PPG building basics: The Ultimate Guide for Contraptions and Builds in People Playground

This is a very serious and in-depth guide to contraption building in People Playground, it should be all you need to know. In the first 4 sections, I will be introducing the basics to ppg building and some essential mods + techniques. In the other sections, I will be covering specific tips and tricks on how to build specific types of contraptions, so only look at these when you are stuck or need help (otherwise, it's gonna be a long read). Good luck!

Introduction

I believe many people who are playing this game wish that they can build their own stuff, mechs, vehicles, weapons… but once they start trying, they realize that this is not a simple process. Builders of this niche game put hours and hours of work to produce the best quality contraptions on the workshop, and I am sure many of you reading wish to be one of them. So here, I have put together some tips and tricks to improve your skills in making anything in this game.
For the purpose of this guide, I will only stick to building things that are functional and good looking, so I won’t be talking about things like pixel art or mods. Also, I will include several images of good and bad builds from the workshop, I will not include the names of the people who made the bad ones, and please do not harass any of them.

I assume that readers of this guide are people who are familiar with people playground (at least know how to spawn stuff, connect wires, how to make things disable collision, resize things, make weightless etc.) and are ok with putting at least an hour into building a contraption. So if you just downloaded the game, this guide is probably not for you. I also assume you all have the 1.26 version of ppg or newer.

In Section 1 to Section 4, I will be discussing the basics of building, everyone should read these sections. Section 5 and After will be tips and tricks for some particular types of contraptions, you can refer to them when you need to build something in particular.

Also, due to the length of this guide, some sections needed to be divided into 2 because it exceeded steam's character limit. Sorry for the inconvenience.

So let’s get started with the basics.

Section 1: Basics

Frankly, building good contraptions in People playground have some underlying rules, and in this first section, I will just introduce you to the answer of a single question: What makes a good build?



I believe it is 2 things: Looks + Function

Here is a reference image, of a not as good contraption, and a good contraption


These are 2 attempts made by me to build the same mech (the first was made 6 months before the second). We will use this as reference when discussing the 2 criteria

1. Looks
This defines how aesthetically appealing something is. Looking at the reference images, it is obvious that the mech on the right just looks more aesthetically appealing than the one on the left. There are more details, more effects, more lights, and it's just aesthetically appealing. The one on the left however, looks plain, lacks detail, the weapons are generic, you can see wires everywhere, the feet actually look like crabs, and generally, it doesn’t look great. I guarantee you that more people will download the mech on the right than the one on the left if they were both on the steam workshop.

How do you make something better? Well, some tips in this guide will help you, but an important step is planning. If you have just a rough sketch or a reference image when building something, it will make it 10 times easier. If you are building something that appears in another form of media (e.g. tv shows, other games etc.), then you should find a reference image in your planning stage. If you don’t even know what your contraption will look like when you finish building it, how can you make sure that it looks good?

Layering plays a big role in the looks department too. If you are making a humanoid contraption, it should probably have one arm layering over the body, and one that is layering below the body. If you are building a mech with arms, then probably they should follow the same rules. If you are making a motorcycle, its wheels should probably not be on the top layer.


Also, you should think about this question when building: Are the majority of people seeing my contraption going to feel like this is something cool? If the answer is no, then probably rethink your design

If you are building something that people know about (e.g. a famous character / vehicle), then when you finish, ask yourself “does this look accurate to the source material?” If not, remake it.

After your self-reflection, if you believe your contraption is cool enough, try to get some other people to see it, they can provide you with more tips and suggestions.
When you are sure something looks the best it can look, it’s probably a decent contraption.

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2. Function
Function describes the inner workings of a contraption. As we all know, ppg offers a great amount of machinery items, and for the most part, we can make contraptions that can work in any way we want. Hence, a good builder makes sure that their contraption serves the purpose of its creation.

For example, if we look back at the reference image, the mech on the right has a working walking mechanism, a charging railgun, a working cockpit door, and a secondary turret. The mech on the left however, only has a working cockpit and some barely working legs. The weapon is nonfunctional(as mentioned before), the legs sometimes just break, the contraption overall doesn’t work that well. Given they are the same mech, it's quite easy to decide on which one is more accurate and has better quality.

Evidently, function also defines the quality of a contraption.

Honestly, there are not many tips I can give for functions, as every type of function needs to be made differently. But what I would recommend is to first think about what your desired function does, and consider what Items in people's playgroundpeople playground (or combination of items) do the same things.

Now some may say, some functions are just impossible to make, like a transformer (as in, robots in disguise, not a power plant) for example, there are way too many parts that need to be moved when transforming, what do I do then?

In such an instance which a function of your contraption is simply impossible to make in ppg, then you have 2 choices
Either:
- change ideas.
or
- fake it.

