Tried searching to see if a thread like this has been made, but couldn't find one. Stop me if I am going over old ground here. Ok, if you have spent enough time in forge, I am sure you have had this happen to you: You have an object, and it is snapped to a rotation angle. For this example lets say it is a XL Ramp that you are rotating 90° at a time. Then you go into the coordinate editor and BLAM the sucker spins around to a different orientation for no apparent reason. I did some testing, and managed to recreate the circumstances that cause this. In the process I may have found the cause of the problem as well. Taking my XL Ramp example, all you have to do is set the rotation snap to something, anything. Then, while holding RT for manual rotation control, start tapping the left stick in a direction. Not enough to make the object enough to actually spin though. Imagine if you needed to move the analog stick 90% of the way in a particular direction, then you want to tap to around 70%-80%. Then, when you go into the edit coordinate menu, the item should snap to a new orientation, despite you not having changed the rotation snap, or actually moved the object at all before entering that menu. So here is my theory: When you are rotating an item in forge, all item rotations have a dead zone that you must pass before the item will actually turn. The dead zone for the manual rotation however, is larger then the edit coordinate dead zone. Think of it this way, say you are trying to rotate that XL Ramp to the right 90° You push right on the left analog stick, and the game starts tracking where the ramp would be moving if you didn't have rotation snap set at all. This is why if you simply nudge the stick a little, then take off rotation snap, the object will rotate. It is rotating to that imaginary degree you were setting. Now, as with all good analog control, forge uses dead zones. What that means is, if I wanted to rotate those 90°, I will actually have to rotate past more then the halfway point (45°) to actually get the snap turn to kick in. The reasoning for this is if there was no dead zone, and you let go right when the XL Ramp turned, the act of letting go of the analog stick too quickly might make it register the slightest nudge back to the left, as the stick is coming to a rest. The dead zone prevents your imaginary rotation going from say, 47° back down to 43° just because you let go of the analog stick too roughly, thus causing the item to spin right for a moment, then instantly back left again. Instead it makes you go as far as, for example, 60° to the right before the snap kicks in. What appears to be happening is, that if one rotates in a direction enough, you might pass the halfway point but not past the dead zone. In our XL ramp example, you may have made it only to 49° lets say. But when you go into the coordinate editor, it recalculates where the object is supposed to be, and it considers that imaginary rotation to be closer to the right spin then the left, and so it rotates the object. But from what I can tell, this isn't 100% true, as the objects don't always spin around one rotation at a time. I have had objects spin around on multiple angles, and farther then a single turn would have allowed. So something else has to be going on here. Perhaps the dead zone has its own built in dead zone, so that you can rotate an objects imaginary degree, but if you are not rotating it enough at one time, the spin will never kick in. That is to say, if you tilt the analog stick just the slightest bit it will allow, it might do this. Now, here is where things get really crazy. According to my testing, not only does forge save the actual coordinates of every object, it also saves these imaginary rotations as well. So if you put on rotation snap, tap in a direction without passing the dead zone, then save your map... get this: That rotation will still be there when you load up the map again. Go ahead, try it. Load up forge, put on rotation snap. Take an object and tap the analog stick while holding down RT. You can test to see if you are doing anything by taking off rotation snap while holding the object, it should spin to your imaginary rotation. But give an object an imaginary rotation, let go, then save the map. Load the map back up, but the rotation snap back on, and grab the object. Then while still holding the object, set the rotation snap to off, and viola... the object will snap to your imaginary rotation degree from before you saved the map and exited out. I intend to do further testing, unless someone else out there already knows in great detail what is going. Thought I would just shave my findings here.
Wow, This is actually a great theory I have never actually been able to puzzle out why this happens but after reading this it does make a lot more sense.
Good findings! I've experienced things like this a lot and couldn't quite pin down what was happening. Mainly I've noticed it a lot when you switch from one rotation snap to another, or from rotation snap on to off - the object would sometimes move even though seemingly it shouldn't. The game must save the background rotation value and then a rotation snap setting, and when it's snapped it doesn't actually rewrite the rotation value itself. Weird logic.
This makes sense. But... why does Forge save the imaginary rotation at all? Even in the session? I often want to rotate something, say, 100 degrees; it's a pain in the ass when I set Rotation Snap to 90, rotate the object, turn it off -- and it suddenly rotates on its own to the "imaginary" rotation. The "dead zone" is a useful feature that allows analog rotation to work, but making any use of the "imaginary rotation" (beyond facilitating use of the dead zone) is simply idiotic and annoying.
well like it makes sense in a programming way... like the variable angle = 83 but since rotation snap rounds it to 90 it doesnt change the variable just how its displayed (idk why bungie wouldnt make the variable change...). So then when the restriction of rotation snap is lifted, it displays the angle at its value, or 83 in this case.
Ok, just did a little more testing that raised more questions then answered. I had a few objects that would once again snap to a new rotation when I went into the edit coordinate screen. The strange thing that started happening is that if I immediately backed out and then back into edit coordinate, sometimes it would snap back to it's original placement, sometimes it would rotate even more into the phantom direction! Strange stuff, more testing required, but right now working more on actual maps then forge theory.
In thinking about this, I may have figured out why bungie might NOT have though this was bad. Its something that seems to be overlooked by the other posters so far. Ever get so fast with the controls that you accidentally changed the rotation snap and said "Well, grill my biscuits!" when you change the snap back, you still get what you had before, which can be VERY nice. Although I do agree that they might have overlooked the snap back thing, which is the topic of this thread, OR they didn't think it was a big deal, as most times you can easily rotate it back(unless you had it about 34*,-72*,167* then people get angry)