It works better when it’s done correctly. 
Thanks!
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The Beacons are working fairly well from what I’ve seen so far. I just finished setting up a few beacons (eight to be exact) for a plot of land for me and my brother who I play with. The only problem I encountered is that the beacons seem to be on a set plane of the area that they cover. To be a little more detailed the area around the beacon is centered in the world rather than being centered at the beacon and expanding outward. Of course I understand this is still testing but this is what I noticed with the beacons. Have not yet been able to try out the beacon sharing since the person I usually play with is in bed right now. Beacons are great though can’t wait to see what else is coming.
The Beacons are positioned on an 8x8x8 discrete grid. This makes it simpler for players to connect and place beacons in a more complex environment. So yes, they don’t respect the individual location of the beacon, rather the cell it is within.
Ah, I see the appeal of that now. Criticism revoked. Also it was a bit of my own fault since I was placing beacons on a set plot that was generated and it didn’t quite link up. Just ending up moving the plot to fit the beacons.
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Yeah - it’s an issue that there wasn’t a perfect solution to.
If the game had been focused on single players - we’d probably have placed the beacons “perfectly”.
However, as the game is focused on online players - we decided to optimise the system for collaboration.
To be honest - this version is a test of some ideas and expectations - if it’s not working there is still time to tweak it.
Of course, I completely understand. Thanks for the reply though I appreciate the promptness.
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So does that mean the absolute grid of plots isn’t just there waiting to be replaced by a better more flexible system but actually what you (devs) planned?
Because I’m more than unhappy with that system.
It’s just too restrictive for a sandbox game.
I mean we’ve seen the first signs at the gortnen market place. You cant have smaller streets/paths between beacons because the plots are fixed. You either have to cut off one or two blocks of your plot for half the street or have a gap between the beacons and the street.
What would be the trade off to have a more flexible system?
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At the moment the 8x8x8 resolution grid is our current and best proposal for how we think beacons should work when placed.
However, as above, the whole purpose of this release was to discover if the disadvantages outweighed our believed advantages. Something we think will work well doesn’t always survive first contact with players.
I’d need @olliepurkiss, @ben or @OortSimon to comment here, because they were elbow-deep in the system during development.
Either way - it’s helpful to understand where it fails. Please keep the critique coming.
(It’s also worth commenting that the beacons miss their support for guilds.)
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I’m also not a major fan of the way beacons currently work either, basically due to how restrictive they make your builds.
For example, if you find a great place to start a build, but then find that the 8x8 grid bisects through the floor by 4 blocks, you then have use another beacon allocation to be able to get enough height on your building to make it worthwhile… whilst the 4 blocks below ground are essentially wasted (imo).
I had the same issue when I wanted to build flush to a mountainside - after seeing where the 8x8 grid fell (half way out of the desired build location), I decided against building there at all, as I would have had to use more of my plotter allocation to protect what I wanted to do.
It stifles potential creativity in my opinion, and only seems to work well when you have the ideal location, land height, wall position, other environmental factor etc.
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Merry Christmas!
There are a couple of issues we are wrangling with here. One of the biggest is usability. A system where you could put plots anywhere would be hard to control and very hard to see where the plots are. We’ve already seen complexities with the system we have, and are concerned for new players using it, the further complexity of free placement would make the system unusable for some new players.
Another issue is what happens when non-grid-aligned plots meet. There would be odd voxels of free land, and people might want to place plots in tiny slithers of space. In complex situations it would be impossible to see what you had included in your beacon and what your neighbour had included in theirs.
When I get back to the office I will have a look at some of what you guys have built and think about the issues you’re experiencing. If there are any particular demonstrations of problems could you let me know where they are.
Thanks,
Ollie.
Hello.
It’s interesting to hear how worried you are about individual voxels in your plot. If you were building without putting a beacon down would you want to go to exactly 16 or 24 voxels high? Or would you just choose an aesthetically pleasing height and build to that? If you do want to maximise your vowel count could you not add a basement, or a step down into your build?