As a famous People Playground builder once said “if you can’t make something, fake it”
Here are some good examples of faking a function in people playground.



This is my contraption of Adam Smasher, a cyborg from Cyberpunk 2077. Here let's take a look at the rocket launcher part of the build. Conventionally, the rocket should be supported by these support arms. But due to people playground physics, I can’t actually make the arms do the work, as they are not strong enough. Hence, I used a piston to push the launcher up, and made it invisible. After that I attached the arms in a way so that they fold and extend to accommodate the position of the rocket launcher. This creates the illusion that the tiny support arms are raising the rocket launcher, where in fact it is the hidden piston.

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Ultimately, a good contraption should at least have a few functions that make it interesting and bring fun to whoever is playing with it.
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- Summary
In general, a good contraption has both good looks and well-made functions, although some contraptions /builders tend to specialize in one category, they at least are ok in both.
Yes, I understand this entire section gets confusing, and it just makes you wonder what really makes a good contraption. How about I describe it again by comparing 2 contraptions



This is an R2D2 contraption I made in version 1.23, it comes with taser, laser, fully automated tilting and moving gimmick

In my modest opinion, I think it looks ok at least, it has good functions, and generally I think if a person were to download this contraption, they would like it, so it is probably a good contraption. It also looks a whole lot like R2D2 in the movies as well.



This is a contraption named R2D2 I found on the workshop
Honestly, I don’t want to trash talk anyone, but does a human rolling on a wheel look like R2D2 at all? Does it look good at all? (it sure looks creepy). I can’t say it has good functions because it doesn't seem to have any sort of gyroscopes or any devices that would keep him from falling over, and the human will prob die in a few seconds (he has bandages and no syringes were attached to him / her). Hence, this doesn’t qualify for a good contraption

I do admit that in this instance the maker of this particular contraption probably can’t make a contraption like mine, because in that version when he made this, Resizable housing hasn’t been added to the game yet. But through this comparison, I hope the things that make a good contraption are obvious to you, and you now know what to aim for.

Section 2: Essentials

In this section, I will talk about some essential tips and tricks on the skills / knowledge required to make a good contraption. There are quite a number of things so please take your time to read.

2-1: Essential mods
Mods are an important part of people playground, however, it is really annoying for a player to download your contraption from a workshop, and then realize that there are mods that they don’t have. Sometimes, your contraption doesn’t even need a mod, but because you left it on, it can cause inconvenience for other people. Hence, make sure your mods are all turned off before a build (unless you really need a particular mod).

However there are 2 essential mods you need to get from the workshop (this is only personal recommendation, the makers of these mods have nothing to do with this guide or me).

- The first is the invisible wires mod. (link）



This mod allows wires used in game to be made invisible if the key “K” is heldpressed when attaching 2 items with a wire. If a player who doesn’t have this mod downloads a contraption that uses this mod, they will still be able to spawn the contraption (unlike many other mods) and wires that are invisible will still appear invisible to players who don’t have this mod. This mod is recommended because wires (especially the rigid wires and fixed cables) don’t look good on contraptions, and they can cover up some details.

This mod is essential, so if you don’t yet have this mod, it's probably time to download it.



- The second mod is the “Make Anything Invisible” mod (Link)



Similar to the invisible wires mod, this mod allows you to make any items invisible. It works even with people who don’t have the mod downloaded. It adds an extra button in the context menu to make an item invisible when right clicked. It is recommended because it can make your life easier if you need to add something with an ugly texture onto your contraption without ruining its looks.

Unlike the invisible wires mod, this mod is not a requirement, but I still suggest it.

Be warned: For some reason this mod breaks the detail view (press s in game) menu in game. Most notably, body parts that are invisible will not display their health bar in detail mode view, so you might not want this.

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Subsection: Introduction to Items and Wires
Of course, if you want to build anything in game, you need to connect items with wires. For different builds, there are often different items that you will need to use. In this section, I will only be discussing some general items that you will likely use in any contraption, and the wires.
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2-2: General items.
1. Resizable housing


- This item is basically a colored square, you can color it to whatever color you want it to have. This item allows us to add any color we want to a contraption, and to make it look goodrealistic.

- This item does have some weight, but it is lighter than other steel items. Due to its role as coloring, it is often used with disabled collision. Resizable housing is automatically on the top layer when spawned, they can be adjusted with the edit layering system in 1.26
- This item can make the game really laggy if there are too many of them.

- This item also has 3 textures to choose from: full outline, 2 side outline, or no outline.



These textures are useful for different things. For example, if you just want to color something, then that no outline texture is probably the best, if you want an outline, probably choose 2 side outlines. If you want to make a box shape, probably use the full outline.

