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Is there a way to easily fill and level terrain?


jnelsoninjax

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I took out a small house that was near where I built my base due to it spawning massive amounts of zombies, including the explosive guys. Now I am left with craters that I have been using dirt blocks to fill in, but it is very labor/time intensive. I was wondering if there was a faster method for filling in the holes? Also, is there any method to smooth out/level the odd sections of ground?

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Short answer: No.

 

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

 

You could open the map in the map editor and use the fill commands, but in-game? Enjoy placing your 2,000 blocks individually. Edit: completely forgot about the "random decorate" trick from Vedui's video below. That can be pretty quick if you want everything at exact block height.

 

(ElCabong offers a shortcut - you could lay frames 1 block below the surface, then just put fill dirt on top of that. I'm assuming in all of this that you want it to look like natural terrain.) And to level them to surrounding terrain (which may not be at an exact block height) ya gotta hand-smash them down with low-damage tools. I sometimes use a stone shovel for the crude leveling, then tap it down with a stone axe or maybe a claw hammer. As ElCabong says, if you just want it level and not necessarily matching surrounding terrain height, placing frames will smush slightly-high terrain and lift slightly-low terrain to a uniform height.

 

Your question actually raises a question for me - does "removing" a POI (by destroying its blocks) actually remove it from the game's spawning mechanism? Are sleeper spawn points anchored in some way to the blocks nearby? I've done some limited POI design work, but never really looked into whether the sleeper volumes were anchored, such that if block X was destroyed, it's anchored sleeper volume would disappear/become inactive. If we could see the volumes as we're collapsing a house, would they fall with gravity and break apart on the ground? 😉

 

A test for later: use the dev gun to destroy a POI from a distance. Raze it to the ground and then raze the rubble flat. Then cross the POI threshold. Zombies spawn or not?

 

 

Edited by Boidster (see edit history)
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1 hour ago, ElCabong said:

You can sort of level the ground by putting wood frames on it. The only quick way I can think of to deal with the holes is to put wood frames in them. That will let you walk and drive across them without falling into the hole.

Thanks, I did try that and it sort of does level the ground.

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

Short answer: No.

 

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

 

You could open the map in the map editor and use the fill commands, but in-game? Enjoy placing your 2,000 blocks individually. (ElCabong offers a shortcut - you could lay frames 1 block below the surface, then just put fill dirt on top of that. I'm assuming in all of this that you want it to look like natural terrain.) And to level them to surrounding terrain (which may not be at an exact block height) ya gotta hand-smash them down with low-damage tools. I sometimes use a stone shovel for the crude leveling, then tap it down with a stone axe or maybe a claw hammer. As ElCabong says, if you just want it level and not necessarily matching surrounding terrain height, placing frames will smush slightly-high terrain and lift slightly-low terrain to a uniform height.

 

Your question actually raises a question for me - does "removing" a POI (by destroying its blocks) actually remove it from the game's spawning mechanism? Are sleeper spawn points anchored in some way to the blocks nearby? I've done some limited POI design work, but never really looked into whether the sleeper volumes were anchored, such that if block X was destroyed, it's anchored sleeper volume would disappear/become inactive. If we could see the volumes as we're collapsing a house, would they fall with gravity and break apart on the ground? 😉

 

A test for later: use the dev gun to destroy a POI from a distance. Raze it to the ground and then raze the rubble flat. Then cross the POI threshold. Zombies spawn or not?

That is a good question as well, the exploding guys seemed to come in mass from that area during the blood moon, and did a fair amount of damage to my area before they were killed by my defenses. I guess I will have to wait and see!

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Sorry to who ever it was, I can't recall, but I saw a mod someone had made (but not released) of a tractor or loader they had made. Man it was awesome. The could dig and level a huge area in no time. I hoped they would let it out in the wild but it never happened.

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Just now, Gamida said:

Sorry to who ever it was, I can't recall, but I saw a mod someone had made (but not released) of a tractor or loader they had made. Man it was awesome. The could dig and level a huge area in no time. I hoped they would let it out in the wild but it never happened.

Oh, that would've been perfect!

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In survival, not as such.

 

In creative you have some more ways around it. Ultimately, adding a mod which lets you do it, or going into creative is essentially the same.

 

Just use this way, make some brum brum tractor sounds and look away, and it'll be flat in no time! None the wiser! (Also works on MP servers).

