Hi, how’s it going. I suggested this over a year ago on the steam forums, but after watching the building overhaul desktop tuesday, I feel it is time to bring it up again:
- Every block in the game should be put into one of four categories: Foundation, Floors, Walls, and Roofs
- These categories should only pertain to the xray mode and should not have any affect in any other part of the game.
- Each category would have a mode similar to the current “slab” mode, where you can place individual blocks and they will register from whatever category you chose them from.
- Hearthlings should build from the lowest voxel from the outside in, regardless of what category it is in. So they will create the bottom layer, then the next layer, then build scaffolding on the outside of each next layer as needed. Theoretically, this approach should mitigate most of the building difficulties we face.
- Windows and doors should be unbound to walls and should be place-able on any qualifying surface. Again, the category of blocks should only affect xray modes.
- And the requirements of what block can/cannot be built on what block should be removed. Let players decide what they want to see through and what they don’t. So if they want to build a statue that doesn’t disappear, they would use foundation blocks.
- We need an extra building xray mode for seeing through multiple floors. The “Floors” category would refer to this as blocks that will disappear with this new xray mode. Every floor would dissapear, so you will only see the foundation. It might be debate-able that natural blocks should disappear in this mode as well. I see this mode being used mostly to select objects that are in a multi-story building or in a cave.
- The feature of hearthlings building (then unbuilding) scaffolding when they get stuck would be nice in the future as well. It wouldn’t negate ladders because it is time consuming to constantly build and unbuild for each individual hearthling. But it would prevent save-breaking situations.
- Please, Please, Please, just add a few natural blocks in the foundation category so we can replace the terrain. You can take them out again when you add the Geomancer. But we got nothing for it right now.
Love the game. Hope you listen to my suggestions. Even if you don’t like them, I hope the game might still improve somehow because of them or similar ideas. Thanks.
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Ya, just to illustrate the frustration I have with the current building format, I recently tried to build a multi-room, multistory building. But the freestanding walls are useless. Not only can they go only a very short distance, but they also mess up roofs. Most of the time, I make interior walls out of slabs, but it doesn’t always look as nice, and you can’t put a door or window on it. So i tried the freestanding walls this time. But that meant I had to build a roof out of slabs. “Might as well make it look cool” I thought. So I decorated the roof with colors and shapes, but it was otherwise just a normal roof attached directly to the rest of the building. So I began building only to discover that ALL the walls were now gone. They were not getting built. So now I’m back to square one and slab interior walls in a limiting building system.
Theoretically, the system I proposed in the original post should be a lot simpler to program than the nightmare that already exists. Set categories of voxels. Each category is unrendered per toggle of the xray mode. And Hearthlings don’t have to think as hard to build, as they will build in layers and it will be pretty much dumbed down. And building will be much simpler without rules like “must build walls on foundation, or roofs on walls.” I admittedly know only the basics of programming, but theoretically, this process would save you time programming and require less cpu to process less checks.
Also, I was thinking earlier, they don’t need to build scaffolding all around. Just build scaffolding in one location, or a few, and then stand on the voxel that was built there to build the rest in that layer. It would save a lot of time and programing, as they would run through what is accessible instead of auto-building scaffolding before starting to build.
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I outlined a very similar suggestion here
Would love to see this accommodated.
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Have you seen this devstream about the new buildingsystem they are working on @Ketsen_Bacque?
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/150514968
I agree with your ideas and i am sure that we will se something along those lines in the “soon” near future 
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For a work-around build in this order
1 Floor: Foundation > Exterior walls > Roof > Interior walls
2 Floor+: Foundation > Exterior walls > Second story > Exterior walls > (repeat last two steps for more floors) > Roof > Interior walls
And actually for best results I’ve found building a hollow ‘shell’ building and completing it and THEN adding interior walls works just as good if not better. It’s the method I used for this 3 floor farming bunkhouse. (it’s still in progress in game but here’s what I’ve got so far). Here’s the download, for the template if you want to take a look. I make no guarantees of it working to build as it was not intended to be a template.
I’m excited to see what we’ll be able to do when the overhaul is done, but until then that’s the method that seems to be most effective with the current system.
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replacing terrain will be a thing (on your last comment) when they add the geomancer class which will specialize in altering the terrain and controlling magical golems.
The Geomancer won’t be coming for a while, probably a long while. It’s ridiculous to wait when all they have to do is put an existing block, that already exists and functions as it’s supposed to, in the build menu. And, honestly, I’d rather they improve the building system before adding anything else new. To me, the game is mostly about building anyway.
@lionsilverwolf
Thanks for the suggestions. It’ll have to do for now I guess. Nice house.
@Ketsen_Bacque
No problem. I’m thinking of putting up a tutorial for the current system to hold people over until the new system is implemented. Also the terrain slabs mod works great for refilling while the geomancer is away.
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There’s always that one mod that adds blocks with terrain colors into the building editor, though they don’t function as terrain (i.e., you can’t farm on them.) That might be a deal-breaker, but I believe the team claimed that that feature was actually impossible to do with the current setup.
The other main reason I see people say that that mod isn’t good enough is because they want to stick to official content, at least for now, but considering it’s made by @Relyss, it’s as official as it’s going to get until they decide how all this is going to work.
I’m not sure terrain will necessarily be held off until the geomancer, but I’d definitely like to see it sooner. It’s going to take so many design updates before they get to the geomancer at this rate.
Ya, guess I’ll have to live with that mod for now. Bummer you can’t farm on them. I just don’t get it though, they should have programmed each type of voxel separately. They should have the terrain voxels programmed so they are always able to be farmed on. I don’t get how complicated they programmed this entire game. Thanks though.