There have been a few posts on this and suggestions but I don’t know if an actual tool is in development to help with block rotation. So I figured I would put an official one here…
We need a “rotator”, “twister”, or “spinner” type tool that allows you to deal with grain and decoration directions of blocks. There are many situations were you cannot easily move around in all directions to ensure that a block is placed in the right orientation to the other blocks beside it. I can’t stress how many times I have had to build temp platforms to just try to get a block going the right way and sometimes that won’t even work…
I know that things are much easier now than they used to be but still not having a tool that can spin all blocks is kind of a big pain for developing buildings, monuments, and other things. Here are some of the points for the developers to consider:
It would be a “rotator” tool that would be available very early (like around spanner) that you can create. Maybe it could be made out of copper instead of stone but it should not be a resource intensive tool like some of the chisels are.
It would have two options when held in your hand
– Left click would spin the block you are hitting on the X axis
– Right click would spin the block you are hitting on the Y axis
The block would work on all blocks you can place and those that have decorations.
Additionally it would work on chiseled blocks. This would help save hits on your chisels because if you didn’t get the chisel cut direction you wanted on the first try, you could use this tool to rotate it to the direction you need. (note: Using chisels can be confusing because of how many options you have and there is no guide telling you what corner to hit to create a cut. So if you get the wrong direction on the cut you have to redo it versus maybe using this tool to just rotate it.)
With this design you should be able to rotate a block in all directions until you can get the grain, angle, layout, etc that you want.
If others have suggestions around this or comments please post. Otherwise I hope development will consider this because it does answer some challenges and major frustrations we have in the game.
I second this idea!
The chisels already rotate workbench equipment when struck, so I think you could follow a similar pattern.
You could even apply rotation fuctionality to the spanner for non-workbench blocks, but I think a rotation dedicated tool would be best.
I’m not sure on the left-click/right-click differentiation though, as that’s already hand-dependent.
I think an edge-target similar to the stone chisel would make the most intuitive use. This would give you both directions and both axis of rotation from any side visible.
Edit: missing a use case of clockwise rotation along a single face of a block. (Around the Z axis) corner strike maybe?
If anyone has ever played Creativerse, they have a similar rotation feature to what you suggested. It’s really useful for building - instead of clicking, you hold down the tool button and drag the block to rotate it in the direction you want. It’s a lot more intuitive than trying to figure out which edge/side to click on
Maybe you could attach the rotation function to a wooden chisel? It’s easy to make and wouldn’t require lots of crafting or rare materials
I want it too, but it won’t/cannot be that free (as in freedom) when it comes to the grain/texture rotation of the block. We can only support 4 rotations (the current 4) not all possible ones (24). We’d run out of space in the data. Most of the time you don’t need every possible one though, since textures are repeated on the 4 sides and often all 6 faces are the same, though without changing some blocks that are more… patterned to have a more random alignment on each side, 4 rotations is still not sufficient either.
Of course for chiselled shape rotations it’s fine.
Then even if we had a tool that allowed you to go through the rotations that do work that would be better than where we are. My main issue is having a challenge with placement and spending time trying to get it right. If I could at least just rotate it without destroying and replace it would be better than where I am not.
I would like to resurrect this suggestion I had a while ago again and see if we can get some development time assigned to it @james or @lucadeltodecso. We even had a poll about this: Block Positioning And Rotation and people were interested.
I am sure tons of people would agree with the hours wasted trying to align block meshes. It sometimes is very hard to be looking the right way and place the block correctly to allow some meshes to look correct. Sometimes you can’t easily even get the angle right.
A simple spanner that rotates the block up/down with left click and right/left with right click will easily solve this. A huge win for builder’s sanity…
I have wrote similar topics of this same suggestion that, I would hope to see this so basic feature that we wouldn’t need to use any tool to rotate or lock rotation when placing blocks down.
I can’t remember were texture rotation tied on skills during EA like with that “wonky” stone & trunk effect, but it would have use now if it was working like that.
I second this idea. Just give it to the spanner and take it away from chisels (for machines/storage blocks). Don’t need to add more rotational positions, just the ones already there.
I think the block rotation should be chosen during the block placement.
Like mutiple games do, you have a ghost block that you can see prior accepting it’s placement. Then during that you could see the rotation of the block before accepting it.
I think a tool to rotate chiseled block could be interesting but not a must since now we can unchisel.
Having a little overlap in abilities is fine by me. All good suggestions. I like the ghost block idea but if I had to choose I’d still take the rotator first. As @Xaldafax noted, there are times when it would be easier to fix afterward than to ensure it’s right from the start.
The issue i could see with a rotator tool is that you will have to hit the block face that you see. So it will still be limited in its rotation when there is block around.
Just to add up to my ghost block suggestion, there is some QOL that could be added to it like locking the rotation of block then it will use that rotation until you change it and more.
I would be fine with that but I see this as a need for tweaks or where the meshes don’t already align. Most of the time things place ok so I wouldn’t see a need to allow it for each block placement. As an option “during placement” then I would be cool with it like you mention a set ability.
One thing I do a lot of is place a wall or floor of something and then block change chisel some of them to create more interesting patterns. This is another use case that would be fun if a rotator were possible.
The issue I see is that only some rotation states exist in the game so the tool wouldn’t be able to work consistently. If the block can’t be rotated on the axis the tool is trying to rotate it on, what happens?
There are only 2 or 3 rotation states depending on the block. N/S, E/W and up/down. I presume this data is stored as something like block_rotation_state=0, 1 or 2. So a rotation chisel could switch between the three states just like a trans chisel switches between the three types of rock, regardless of where you are standing when you would use the rotation chisel.
For chiseled blocks it would be way more complex. I would be fine with the rotation chisel just changing the rotation state of the base block’s texture and not moving bevels etc.
U xal