Talk:Pillars

Base Units?

Recently Arcane and here had Tyrak add 'unit' measurements to the pages describing the size of the base items. I've rechecked the base editor and no where I can find has any measurement for the objects in it (much less anything on how big a unit would be). If any one has any information where this measurement comes from, please leave a note here or I'm afraid the recently added sections on this will have to be reverted.

@.@ oh, also, please note that if said 'unit' does exist, the height info on pillars is incorrect as they're variable based on the floor and ceiling heights and would have to be fixed. --Sleepykitty 00:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

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When you place an item, you are limited to discrete locations. As you move an item around, you can count the possible positions; all bounding box dimensions are whole number increments of these positions, and every base square measures 32 of these positions on a side. Place a floor safe, and then place a second one in front of it but lined up with the first one. Then move the second one slowly to the side, and you will see that it has a measureable width. Do the same moving the second safe back until it lines up and you can measure the depth. Lift an object vertically and you can measure height. Presumably each unit is equal to a foot... if you measure the height of a single floor section, you will find it is four units. Then walk up to it with a four-foot tall character on a lower section, and you will see that the character is almost exactly the same height.

As far as pillars go, they are all always 48 units in height. Raise the floor and lower the ceiling in a section, place a pillar, and then move the camera around. You can see that the top and bottom caps are not on the ends of the pillar. Instead they are placed so that they will be flush with the ceiling and floor. The pillar itself extends from the very bottom of the base to the very top. Currently it only matters for a couple of minor visual effects you can achieve using slow fields to make certain floor styles transparent, since when not in edit mode you don't normally see beyond the floor, ceiling and walls of the base. But it may be useful for people to know.

Bear in mind that the base editor has no documentation to speak of; there are key commands (very few) for base editing but none of them are listed in the keymapping, the rulebook, or any online source that I've found. --Tyrak — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyrak (talk • contribs) 05:36, October 15, 2009

@.@ oh lovely, logging all of those would drive anyone nutty... So, a few questions I guess:

• >.> you said "every base square measures 32" on a side, are you sure that the 'base squares' are actually, truly square and not actually 32x31 or something? (that is, have you checked) A number of the base builder bits where fudged to save time back in i6, and that's not really the sort that they could fix later.

• <.< I can believe you easily, now that its explained, on the horizontal count, but, given that there are only 3 ways to get vertical (2 diff lights and dumping things on stackable desks/cabinets/whatnot), how can you have a decent set Y axis unit? particularly since the light ladders I suspect you use for this have notches at different spots?

• • o.o subQ, and if you have a reliable testing for this, are the units perfect squares, or rectangles? I ask because rectangles would seem to be my experience with the builder.

now that I have those out of the way (pardon my rambling ^^ pls).. "Presumably each unit is equal to a foot" err.. I really wouldn't presume that they're that big since there are several in the length of where your char would stand while editing said object, and 2-3ft wide characters (shoulder to shoulder) aren't the norm. There's probably some overly complicated way we could find out though using chars at exact set heights and comparing their height to width..

o.o anyway, last bit (and hopefully a couple other admin besides myself will chime in here with their opinions), the wiki is certainly the place for esoteric information.. so this sort of info and observation should be on a page here. Its whether it should be entered into every page on bases is the question. If it is going in though (and I certainly don't mind as long as formatting is observed (ie, in a notes or similar section)) we'll need to toss up a page explaining what 'unit' is and have every or many of the times its used on a page as a [[unit]] type link.

>.> and on that note, we would also need to figure out a name thats a bit less generic, as naming a page 'unit' doesn't just invite silly Dr. Who jokes, but also has a decent change of ending up as a disambiguation page. Perhaps something like 'base unit' or 'floor unit'. --Sleepykitty 08:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Concerning base unit:foot conversions: My suggestion would be to place the largest room possible on a plot with the ceiling raised and the floor lowered as far as possible. Then fly up to the upper corner of said room and take a /loc reading. Next, fly to the opposite corner of the room (i.e. if you were in the upper NW corner, go to the lower SE corner) and take another /loc reading. Using these two sets of numbers, you should be able to calculate the approximate X, Y, and Z dimensions of the room. (Note: This won't be exact; I'll get to that in a bit.) If the dimensions of the room have already been determined in terms of bu (I don't want to keep typing "base units"), then you should now be able to calculate an approximate conversion factor for bu to coordinate frame measurements ("cfm").

Now, enter any zone. Pick a waypoint on your map. Note the distance to your waypoint indicated on the screen. Take a /loc reading at your current position. Move to stand on top of your selected waypoint. Take another /loc reading. Using basic trig (sqrt((x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2 + (z2-z1)^2)), calculate the coordinate frame shift required to travel the distance to your waypoint. You should now have an approximate conversion factor for cfm to feet/yards/miles.

Combining the two conversion factors, you should be able to find an approximate ft/bu conversion factor.

Accuracy of measurements: There will be some inherent inaccuracy in these measurements, but there are ways to make the error term smaller.

• Error could most easily be eliminated with creative use of demo files except that, as far as I am aware, demos don't work so well inside bases.
• Choosing the largest possible room in a base would help to minimize the inaccuracy of /loc readings in a room by making the ratio of distance moved to dead space between character and wall/ceiling as large as possible. If you could make a room large enough, the dead space term would become negligible.
• When measuring distance traveled outside, it is important to keep in mind that only integer values of distance for feet and yards (I think) are displayed and miles are displayed accurate only to one tenth. Assuming rounding, a reading of 2.5 miles could in actuality be anywhere from 2.450000 to 2.549999 miles. Converted to feet, that could be anywhere from 12936 ft to ~13463.9947 ft. Again, maximizing distance traveled should minimize inaccuracy. The final conversion factor should work well for converting cfm to distance at all times, though.

