Hotkey to see chunk borders, please

[BustedHipGaming]

Since a lot of the mechanics in this game revolve around chunks it sure would be nice to have a button we could press that shows the borders in the main view, and in the zoomed in map. And a second press would make the borders disappear again (so it should be a toggle).

[Brainsloth]

Interesting idea! More curious than anything - what sorts of things do you try to make sure you line up on chunk boundaries? Is it mostly mob spawners?

[TheRemyD]

It isn't quite the same but you can do this to a certain degree with claims, or by using the map tiles on the zoomed in map. Not 100% precise but it will help a lot.

[BustedHipGaming]

Originally posted by Brainsloth:

Interesting idea! More curious than anything - what sorts of things do you try to make sure you line up on chunk boundaries? Is it mostly mob spawners?

Well, for starters, I am OCD as heck about it. :) Second, I like being organized, and want to do things like "plant plots of 256 lettuce, turnips, etc. I also want to have a block of 256 cactus plants for raising cactus flowers. Also, I have seen neat examples of "this fits into one chunk" buildings and such that would be fun to try, maybe making roads along the grid lines to make a little Creati-town. :)

From what I have read monster spawners work best if they take up whole chunks, but you'd have to ask someone who has actually built monster spawners. I haven't tried it - I might at some point, but I honestly find that just running around the layers where they live tends to find me plenty of monsters. Sometimes more than I can handle. :)

EDIT: Oh, and so far the only thing I tried is making a new world so that it allows claims so I get the glowy thing that delimits a 4x4 chunk region, and carefully pacing out and marking the corners every 16 blocks. Kinda more tedious than watching paint dry, but as TheRemyD pointed out, it's probably the best option we have. Had to abandone a huge reserve of resources from my first world, though, as it was made before claims were a thing. I am making my new world "the one where I put what I learned in the first one to use."

[BustedHipGaming]

Originally posted by TheRemyD:

It isn't quite the same but you can do this to a certain degree with claims, or by using the map tiles on the zoomed in map. Not 100% precise but it will help a lot.

Yeah, my OCD cringes at phrases like "not prcise" LOL

[AvilerED]

With claims, just start on a claim border and count 16s. Claims are 4 chunks by 4 chunks. You can also calculate using coordinates (requires some math), or do it by spot checking using /sim.

[BustedHipGaming]

Originally posted by AvilerED:

With claims, just start on a claim border and count 16s. Claims are 4 chunks by 4 chunks. You can also calculate using coordinates (requires some math), or do it by spot checking using /sim.

Yes, none of which is convenient or user-friendly compared to just having a toggle to make them visible-when-desired. And the Claims thing does not work on worlds made before Claimes were implemented.

[AvilerED]

True. Most people aren't as chunk oriented as some of us are, though :). Border style, if it was implemented, I would prefer to be like a grid on the ground, or something on the more subtle side, not the obnoxious visual assault the claim borders are.

[BustedHipGaming]

Originally posted by AvilerED:

True. Most people aren't as chunk oriented as some of us are, though :). Border style, if it was implemented, I would prefer to be like a grid on the ground, or something on the more subtle side, not the obnoxious visual assault the claim borders are.

Subtle is always nice. I figured a toggle would be good so that it could be just plain *gone* when you didn't want to see it. :)

[alikhi]

With my own Spawning Pad design I always line up with a chunk border running right up the center. I made mine 1 chunk wide with half the pad on either side of the border. this gives me enough space to spawn, but doesnt spread the spawns out too much. As I've understood it each chunk has it's own spawning table. so building 4 chunks long and splitting the pad with a border, gives me 4 chunks worth of spawnable area, with 8 chunks worth of spawning tables. At least that is the theory I started building with, and I must say that my pads all seem to work awesome. I spent a LOT of time experimenting to find out what seems to work the best, and so far this seems to be it. Oh BTW, I did build a pad using igneous rock, put walls around it, and a roof of crafted blocks. It was a bit too dark, so I punched holes in the walls, filled them with the glowing floweres, and was very suprised to see that my spawns did not decrease, but the warmworms all spawned in a very neat line pretty much right up the center of the pad. and the flowers gave me just enough background lighting that I could make out the hotfoot (or is the plural hotfeet ?) quite easily. The chests on this pad also tend to spawn right up the center, but also seem a tiny bit less frequent then before the flowers.
So yeah I would definately +1 the border toggle, maybe even +2 or +99, as I tend to use // and a calculator QUITE A BIT, and it does get tedious.
Another thing I use chunk borders for is plotting stairs, kind of OCD I guess, but I have a thing for plotting corners at 16 block inervals, I like to have them start at a chunk corner, run down to the next corner, turn then down to the next.

[AvilerED]

Originally posted by alikhi:

So yeah I would definately +1 the border toggle, maybe even +2 or +99, as I tend to use // and a calculator QUITE A BIT, and it does get tedious.

Unless and until we get chunk border markings of some sort, there are at least a couple of easier ways to determine chunks thatn the coordinate method. I touched on them in an earlier post in this thread, but I've also done a video explaining in a bit more detail.
https://youtu.be/3whPPa-dFeU

[Phoenix-Mask]

Bit old but think should be pushed as a reminder since in my eyes visible chunk borders are important because the chat code alone isn't enough

[TheRemyD]

I too like the simplicity of being able to see chunk borders. For now, I tend to use claim borders to see at least the outside edges. Being able to use the chunk boundaries to measure builds and locate positions would be very helpful.

[Phoenix-Mask]

It is especialy needed for farms were you need a certain amount in the chunk so you even get a spawn

[entuland]

Chunks affect all of the following:
- mob spawning algos (count of blocks, mobs and even lights)
- lighting (sometimes nearby chunks fail to get affected from lights just on the edge of a chunk)
- liquids (sometimes they don't realize there is more liquids in the nearby chunk and they look like flowing even though they should be still; unless it has been fixed liquids don't flow into completely empty chunks)
- window glasses (the glass itself may show weird differences in the texture at chunks corners)
- in certain cases also grass behaves like window glasses at chunk corners
- unaimed pet commands issued with a shortcut (they affect all pets in the chunk)
- pet browsing interface (the left and right arrow only cycle through pets in the same chunk)
- underwater air pockets (you can cleary tell where the chunk begins because the air pockets generated by slopes or other non-full blocks show a clear cut there)

There may be more subjects affected by chunks which I am unaware of.

Being able to see the chunk limits would be really helpful.