Often restrictions and frameworks are great drivers of creativity. The voxel concept itself is a great example of that - you have all created amazing things in a world where you can only place things on a 1m grid. Would it not be more flexible if you could place blocks in a more granular way? It would be, but that wouldn’t necessarily make for more creativity or more fun.
Ollie.
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I think the grid in the x/z plane works just fine (and is, as you already said, somewhat necessary). It´s just the fixed y position that makes you feel like you are wasting a lot of your beacon.
IMO keeping the x/z grid but allowing free beacon placement along the y axis would be the best compromise between the inflexible current grid and totally free beacon placing. And given that everything above & under your initial beacon is reserved anyway I don´t see a problem with potential tiny slithers of space.
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Hey Ollie,
Whilst I can understand the reasoning for doing the beacons in this way, it’s just not what I was expecting from a game titled Boundless. I much preferred the manually implemented way of doing beacons, where you had the whole height of your claim - thus protecting both a shop on the surface and valuable resources you’d discovered underground… For me, this was one of the major selling points of the game. It was also very visible from all around that that particular section of land belongs to someone, as you have a projected hue that reaches up into the sky.
For me personally, I would probably try to conform to my own design limitations depending on what I had in mind for a build. Whether that be 8, 16, 24 blocks or somewhere in between (or beyond).
I don’t see how that isn’t stifling creativity? My main argument against the current system is that I shouldn’t have to conform to an imaginary grid (in addition to the landscape - which should be my only restriction) to build something. If beacons will be restricted to a certain allocation per player, people will ultimately want to maximise their use of the space within them. My example above describing the nice build location which has the 8x8 grid bisecting the floor by 4 blocks is a prime example of this. I shouldn’t have to waste my beacon allocation digging down to the bottom of the grid to maximise my use of the space. To get a roof on that build, I would have to use another one of my precious beacon allocations above it - and times by however long/wide I made the build.
I both agree and disagree to this statement. Whilst a framework can aide in some creativity, it is ultimately limited by the bounds of the framework itself. This is supposed to be “Boundless”. My personal opinion on this, being a developer myself for over 20 years (in one guise or another), is that restrictions and frameworks are great drivers for conformity, not creativity - creativity can only be taken so far when it is restrained. It’s not as bad when you have control of the code and the ability to grow beyond the bounds of the core system, but being in the closed eco-system of a game, where the players cannot go beyond those bounds, it is a major restriction.
I’m not saying that I want to be more granular (people are already well versed in creating amazing things out of 1x1m blocks, especially after years of practice on MC), I only have an issue with the current limitations of placing beacons in a conformed grid and being able to protect them in a way that makes efficient use of peoples beacon allocations (an allocation that also separates the pricing tiers of the game!).
I don’t think many of the amazing builds in game so far, before the release of this update, would be able to conform to this grid system either - Nyuudles amazing spire project would be a prime example of that - which started out as a 41x41m grid for each section (216 beacon allocations per section - that’s of course, if they fit nicely into the imaginary grid!)
…and my apologies for the long-winded post!
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@Vastar s idea of having at least the y-coordinate fixed to the beacon and not the world (or even being able to choose the y freely as long as the beacon is inside the area) would also be a step in the right direction for me.
What about a system that let’s you have a fixed amount of blocks and you can create the volume as you wish?
You wouldn’t have single blocks left unprotected because of poor beacon planning and it would allow for a better use of beacons.
You could even implement it with the beacon plotters already in game. Just place them at the corners of your plot. It might need some additional logic for the edge cases but it’s not undoable.
If you say that it’s to unpractical to do that because the you’d have to pillar up for the corners further up (since it’s 3D and not just a plane). You could even make a fixed y-height which you can just move up and down.
So you make the shape on the x,z plane, y is fixed and then you decide where that shape goes around your beacon. That would be a pretty flexible system while still being easy.
