SUGGESTION: More useful shovels.

[Gargoyle Girl]

And by this I mean something that should always have existed, along with a concept that I think would be useful: filling *in* holes, and leveling/sloping ground.

FILLING IN HOLES: aka 'SHOVELING THE DIRT BACK IN THE HOLE AGAIN'.
Pretty self explanatory. You can use shovels to shovel material into holes. The way I would make this work is like other tools: you hold R to open a menu, then choose the function you want to set. Pressing R would make this function work (this would also work for the other functions; more on this later). The player could use stone, clay, sand or snow to fill in holes, basically just shifting materials from one place to another as needed.

Of course this would allow the determined player to build dirt bulwarks against hordes, as well as letting those players who just like their homes to look good to fill in the holes on their property fairly easily.

LEVELING AND SLOPING GROUND aka 'I GOT YER RAMPS RIGHT 'ERE!'
A lot of the 'out in the wilderness' P.O.I.'s are on... 'questionable' ground. Snow, dirt or other materials that zombies can burrow through like moles surround them and are underneath them as well, giving a chance for a base to be undermined and collapsed if the zombies get frustrated with the repaired and upgrades parts and just start punching blindly at the ground.

Some of the houses, having been collapsed, have ramps of stone or dirt or what have you leading up to holes in the wall. A player wanting to salvage said house will often dig a bit too much, exposing an underlying block or patch of ground that again could trigger a collapse if destroyed, or if some overly determined zombie were to crawl in there and refuse to crawl back out.

So the two features.

LEVELING
This would simply affect a certain number of blocks around the one you're aiming at; preferably with a visible AoE. You could select this function from the radial menu, and pressing right click would activate it. Each click would smooth all blocks in that AoE to the same height; I'm thinking a 3x3 area. This would allow the player to terraform a bit more around their base, set up fields for farming, planting tress more easily, smoother travel, seeing approaching zombies, and so on. This again would allow base builders to work out a nice clear area around their base as well, and deal with those awkward divots you see when you dig a hole and place a block in it.

SLOPING OR GRADING
Also on the radial menu would be the gradient option, with maybe 4 choices. I'm thinking 15, 25, 35 and 45 degree angles. When used with the right mouse button, this would adjust that block, or again the 3 by 3 AoE, to that angle, allowing the player to make angled slopes. In this case, the marker for what you were doing would have an arrow point to the direction that the slope would be rising towards.

This process would use again, stone, clay, sand or snow to build the slope; it wouldn't just change the ground without resources, so some digging ahead of time would be needed.

I see this as being something that could be used to make a mine more accessible, crafting smooth ramps down into it, or again for shaping the environment around the base to suit you,

[JimmyIowa]

Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:

And by this I mean something that should always have existed, along with a concept that I think would be useful: filling *in* holes, and leveling/sloping ground.

FILLING IN HOLES: aka 'SHOVELING THE DIRT BACK IN THE HOLE AGAIN'.
Pretty self explanatory. You can use shovels to shovel material into holes.

You can do that now, by crafting dirt blocks and placing them. Just craft blocks like grass, or dirt, or gravel (depending on the type of ground you want to blend in with), then place them like you do with any other blocks.

[Shurenai]

You can already craft placeable ground to fill in holes/build ground based bulwarks, although they aren't very effective. Search 'ground' or 'topsoil' in your crafting list. Can craft 4 or 5 different kinds, clay based, sand based, snow based, stone and destroyed stone based.

Leveling can be achieved via placing wood frames without compromising integrity of anything nearby- Just place a wood frame and the ground is auto-leveled underneath it.

Slowing and gradients aren't currently possible in game; The world generator goes through a lot of steps to make the ground as smooth as it does, and I'm not sure it's possible to put those tools into the hands of the player.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

+1 to OP idea... would be much more streamlined that way, but I don't think TFP will ever have time to give this any priority.

[Gargoyle Girl]

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:

And by this I mean something that should always have existed, along with a concept that I think would be useful: filling *in* holes, and leveling/sloping ground.

FILLING IN HOLES: aka 'SHOVELING THE DIRT BACK IN THE HOLE AGAIN'.
Pretty self explanatory. You can use shovels to shovel material into holes.

You can do that now, by crafting dirt blocks and placing them. Just craft blocks like grass, or dirt, or gravel (depending on the type of ground you want to blend in with), then place them like you do with any other blocks.

Ah, I did not know this. I'll give it a try and see how it works.

[KayDawg13]

unless something has changed, I do believe that the crafted topsoil block will automatically conform to whatever terain you are working on. I tired to plant a yard in the wasteland but it just turned back into the destroyed brick ground, this was in A19 tho.

[Amins]

Yeah, most of these functions can pretty much be achieved by other means. But it would be nice to replace the right-click power attack function on a shovel with a "terrain repair" function. The power attack is pretty much useless as it takes significantly longer and doesn't do enough extra block damage to make a difference. Shovels would make more sense in repairing terrain blocks than a nailgun, though. Plus, you already have it in your hands while you're digging anyways so it would be much more convenient. And for leveling terrain, though it would be easier to use a bunch of frames to glitch it flat for large projects, having a quick animation on a shovel to flatten the occasional block would be more immersive and a little more convenient than switching between shovel and frame constantly.

[The Pollie]

[quote=Shurenai;3272438771253782679

Leveling can be achieved via placing wood frames without compromising integrity of anything nearby- Just place a wood frame and the ground is auto-leveled underneath it. [/quote]

Not true. I was building a cabin earlier and noticed that the entire front of the structure was hovering a few inches off the dirt-level.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by The Pollie:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Leveling can be achieved via placing wood frames without compromising integrity of anything nearby- Just place a wood frame and the ground is auto-leveled underneath it.

Not true. I was building a cabin earlier and noticed that the entire front of the structure was hovering a few inches off the dirt-level.

It is true- But within certain bounds. Every voxel can only stretch so much- Placing a woodframe isn't going to make a voxel 2 levels down stretch up to it; But placing a wood frame ON a voxel will flatten or raise the terrain to match the woodblock's bottom.

From the sounds of it, you have most of your house on flat ground, but then on that front edge the terrain actually dips down one but with a high slope that makes it look similar to the blocks around it. Try placing something in that several inch gap and I'm betting you'll find it's actually an unoccupied space despite appearances.

[Kauldric]

LOL I must say OP is a genius. I swear why have I never noticed the absurdity of not being able to fill holes with shovels:l. My hat is off to you my good sir. 😂

[Big Fed]

It might be tough sometimes but you can also repair the ground with clay in your inventory to level it out. Nail gun preferred ofc.