 

The actual line number has changed, just search for the stuff (leveltool I think) and it should show up :)

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Vedui said:

In survival, not as such.

 

In creative you have some more ways around it. Ultimately, adding a mod which lets you do it, or going into creative is essentially the same.

 

Just use this way, make some brum brum tractor sounds and look away, and it'll be flat in no time! None the wiser! (Also works on MP servers).

 

The actual line number has changed, just search for the stuff (leveltool I think) and it should show up :)

 

 

OK, if I understand that correctly, it only works in creative mode? How do I switch to creative mode, and can it be switched back and forth?

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On 8/6/2021 at 1:32 PM, jnelsoninjax said:

That is a good question as well, the exploding guys seemed to come in mass from that area during the blood moon, and did a fair amount of damage to my area before they were killed by my defenses. I guess I will have to wait and see!

 

For what it is worth, the BM horde is not POI-based, so removing a POI will have no effect. It spawns where it wants.

 

5 hours ago, jnelsoninjax said:

OK, if I understand that correctly, it only works in creative mode? How do I switch to creative mode, and can it be switched back and forth?

 

Press F1, type 'cm' and press Enter. Vedui ought to demonstrate this in his video. You can toggle it off by doing the F1->cm thing again. But it doesn't really affect the game while it's enabled. You just have access to additional tools if you want to use them.

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1 hour ago, Boidster said:

 

For what it is worth, the BM horde is not POI-based, so removing a POI will have no effect. It spawns where it wants.

 

 

Press F1, type 'cm' and press Enter. Vedui ought to demonstrate this in his video. You can toggle it off by doing the F1->cm thing again. But it doesn't really affect the game while it's enabled. You just have access to additional tools if you want to use them.

Thanks!

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15 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

@VeduiI followed the video and removed the section of code, however I still do not have the option like was shown in the video. I did enable cm and now I have access to all the resources, I still do not have the leveling option. I'm running Alpha 19.6 (b8)

 

You may also need to access "dm" within the F1 command where you typed cm, then select dev tools maybe?  It'll look like a piece of terrain with a -/+ on it, if I recall.

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On 8/6/2021 at 12:17 PM, Boidster said:

A test for later: use the dev gun to destroy a POI from a distance. Raze it to the ground and then raze the rubble flat. Then cross the POI threshold. Zombies spawn or not?

 

I did this test - the sleepers spawned in where they normally would, even though the POI was utterly destroyed to ground level.

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24 minutes ago, Darthjake said:

 

You may also need to access "dm" within the F1 command where you typed cm, then select dev tools maybe?  It'll look like a piece of terrain with a -/+ on it, if I recall.

OK, I found the tools, but the option for Clear Selection and Fill Selection are greyed out.

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1 hour ago, jnelsoninjax said:

OK, I found the tools, but the option for Clear Selection and Fill Selection are greyed out.

I'm really not too certain about it, are you in a single player or a multiplayer game?  I've only used it once in a SP game and never used it again because I messed the terrain up so much.

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then after you hit "U" type in Dev for search and go to the Dev Blocks on Tab, you'll see 748 Dev: Terrain Remove Tool and 749 Dev: Terrain Add Tool, put those on your hot key slots and you should be able to play around with terrain, just don't do it in a game you want to keep because mistakes will be made while you are learning.

1 minute ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Yes and the options are there, but greyed out, I have triple checked the xml file, and I edited it as the video showed.

 

Wierd, I'm in SP right now did all that and I can pull them into my inventory and then to my hotbar.

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21 minutes ago, Darthjake said:

then after you hit "U" type in Dev for search and go to the Dev Blocks on Tab, you'll see 748 Dev: Terrain Remove Tool and 749 Dev: Terrain Add Tool, put those on your hot key slots and you should be able to play around with terrain, just don't do it in a game you want to keep because mistakes will be made while you are learning.

 

Wierd, I'm in SP right now did all that and I can pull them into my inventory and then to my hotbar.

I press U and searched for dev, and nothing comes up

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I just want to point out that the explodey guys actually do not spawn in POIs. The fact that they came from that direction is coincidental. I don’t think that removing POIs would do anything to impact the spawning of demolishers.

 

On another note, blood moon spawns don’t actually draw from sleeper spawns anyway. Even if POIs spawned sleeper demolishers they would only spawn as you approached their volumes in the POI and not as you stood atop your nearby base. 

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