Glitch Building Techniques

The subject of this article is from the Frontiers update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 15 February, 2022.

Glitch Building Techniques is a base building page.

Summary

Glitch Building Techniques is a page referencing Base building techniques.

Featured Bases and planets where many people gather can be seen with advanced structures that cannot be built using normal construction methods. Some of them can be called works of art. Some may suspect that it was installed by the developers, but this is not the case. These are the player's creations, albeit using unusual construction methods. It does not require any modification and can be used with CS machines.

Overseas, this is called a Glitch Building or a Blender Glitch. It is a technique system that not only makes the impossible possible, but also includes detailed position adjustments. In order to carry out construction without the assistance of the system, and to deceive the assistance of the system, the procedure is much more complicated than in normal construction. Artistic buildings are an enormous amount of work, and it is difficult to explain them in writing.

This technique is fraught with system glitches (e.g., using a judgment that can be placed for a moment, or retaining the previous action), so it can become unusable at any time. It's just a bug. However, even if the technique is no longer available, the installed parts will remain intact. In fact, if you break down artistic buildings one by one, they are usually derived from a fixed mold. After knowing this, you may be able to imagine how such a work is made when you see it.

WARNING! Some techniques could be fixed in an update. Some techniques has become obsolete in the Frontiers update due to the base building overhaul.

Colour and texture glitches

These are techniques that allow the transfer of a colour to a part that has a limited colour selection without the particular colour.

Colour glitch

Dependencies: This technique does not depend on any other glitch techniques.

Description:

1. Select a piece from the build menu which accepts the desired colour.
2. Place the piece.
3. Colour the piece by entering Edit Mode, pressing the button or key that brings up the colour menu, and selecting the desired colour.
4. Leave Edit Mode without leaving the build menu completely, and select the part you want to place from the menu.
5. Place the part. You will see that it has the colour applied to the previous part.

Caveats: This technique will not work with a part that does not accept any colour changes. Some parts take the main and accent colours in peculiar ways, so while your colour may be applied, it may not have the result you want.

Part placement glitches

These are techniques that allow the placement of a part where it shouldn't ordinarily go, for example a plant on an arbitrary spot in the floor in a biodome.

Wire glitch

Dependencies: This technique does not depend on any other glitch techniques.

Description:

1. Select the piece from the build menu that you want to place.
2. Press the button or key to enter Wire Mode.
3. Move the cursor to the point on the surface where you want to place your part.
4. Press the buttons or keys to exit Wire Mode and to place a part, at the same time. You should see your part placed where the cursor was.

Caveats: The object placed will be oriented in relation to the surface on which you place it.

Adjacency glitch

Dependencies: This technique does not depend on any other glitch techniques.

Description:

1. Select the piece from the build menu to the immediate left of the one that you want to snap into place.
2. Position the selected piece where you want the desired piece to go.
3. Press the buttons or keys to cycle to the next piece in the build menu, and to place the part, at the same time. You should see your part placed centered in the space that the previous part would have occupied. This can be used for example to place a half ramp centered against a floor panel rather than to the left or right side of it.

Scaling glitches

These are techniques that allow the scaling up and down of base parts that cannot ordinarily be scaled via the build menu.

Scale up or down a wire

Dependencies: This technique does not depend on any other glitch techniques.

Description:

1. Select a piece from the build menu that can be scaled in the normal way.
2. Press the button or key that enters Wire Mode.
3. Click to place one end of the wire on a surface, and pull it some so that it will be visible.
4. Press the buttons or keys to exit the Wire Mode and to place a part simultaneously. You should now see a scaled up or down wire.
5. This wire can be duplicated and placed elsewhere if you have a large build and you want to use the wire in other techniques, in areas far away from the place you placed it.

Caveats: Scaled down wire can be hard to see; choose a nice staging surface where the wire will be easily visible, or place an object near it so you can find it again easily.

Scale a part via adjacency

Dependencies: This technique depends on the adjacency glitch.

Description:

1. Locate the part you want to scale in the build menu, and select the scalable part immediately to the left of it. If the nearest scalable part is more than one position away, you need to use "extended adjacency", see below.
2. Scale the part to the degree desired.
3. Press the keys or buttons to move to the next piece in the menu (the part you want to scale) and to place a part, at the same time. You should now see the part you wanted, resized. You can pick up this piece and move it around or duplicate it and it will keep its size.

Caveats: This technique works only if the unscaleable part is to the immediate right of the scalable part in the build menu.

Scale a part via extended adjacency

Dependencies: This technique depends on scaling by adjacency.

Description:

1. Find the nearest scaleable part on the left side in the build menu of the part you want to scale.
2. Scale the part immediately to the right of it, using the previously described scaling by adjacency technique.
3. Select that part and duplicate it, but do not place it.
4. Scale the part immediately to the right of this one, using the scaling by adjacency technique.
5. Repeat until you reach the part you want to scale, and do that one too.

Caveats: This technique works only if there is some scalable part in the category to which the piece you want to scale belongs. Otherwise you will need to use the technique for scaling any part described below.

Scale any part

Dependencies: This technique relies on placing a scaled up or down wire and using that in order to scale up the desired piece.

Description:

1. Scale up or down a wire to the degree desired for the piece you wish to place.
2. In the build menu, select the piece you wish to scale.
3. Press the buttons or keys to enter Edit Mode and Wire Mode simultaneously. The base building UI should indicate that you have entered Wire Mode but showing the square and center dot of the Edit Mode. If you see the wire connector as the cursor, the next step will fail. Start again.
4. Place the cursor over the scaled wire and press the button or key to duplicate the wire.
5. Move the cursor to the surface on which you wish to place the scaled object, and click to place one end of the scaled wire, then pull the wire just a little.
6. Press the buttons or keys to leave Wire Mode and to place a part, simultaneously. If you get the timing right, you will have placed your desired part, scaled.
7. This piece can be picked up and moved around, or duplicated and copies placed, and the new size will be kept.

Caveats: The part to be placed must be placed in Free Placement mode. Using Snap Placement will result in losing the resizing of the piece.