House expansion and my opinion on it

[Snowy Nights]

So imma just get down to it. The whole house expansion system isn't all that great. yard expansion is ok, you get a lot of open space compared to Portia. But expanding your house itself is too wonky, if you want a 2nd floor good luck because the foot of the stairs love to be against the walls of the interior and as far as i tried you can't really rotate the stairs inside the building. On top of that it seems you can't use the home edit in construction junction to edit the interior. Then there's the issue when placing the roof, not sure if its a bug or not but once you place it you can't really click on the roof to resize, rotate or remove it, you can only remove it by hitting the undo button. hopefully soon we get an update for home expansion because it really triggers me seeing the foot of the stairs to the next floor up against the wall.

[Snowy Nights]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zaris:

- you can select the roof, did it multiple times myself
- you can move / rotate the stairs inside, there are models which fit against a wall, others need a tile space towards the wall to look good
- rooms can be aroudn 11x11 tiles big which is imho enough for decorating (beds are maybe 2x2 tiles, tables 2x1 or something like that)
- if you want a "bigger" room make 2x 11x11 blocks besides each other and put a wide doorway between them

But yes some improvements would be to allow the players to create even bigger rooms over 11x11 and with the options to remove the floor so you can make i.e. a great hall but that's the problem if you have a small team with limited budget and Sandrock overall is already a budget game (20€ is not much against AAA titles which want 60-80€).

actually i've tried to select the roof many times and instead the game just selects the whole building the roof is attached to, though as i've mentioned what i've experienced is probably a bug.

[Piperbird]

I've tried building additions and just gave up. I'll leave my house small. The whole system is a bit frustrating an unintuitive to use. If they redo it some day I'll play with it again. If not, the starter house is just fine by me.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DarknessShallFall:

I do think it would be nice if you could choose to move your entire house, doing this, maybe it'll give it the ability not to move the staircases around as for I think that is where the problem stems from. Because if you move a floor, the staircase will try to connect to the other floor no matter what, and once you move the other floor, the staircase will go where it can fit, if, while moving it, if there is no place for it to connect, the staircase goes away until you finish moving and then re-connect wherever. So if you can move the whole house, including furniture and things attached to it, that should hopefully remove the problem of the stairs moving, and throwing your furniture about.

DSF, I think you've hit on the key problem here. The system doesn't build one house, every room on every floor is an independent unit. A "house" on their own. So there is no way for the software to treat it as a single unit to relocate it on the map.

[Bored Peon]

They simply need an option for people who want simple pre-made structures.

I like having the ability to spend time and customize the house, but I would prefer a simple upgrade just as much.

[Aerogems]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dex:

3 things I think could help improve the situation with houses:

- the showroom as is needs improvement, having to build a large number of individual items as requirements defeats the purpose of the showroom imo

- portia upgrading for those that don't enjoy the building system would be amazing

- keep the building system, but make it a bit more intuitive/easy to use. Right now a large number of players ignore it because it's so intimidating.

FWIW, I largely agree with this.

My ideal scenario would be to have a couple prefab models that you can build for money and materials, similar to Portia, but I have no problem with keeping the existing system for people who want to build elaborate McMansions. Even if it's a one or the other situation, where if you build one of the prefabs you're locked into that route and can't customize the layout, I'd probably go that route personally because it's just such a pain dealing with the system right now.

I'm primarily a controller player, so I have to switch to KBM when doing house renos, because the controller controls are clunky beyond imagining. It's the one real glaring area where controller players are serious second class citizens. A few other areas, like planting, could use with a bit of tweaking, but the whole house building interface needs a top to bottom rethink for controllers. Console players are probably going to be extremely frustrated by this aspect of the game which seems to have been designed only with KBM controls in mind. Which is where prefab models could come in as a quick and dirty fix.

[mitchellrob]

The way the entire house system is set up is the sole reason I quit playing this game. I just wanted to buy a prefab larger house. Not this complete mess of building it myself. It sucks 100% of the fun out of the game. Until prefabs are added then I am done with this game.

[Frieren]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von mitchellrob:

The way the entire house system is set up is the sole reason I quit playing this game. I just wanted to buy a prefab larger house. Not this complete mess of building it myself. It sucks 100% of the fun out of the game. Until prefabs are added then I am done with this game.

You have to click onto the roof directly in order to select the roof. i found this out after many tries, so i turn the camera, and click on the side of the roof (i always use the triangle roof) and it selects it ...
you quit the game just because of the house building? ... there are pre fab houses already made in there by other players, you just have to select it ...

[Ihateeverybody]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dimensional Traveler:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ihateeverybody:

They can't fix problems if they won't get honest feedback. Not saying you have to. Just saying constructive criticism isn't being disrespectful.

