Hey everyone, A22 is finally on Steam Stable, so let’s switch our focus this week to one of the team’s long-term projects: fixing building, from the fundamentals. At Pax East last March, while watching you guys struggle through the building process in personal, Chris (finally? it was a long time coming) flipped a metaphorical table over building’s general fragility and horrible UX. He said, and I quote: “I will not go one more PAX having to apologize constantly for this (insert colorful word) system.” So there! In the background, on a separate branch, he nuked the original building infrastructure and started over with everything we’ve learned over the last few years. This was incredibly dangerous AND ambitious, given the years of fixes poured into the existing building system, but in the last three months he’s made incredible progress. Let’s check in on how he’s doing!
Warning: this is a long-term project that affects all of building. We will not put this in the game until it’s much, much more stable than it currently is. In a completely unrelated side-note, we will not be attending PAX west this year.
This was simply a great DT! I look forward to see more about the new editor an system. Compared to conversations, i am ready to spend many weeks following the progress of this
8 high 4 wide 5 long tunnel, with pillers on both sides (mined into the wall, and a beam across the top. built to make my mines feel more like mines.
the hearthlings generally stop when trying to build the top bar do to it being right against the roof. I also tried to build a “building” into a mine and once again the roof didn’t place.
simple problem the hearthlings do not like or seem to be able to place blocks above their heads. the suggestion is simply to allow them to place above them though that may also require work as you may have a hearthling box themselves into a death box.
ok this is the easiest way to replicate with out requiring to much work. hearthlings never mine or build above their heads.
would suggest a few items to help with this.
ability for hearthlings to mine upto 2 blocks over their head and ability to place as well.
items for building underground like an improved x-ray function or a clipped cammera which can not pass through walls and allows easier navigation of caves.
I’ve tried something similar in the past by shoving a prefab Rayya’s template into the side of a cliff face. I have bug reports with details of the outcome using the existing build AI (you can guess how it went; I’ll edit this to include a link in a sec Sadly, I can’t seem to find it now ).
What I did was dig out the precise dimensions of one of the RC prefab buildings, and then attempted to place the ghosted building within it. I did finally get it placed, but the builder at the time couldn’t figure out a solution that wouldn’t strand at least one hearthling between the rear underhang and the rear wall. I also had to help them by manually adding/removing ladders here and there.
To be successful, Hearthlings would have to be able to build the template almost entirely from the interior of the space, from the outside in. If memory serves, they didn’t do too well placing the roof blocks either, because it too was flush up against the top of the hole I dug.
I’m somewhat surprised that wall/roof concepts were so deeply ingrained in the building system. I mean, Minecraft in already here and it shows actual universal voxels are much more flexible (and true to the RL in you think about it) than artificial human-based division on roofs/walls.
I’m not saying Radiant team did a bad job. I, being a newbie, would probably do the same in their place. Yet I think it takes courage to make a decision about rebuilding something this global from the ground up. Hope they will see it through. As for me, it was a very interesting DT, and while I understand it’s no small task and it won’t be completed tomorrow I’m looking forward to more DTs on the topic.
A current fix for this is apply the command setting int he options menu, and than reload your game, than hold Ctrl+C than select the building, than type ib and press enter.
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which will not be build too