My comments on the building system (3D)

First, I'd like to say that the game goal is really innovative and really immersive. Making your own world rules...

I'm a mapper for Half-Life, I've made whole levels and I have some experience with building stuff. I had no problem building stuff with the very "intuitive" in-game editor... BUT

The fact that you build in 3D with a totally useless grid and hard-to-get point of views is irritating me. Okay, we have measurements with .001 meter precision but how the heck am I suppposed to align my walls correctly if my blocks don't "jump" from grid to grid. Let me explain myself, instead of the blocks moving, say, on a X axis by .1 meter at a time, they move with a .001 precision that means it's impossible to get my walls aligned perfectly (like i used to do with Valve Hammer Editor for Half-Life and it's X-Y-Z-3D views).

Or maybe I just missed something out and I'd like to be informed how I was wrong. But what I see is it's easy to build, but impossible to be (perfectly) clean.

Here's an idea for ya that I've found works great for walls

Make a block...stretch it out to a wall, say 10 x 10 x .1.....

then in the create tab....check "keep tool selected", Copy selection, and "Center copy"....(make sure your original wall is selected and click on the .1 side face of that wall....it will create a duplicate of that wall connected to the first one.....then click the top .1 face of the original wall and you have another wall on top that is already connected....click the .1 side of the most recent wall and you have another wall...keep doing that till you build your walls...works great....(there's also a rotate command that you can check too that has different results....)

hope that helps with your walls ...lock em down and get to the fun parts....the guts

Valfaroth Grimm

PS - Thanks Aaron for teaching me

yea, Grid Unit of 0.100 always snaps your obect to position that ends with 4, such as 92.104. i think that's a bug.
personally, i use 0.125, and it will snap to a number ending in 5 or 0. you may already be using this technique, but i'll post it anyways; in the tools window (the one that opens when you edit something), check the 'Snap to Grid', then hit ctrl+shift+b and set your Grid Unit to something like 0.125m. create your primitive and move it around a bit, so it locks to a grid point.
the point of view can be changed with Alt+mouse, alt+ctrl+mouse, alt+ctrl+shift+mouse.
bp

Text entry. It's the only way to model. Do all the positioning and size math in your head. That's how I do it. It may be more difficult, but it's 100% as perfect as your calculations, and you don't have to deal with a clumsy perspective view.
For modelling to be really good in SL they'd have to add a multi-view, orthographic (no perspective) rendered, modifiable grid (you control the spacing), (nearly) infinite zoom, editor. So I could click on an object and say edit and then work on the object in the modeller (inside of SL). (See Rhino 3d, the best, most intuitive and powerful 3d modelling tool there is)

-Pat Murphy

dude... slow down.. play with it. All my walls are perfect if a wall is 10x10x1 all you need to do is do +10 in what ever position your are going (x,y,z) use a calculator if you're not sure.

Ther is another easy way to make aligned copies. I was suprised to encounter a few people in world who didn't know about it.

Everybody should know about the shift-click-n-drag method of copying objects:

Select an object and go into edit-mode.

While holding down the shift key click and drag on one of the selection arrows (you know, the red, green, and blue ones).

You will leave a copy of the object behind as you drag the original along the selected axis.