Alright, its wrong from the ground up. Their basic concept is flawed. The angled isomorphic view/interface worked (barely) in Portia because you were just moving fixed items around, not changing existing structures. It is also difficult to use and SLOW in Sandrock. I think they need to remove the entire thing as it stands and rebuild from the ground up. (Puns not intended.)

Go with a top down blueprint interface, allow the player to draw/add ALL that they want to change or add before executing ANY of the changes.

And I am aware that it is far too late in development for that change to be made.

So expanding on that idea about a Blueprint interface. What if House Building was more like Building on the Assembly Platform.

This is very Rough and people should definately speak their mind. Bear with me, this gets involved. And it won't be an instantanious thing like it is currently.

So here is what I am envisioning.

Planning: You go to Heidi. The Current Home Edit Table is scrapped and replaced with a Drafting Table. Heidi is the interface for designing your house. This could also incorporate Pre-Built Sectionals for those who want them or allow a freestyle option for those who want more creative control. Like you said, it would be a top down Sketched out Plan for a lot.

Prep Phase: In this part, you would go to your lot and ensure nothing conflicts with the white fuzzy outline of the Plan (Moving machines, Garden Plots, whatever is in the way)

Build phase: Currently every thing we do on Home Edit (With the exception of certain tab with Assembly Platform and Animal Homes) costs money. What if instead you could provide materials to offset costs (there would still need to be money because there would be worker NPCs actually building your plan same as with the Bridge).

Depending on the work being done from Minor changes to Major Building, it can take days to a week.

Good Idea? Bad Idea? Likely too difficult to implement this late in the process. I am also sure there would be an uproar over the involved process instead of the Instantanious changes we have now.

Mostly it's to get the conversation going on changes.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Not a bad idea IMO. If nothing else it would give us a use for all the wooden boards and bricks we accumulate. One question, where does your character sleep while your house is being built/rebuilt?

[Frieren]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dimensional Traveler:

Not a bad idea IMO. If nothing else it would give us a use for all the wooden boards and bricks we accumulate. One question, where does your character sleep while your house is being built/rebuilt?

Rent an apartment where Grace and Ernest and all the rest of them stay ... ?

[Morvoldo]

The House system is a better improvement to what it was in Portia, and i don't have a problem with it, other than the Stairs, the only stairs that seem to work are the square ones (1 half up and 1 too the side) the others Don't give you much room at all as are too close to the walls, The best thing they can do is make the stairs slightly smaller in terms of size as making the rooms any bigger will take up alot of space, Shrink the stairs down by a size to fit rooms better, plus if we can have two of those types in a room we can then add a Multi floor stairway like in the Apartment building. Other than that i like the design our home bit they have done. Just needs a bit more of a Polish and it would be a really great system, plus when they add more things like in Portia to put the stuff we get in game, Like clothes and items. as the book shelves are a bit rubbish.

PS i have played this on my wife's account as she has both :)

[Ihateeverybody]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von KarmicRequiem:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dimensional Traveler:

Not a bad idea IMO. If nothing else it would give us a use for all the wooden boards and bricks we accumulate. One question, where does your character sleep while your house is being built/rebuilt?

Rent an apartment where Grace and Ernest and all the rest of them stay ... ?

Or you know, I hear tell of an Inn/Hotel in town (with 2 empty rooms most of the time)

[Belz]

I agree the building system still needs a lot of improvement, but I don't feel it's all that bad. I'm an architect irl and I've played a lot of games that has this kind of system, so I'm comparing to a lot here. Honestly, all you need is patience, for both professional tools and games systems. In Sandrock I was able to make a nice house (even tho I still hate all the wallpapers deeply) even with the limited budget I had at the time. Took a couple hours to figure it out but it worked just fine.

BUT given that no one has the obligation to have the patience and even less to like building systems, I 200% agree that pre-built options should be given. It can be really frustrating for those who don't like it. The showroom is already there, so maybe that's already a work in progress. If not.. please do? haha
Also would be better to be a "naked" house instead of a furnished house. Or, idk, pushing some buttons: give both options?

And if it's not asking too much (given the time and team effort) please also give us more furniture, specially for a kitchen. I was impressed with the furniture and general designs inside the NPC's houses, it's looking quite nice, so it would be awesome to be able to use them aswell. xD
Also a wood wallpaper that doesn't look so broken pls T_T

[Zeesha]

Balconies that we can put stuff on like in Portia... Missed that being brought up in this thread? (might have read to fast)

I can make doors out onto my roof but not put anything there :/ Still. PLEASE would love to even do just that. Even a "We are looking at it" would be: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! Thank you!

I would take a pre-done house like in Portia if it had that over the current system. Yes, I like balconies.

[Coltrek]

Maybe a better example is a section clicking, a wall, door or floor etc, like they have it in Fallout 4 or No Man Skies.