Anyway, just some ideas on coming up with an accurate set of scale factors. --Eabrace 14:52, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

First, in answer to Sleepykitty:

• Yes, the squares are 32 units in both directions. I measured that out the hard way before checking the floor tile in room details just to be sure it would work as a rough measuring device.
• Lowering things from the ceiling can be done with several different lights. The most commonly used is the hanging lamp, which I believe you're referring to with the notches. You can still lower items along the stem, but I usually overlap the lights so that no gaps occur except at the very top and very bottom (and throw in lit and large ones here and that so it's easy to estimate height at a distance when trying to place ceiling items at the same level). For raising items, I typically stack floor safes to the ceiling (less one spot, because the floor safe bounding box is taller than the safe - the last safe overlaps the next-to-last one by a single unit, and then set a floor tile at whatever height. Any floor item can be set on a floor tile, and floor tiles are easy to manipulate since they can 'stack' on themselves but have no height. So if you don't drag them off to the floor or some such they end up moving around at the same height.
  • The units are perfect squares, though I doubt they are perfect cubes. They seem to be taller than they are wide or deep (which helps answer your bit about super-shouldered characters at least a little). Bear in mind that straight and square are determined by perspective when looking at these things - some items that are square never quite look it due to the way the rendering is done. To test squareness, take something that should be square but has identifiable faces and rotate it. Measure each face using something else that should be square that you do not rotate, so you have a consistent measuring tool. Then rotate the tool and repeat the measurements. If you come up with the same answer for all faces using both facings of the measuring tool, the units are square.

My doubt that the units are cubes is why I went with a generic term instead of calling them feet. I am sure that they are close to a foot in height, and may even be exactly a foot high. Other than that, though, who knows? Your suggestion for a less generic term is well taken - though if it is too long, the format should have width, depth and height (or whatever terms you prefer for these measurements) without specifying units each time. I did include the dimensions of a base square in terms of units in the overview; it seems a good place for the explanation. Or, since it would be repeated everywhere, perhaps a link to the explanation.

Second, in answer to Eabrace :

I like your notion of using /loc readings; for height, though, that is subject to some variation depending on whether you jump, hover or fly (and indeed the type of flight - at least one of the jetpacks puts you at different height than does the fly power). Similarly, your facing affects how close you can get to a wall. These should be trivial factors, though, in a large enough base.

bu = base units... I like that.

Better than opposite corners in a single room, the same corners of different rooms across a large base plot - that way the distance you inevitably are from the wall will be about the same and will be offset in the same direction, allowing one to reasonably discount it. For height, placing floor tiles as various heights and measuring the z-axis location while standing on each should do the trick. If several readings are consistently-spaced (and hopefully integer values), I think that would justify assuming the remainder are.

If the base units end up not corresponding well to normal measurements, is there any value in using normal measurements? After all, the placement of items is still tied to a grid. Still, I'll give it a go. I expect the best way to measure outside distance is to reach 879 yards and then back up very slowly until the reading changes to 0.5 miles. Ideally while on the ground in Steel Canyon or Skyway City as they seem to have the least grading over that distance.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyrak (talk • contribs) 19:19, October 15, 2009

Okay, I measured 880 yards (2640 feet) as being equal to 2638.6 coordinate units. I'm comfortable saying that a coordinate unit is equal to one foot, given the difficulty involved in precise positioning. Inside the base, ten base squares is equal to 320 coordinate units (on either axis), and each increment of vertical placement corresponds to one coordinate unit (by the way, the floor tile is actually 0.1 units high). Looks like it is feet after all. --Tyrak 21:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

o.o kk, I was procrastinating on making a base unit page anyway ^^;; Though, when/if you go around adding the measurements to the pages, pls add the notation after the numbers each time, its a pain I know, but it really should be done. (I'll go ahead and do it now, infact <.<)--Sleepykitty 09:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Updated page

I updated the pictures to show three pillars - two full height, of which one is selected to show the bounding box, and one minimum height to show that the end caps adjust to the floor and ceiling. The factory pillar picture includes a fourth pillar, showing it end-on.

I updated the overview to use feet instead of units, per my measurements mentioned previously using /loc and discovering that each coordinate unit corresponded to one foot. And I see now that I naturally forgot to note that all measurements given are in feet. I did note that the measurements given are for the depth and width of the bounding boxes, and the height of the end caps. I also removed the dimensions from the description and placed them on their own lines.

My intention is to perform my other base item updates in a similar manner by adding lines for the bounding box dimensions, and updating pictures as done here and noted in the forum. For any item where the bounding box is significantly different in size the actual item dimensions would be noted below the description (there should only be a few of these). Lighting items would include another line as to whether or not they provide light, since several that are supposed to do not (or did not, I will have to check them all to verify). Additional notes would be given for any item that permits stacking in any fashion, though I would like to solicit suggestions for terms to differentiate stacking up off the floor from stacking down from the ceiling, from stacking out from the wall.

Also, before I update to note that measurements given are in feet... should that be included in the overview (my preference) or on each line (either as "Depth (in feet): 6" or as "Depth: 6 feet")? --Tyrak 03:12, 19 October 2009 (UTC)