EQNL joystiq hands on

Nadia

building video at link

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/11/11/hands-on-with-eq-next-landmark-building-my-castle-of-dreams/

Actions: Actions included select, delete, heal, smooth, paint, and line.

• Select is the base for the other actions; it's basically highlighting a specific spot. After choosing the shape (cube is default, but there is also sphere), players can adjust the size of the shape with the mouse to cover a large or small area to work within, be it filling in with material, deleting, smoothing, painting, or making beveled shapes with line. The cube's parameters can also be adjusted after placement by dragging the different faces with the mouse.
• Delete is pretty self-explanatory; the DEL key works the same.
• Heal will return the area to the original parameters, like the ultimate undo button.
• Smooth is your basic blur tool without the blurring -- it sands down rough edges.
• Paint applies whatever material you have selected to the shape you've chosen. It is not a surface-only cosmetic change; it changes the entire selected space to that material. This allows players to build the structure they want, even if they don't yet have the material they wish to use, and they can easily switch materials later on. (You can build your diamond tower out of stone, then use the paint brush to switch it to diamond after you've mined enough of them. Paint also works on Player Studio structures, whereas delete does not.)
• The line tool, like paint, is one of the more advanced tools that players will have to earn. This is the one that allows players to make arbitrary angles and inclines. Beginning and end points can be adjusted to different sizes to make beveled areas.

Materials and objects: This menu accesses building materials, props, and the shape template (for select).
Once you have selected the shape you want to build with, you have to select a material. The interface holds a sample swatch of any material you have access to separated into categories like stone, wood, gem, and water (liquid). When you right click your mouse, that material will be inserted into the world in whatever size and shape you have selected.

Any props you have available -- decorating items like lights, wagons, chairs, etc. -- will be included in this menu. Size can be adjusted, as can placement on all three axes. One cool note here is that the lighting actually reflects off of the surface, so if you have a multifaceted gemstone (as I did), the light will bounce off all the different angles and make quite a display.

 

Flight: Flight might sound like an odd tool, but until you earn this one through gameplay, you are grounded and have only the single vantage point available when building. With flight, you can get up into the air to see and work on your creation from a variety of angles.

 

 

Grahor

Actually better than I expected. Now if only they d stopped trying to make a game and left freebuilding mode...