The G-Meister
Giga Slime
I'm liking the housing overall, and some of the things suggested in this thread (particularly Res7's stuff) I'd love to have in a house. Having said that, I don't have much motivation to get to grips with the system if I can't have the right room shapes in which to put the objects. And with that, here's my dump of complaints about the room building and lumber systems.
Having played a lot of Minecraft in my time, I've become fond of building not-so-regular shaped houses. For me, the majority of rooms are never square, and often don't even come to regular shapes at all. They join up in all manner of different ways - some vertically, some horizontally, some with a gentle incline, some with staircases. A floor, where applicable, may not be flat.
Basically, to me, a house isn't just (or does't have to be) a series of interlocking rooms. It is it's own free-form structure that wraps around itself in convoluted ways, where rooms connect in both convenient and aesthetically pleasing ways. With this in mind, here's what I don't like.
Almost the first thing I noticed is that you can't place a room inside a gap left by the addition of a new wall:
It's trying to add this room onto the edge of the wall, which is understandable, but why shouldn't I be able to put it inside that little gap I've made? This is an example of an interlocking room that would give the house that almost maze-like structure I'd want it to have.
I'm pretty disappointed in the lack of horizontal walls. It's absence seems conspicuous to me, would like some reasoning. Also apparently it's been brought up already somewhere, but I can't seem to find that. Maybe it was on the Discord.
This is a minor gripe, but why don't rooms start at their smallest size? You can shrink a new room horizontally by two sections, and get the lumber back for it. It seems like a better idea for rooms to start at their smallest size so, if you're short on lumber, you don't have to get a few extra for a new room of the smallest size.
Why don't we get lumber back from bringing a wall in? The system appears to be 1 lumber per 1 square, and by bringing a wall in, we're restricting the number of squares we can put stuff in. And if we should get lumber back for reshaping, we run into the same issue as above - extra lumber shouldn't have to be put into a room if you're only going to shrink it down again and get that lumber back.
If we compile all these complaints together, most of them can be solved by a change to the way rooms are edited. This is where I propose:
The room-brush tool
What does it do? Well, the whole resize/reshape system could be replaced with a brush-like system that essentially allows you to "paint" your room shapes. While it would still be faster to use a mouse, using this system means you don't have to navigate through as many menus to get the desired result.
Regardless, the brush can be changed into different shapes, eg. cuboid, circular, round-edge cuboid, etc. and resized into however big you want it to be, with each "place" calculating the amount of room spaces needed to be cleared and subtracting that much lumber (or calculating that dynamically and going green/red when placing is feasible), possibly giving you a popup if you don't have enough and asking if you want to buy more. Of course, there'd have to be an opposite function as well, allowing you to place walls and retrieve lumber.
So, to resize, set the brush to a cuboid the width/height of the room, hold "place" and the direction you want to build in. To reshape, set the tool to place walls with a cuboid of applicable size and follow the same instructions. New rooms can be added to any flat-enough surface, possibly also allowing re-connection to other rooms.
Seems like this would make life a lot easier. Would like to know what people think.
Sorry, this might've sounded a bit cynical, but I can't really find motivation to build a house over building one in Minecraft if I can't get nice room shapes to put my objects in.
I had a few extras I wanted to add but it looks like I've forgotten them. Will update when I remember.
~G
Having played a lot of Minecraft in my time, I've become fond of building not-so-regular shaped houses. For me, the majority of rooms are never square, and often don't even come to regular shapes at all. They join up in all manner of different ways - some vertically, some horizontally, some with a gentle incline, some with staircases. A floor, where applicable, may not be flat.
Basically, to me, a house isn't just (or does't have to be) a series of interlocking rooms. It is it's own free-form structure that wraps around itself in convoluted ways, where rooms connect in both convenient and aesthetically pleasing ways. With this in mind, here's what I don't like.
Almost the first thing I noticed is that you can't place a room inside a gap left by the addition of a new wall:
It's trying to add this room onto the edge of the wall, which is understandable, but why shouldn't I be able to put it inside that little gap I've made? This is an example of an interlocking room that would give the house that almost maze-like structure I'd want it to have.
I'm pretty disappointed in the lack of horizontal walls. It's absence seems conspicuous to me, would like some reasoning. Also apparently it's been brought up already somewhere, but I can't seem to find that. Maybe it was on the Discord.
This is a minor gripe, but why don't rooms start at their smallest size? You can shrink a new room horizontally by two sections, and get the lumber back for it. It seems like a better idea for rooms to start at their smallest size so, if you're short on lumber, you don't have to get a few extra for a new room of the smallest size.
Why don't we get lumber back from bringing a wall in? The system appears to be 1 lumber per 1 square, and by bringing a wall in, we're restricting the number of squares we can put stuff in. And if we should get lumber back for reshaping, we run into the same issue as above - extra lumber shouldn't have to be put into a room if you're only going to shrink it down again and get that lumber back.
If we compile all these complaints together, most of them can be solved by a change to the way rooms are edited. This is where I propose:
The room-brush tool
What does it do? Well, the whole resize/reshape system could be replaced with a brush-like system that essentially allows you to "paint" your room shapes. While it would still be faster to use a mouse, using this system means you don't have to navigate through as many menus to get the desired result.
Regardless, the brush can be changed into different shapes, eg. cuboid, circular, round-edge cuboid, etc. and resized into however big you want it to be, with each "place" calculating the amount of room spaces needed to be cleared and subtracting that much lumber (or calculating that dynamically and going green/red when placing is feasible), possibly giving you a popup if you don't have enough and asking if you want to buy more. Of course, there'd have to be an opposite function as well, allowing you to place walls and retrieve lumber.
So, to resize, set the brush to a cuboid the width/height of the room, hold "place" and the direction you want to build in. To reshape, set the tool to place walls with a cuboid of applicable size and follow the same instructions. New rooms can be added to any flat-enough surface, possibly also allowing re-connection to other rooms.
Seems like this would make life a lot easier. Would like to know what people think.
Sorry, this might've sounded a bit cynical, but I can't really find motivation to build a house over building one in Minecraft if I can't get nice room shapes to put my objects in.
I had a few extras I wanted to add but it looks like I've forgotten them. Will update when I remember.
~G