Terraria's Build Mechanics: What Works and What's Missing

One aspect of Terraria type games that I don’t personally make use of much are the features and content specifically made for those who like to build for aesthetic purposes (as opposed to purely functional purposes, such as storage for items or basic housing for npcs).

What content/features provided by Terraria do you find useful for building, and what do you find lacking that you wish was implemented?

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In my opinion, hammer tool to change a block shapes is most useful for buildings. Other that i been wish if theres a auto build housing for npc.

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The option to alter the color/hue of blocks and walls in order to create a desired shade with the desired texture.

Blocks that don’t take up the entire square (such as certain candles or statue furnitures) can offer a whole lot more variety to a build, especially if they have a block manipulation tool such as TEdit.

Tiles such as Gemspark that give off light open up a whole new realm of creating mood and emulating a feeling. You can turn them invisible with Echo Coating to create a beam of light.

Being able to actuate tiles and making them a shade darker and passable is also really handy since it allows for the potential for more depth, and the added shading could be used to create better and simpler gradients than by applying conventional paint.
It also introduces more versatile 3d building potential with the additional shading options.

Animated tiles/furniture are always fun. Combine it with TEdit and the creative possibilities are functionally endless.

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Sounds like everything you mentioned is things that exist that are good right? What about things that you wish existed?

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Yay drafts

I have many issues it comes to building specifically in DG.

The lack of management and protective measures in Build. The permissions system with DG is wack, and I feel more additions could be added to Build in the future that enables builders to both protect their builds through regions (this could be a thing that you obtain once you get Crew).

Regarding regions, I would like to propose an anti-grief/sabotage mechanic tied to regions.
The moment a region is created, a serverside asphalt (shadow paint) border is created that cannot be broken, only expanded through ‘/region resize’ or through deleting the region whereby everything within the region border will be deleted.

Also I implore you to fix the /buildmode cmd so players may build in perpetual client-side daytime. It’s such a pain trying to build in complete* darkness in PvE. A massive gemspark wall can only go so far.

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In this case I’m specifically talking about just the game mechanics not the server. But those things might be good for a suggestion topic.

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Oh game mechanics. I gotchu.

A camera stabilizer would be a godsend. There’s a mod in tMod does such as that and it’s exceptional for both recording and getting a fixed viewpoint.
Usually you’ll be wearing a light-emitting helmet so you can actually see what you’re building. Having a fixed viewpoint would help quicken the process of developing external sections of a build without having to travel back and forth to check if you got the lighting or shape correct relative to the interior.

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Also a mod in tModloader, it’s called Immersive Projector and it allows for the user to add actual mathematical and physical depth by casting a non-intractable projection/copy of an already existing build in the world.

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