Also I think you underestimate the intelligence of the players. Why would a more flexible beacon system be so much more complex? The only thing it demands from the player additionally is being aware of their surroundings. (And if you’re not aware of your surroundings you won’t enjoy Boundless anyway, but that’s just my opinion.)
For the rare case someone really doesn’t get how the system works, we have many players who’ll help. That won’t change.
Although I can see why the very flexible system I proposed first could be somewhat confusing at first, my point still stands. Just being able to choose where your cuboid has to be instead of being at the mercy of the grid system isn’t confusing at all. Even if you can determine the x,z shape it’s not really confusing.
All in all I’m not very happy with the current beacon system and to be honest it might be the reason for me to not build very much since it’s far too restrictive.
BUT if you can tell me good reasons against every other idea I just proposed I’d be more than willing to say: “Welp, there’s just no better solution to this problem.” (Not that you’re in a position to defend yourself^^ But that would be the way to convince me^^)
P.S. I hope this post didn’t come across rude or anything. If so it was not intended. And I hope it wasn’t confusing^^ (not a side blow)
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I agree the beacon placement feels a bit restrictive. I could probably learn to live with the grid-like placement in time once we have more plots though.
The one thing I can’t get over is the height - they feel way too short to me. That might get better with more plots, but I still think it would bug me to need 2 plotters for every 8x8 covered just to reach a decent height.
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Happy New Year guys.
Thanks for all the thoughts. KuroKuma: your post doesn’t come across as rude – I appreciate the feedback.
We are treading a fine line here to try and deliver a usable and understandable system for all players (present and future), whilst giving the power and flexibility to create what you want to create.
The fixed x/z, with a variable y suggestion is very clever, and something we will put some real thought into. There might be other options too. We’ll get our thinking caps on.
Cheers,
Ollie.
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TLDR : the image + Stronged text. text is here to present why / a bit more explanation
When building is concerned, flexibility is far more valued than simplicity. What shows, and appeal, to the exterior, is all those huge, complex and terrific constructions (just watch some minecraft albums). But indeed, easy comprehension is a plus.
I don’t like the idea of fixed x, y. Nor the “put beacons at each corner”. Dont get me wrong, i clearly prefer if we can do custom shapes, but fixed volume is not what i think would be best. And beacons at each corner may be a hindrance for the construction (having a cube at each corner overstepping flat land…).
So instead here is what i thought : let’s say you can protect up to 8192 cubes (that’s 16 beacons of 888). You can drop a nocapped number of beacons. And if you right click one of your beacon, here’s what appears :
(don’t mind design 
)
Even with this horrible design, i think you understood where i want to go. With this, you can customize every axis as you see fit. Each direction start from the beacon, excluded.
Why this beacon use 1344 blocks ? because (2 + 9 + 1) * (8 + 7 + 1) * (3 + 3 + 1). Why + 1? Because a placed beacon already means a 111.
So this beacon protect 1344 blocks in a 12 * 16 * 7 shape.
Why total used blocks (beacons) == 4713 (3) ? Because you (the player) placed 3 beacons in total, and those beacons covers a total volume of 4713 blocks.
We could only add 3 inputs : one for each dimension : x y z, but that’d force the beacon to be at the middle (= may be a hindrance) & the shape to be uneven (= less flexibility).
So, is this system simple ? It’s simple, easy to use and extremely flexible.
Is it easy to understand ? Let’s be honest, it’s not that simple you can skip a “help” button on the GUI, but it’s really not that hard to understand. And with a superior, readable design, even a help button might be unneeded.
(A = Above, B = Below)
Default a newly-placed beacon to values N:3 S:4 W:3 E:4 A:3 B:4 and the player can use a 888 zone out of the box, he can build right now and read help later, when he’s ready for larger structure.
Don’t forget a way to indicate where the north is
Some checks will be needed, but nothing complex :
default each direction to 0 if the initial default + total used block is over the total allowed block
dont place the beacon if total used block == total allowed block
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