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The Art of Still Building and the !grav 0 feature of #cbase bt

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Hi mice! disclaimer: this isn't about saving mice, only about building

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As part of a smaller ongoing series, this time I'd like to write about being precise when you build stuff and how it's possible to build "in reverse" with zero gravity.
Recently, cbase maintiner (and my friend) Cass added a minor feature to #cbase bt, a buildtool module meant for practicing building. I'd requested it long ago after playing around with a little bit myself and it has finally arrived! I've been playing around with it a bit and what I've been doing the most is this:



Where most of the time when you're building, you want to first establish a base, here, you can just slap down whatever platforms mice run on and then secure them after, like this:



and when you turn gravity back on (!grav):



..it falls into place! Sweet!
This gives you a completely new way to build! Instead of trying to building a skeleton for your solid stuff to rest on, you just put the solid planks exactly where you want them and secure them down after :)
I've had fun trying to do builds that don't move as much as this one ended up doing:


(before and after gravity turned back on, overlayed to show how much the build moved after !grav reset)

Like the golden standard of map 66:

without gravity:


with gravity (again, overlayed.. hard to tell this time):


It didn't even budge! There's something awesome in that, to me: that whatever you spawn in didn't move.
It's a bit of a high-level thought in building, I think, the difference between this:

..and this:

in the left picture, you let the plank FALL into place while in the right picture, you spawn it into place without any movement.
It might not seem that significant but all those loosely placed planks add up quick. If you always set things up the way you intended your build to be to begin with, you wouldn't ever spawn a plank in a position where it had to fall.
What I mean is - if you build with intent, if you see your final build before you've even begun your build, you can build more precisely.

As for an example:

grav off:

This is the route I've decided I intend on building for the mice. It gives a me a clear, definite goal: find everything needed to support having planks in this specific configuration. This is where precision comes in handy.

grav on:

It's a radical way of doing things! It's in complete opposition to the "procedural" build where you just start with a base and go off on your adventures. It's kinda like poly bridge, in a way, that you get to put your bridge before it's exposed to gravity and all that.
But it's also a good exercise: practising building in reverse so you get better at planning out builds. Always be a step ahead! Sometimes 7.
Anyway, that's it for this time. Hope for your continued support in writing this :-)