- If we look closely at the items, we can notice that the item has a texture on it. In fact, the texture changes when you resize it. (see below for the 3 textures of resizing)




We can see that the biggest texture (original texture without resizing) has many little details, it looks like a panel. The second one has less details. And when the item is shrunk down further, it becomes a small pixel with a solid color (same thing happens when it is resized into thin strips). This difference in texture is more apparent in lighter colors. Hence, if we want to make good contraptions, it is important we utilize this feature.
It is important to note that even the no outline texture can have a very light outline around the item. This will not be apparent when the item is made really big or small, but it can be obvious when it is right in the middle for size.



Let's take a look again at my contraption of Adam Smasher. We can see that using different textures, I am able to add so much detail to this build. This pretty much utilizes all of the techniques I talked about in this subsection, I suggest you take a really close look.



This is another contraption made by me, it is the robot engineer from team fortress 2. Almost every part you see here is made from resizable housing (including weapons, armor, details created from layering etc.)

Summary: If you need to add colors, parts and detail, use resizable housing.

2. Lights



There are many lighting items in this game, and they have different uses. Honestly, there isn’t much of a rule to use them, it's just about using them as they fit.
Special things to consider:
- If you need a screen, or a small blue light, you can use a hologram and edit the text (common uses include: Digital screen text: “_____” . For Light / arc reactor, text “ ” - basically just space)
- Cathode lights will leave their light effects when made invisible through “make anything invisible” mod. Their lighting effect will always be covered by resizable housing if it is placed over the item.
- All light sources have an area where their “glow” is visible, this might not be desirable for some builds.
Please note:
When connecting catheode lights to an activation module, make sure that the propagation wires connect directly to the lights.For some reason, doing it incorrectly results in the contraption Krakening. So please be aware.

Some examples:


(Build 1 (top left): Robot scout from team fortress 2 by me
Build 2 (top right): Head of Gundam Gratia by Misty Radio
Build 3 (bottom): Jeager Robot made by me, this can be found on Misty Radio’s Workshop page
Build 4 (right): Iron man Mark 3 made by Daewo
Build 5 (the one in a text box): Undyne spear made by me)


3. Steel Bars



These are the most commonly used items for building the frame of a contraption. The Structural pillar (left) has the most weight, while the steel bar has the least, the i beam is in between the two in terms of weight
- The Steel bar can be held by humans – this can be useful when making weapons for humans
- The small I beam have very good bullet and explosion resistance
- The pilar is very useful in buildings and internal frames, however, it is heavy and unsuitable for weapons

Continue to next section:

Section 2 continued

- Gyroscope stabilizer
When the normal gyroscope stabilizer (the one on the left) is activated, it tries to turn it self into the upright position, see diagram below.




This item is commonly used to help a contraption get upright again after it has fallen over, and to keep it in the upright position. Basically, this gyroscope item is not in its upright position, it will try to turn itself back up. The bigger you resize this item, the stronger its stabilizing ability is. (i.e bigger it is, stronger the turning force). It should be noted that this turning might break some contraptions, or even make it glitch out, see Section 3 for details.

- Industrial gyro-stabilizer



This item is used to stop contraptions from falling over / rolling completely. This is because when this item is activated, it is literally impossible to turn it. Although this can keep many contraptions stable, it can make some very unrealistic (e.g. if you use this on a car, then the car probably can’t go down slopes properly)

5. Disassembler



This weapon item can completely remove a part of an Item, such as body parts, vehicle parts, and many other things. This weapon allows us to use items in an unintended way. Here are 3 examples.


The machinegun’s base can be removed


The only human part on my Adam Smasher is the guy’s head, I removed all of the body parts of that human with the disassembler except for the chest and the head, which I then attached onto an android body to make this contraption.


The engine / motor on the left side of my meat grinder is literally a car engine. I am able to remove every other part of the car completely, and leaving only the engine.

Why do we need to remove parts on an item? Well, if we only need one particular portion of an item (e.g. a car engine), we can’t just save it on its own, as the save file will automatically save the other parts of that car as well. However, if we removed the parts we don’t need, then we are able to save the parts we do need on its own.



6. Some other items for function building

These Items listed here are very useful when building any contraption. When you are in the planning phase you should be considering the uses of these items as well. The items listed in this section either have a very straight forward use, or their uses and abilities are quite literally in their in game description. Here I will just give some small tips for each of the items.



- Winch - Despite the game saying that its cable can be extended by electricity, it is also possible to use a red activation wire to move the cable (as it “toggles an internal battery” – this might not be clear when you read the description). A normal activation signal (green) will change the winch’s rotational state (extending or retracting cable)

- Power sources – Make sure they have collision disabled, as they can kill a human / android easily, and it might conduct electricity over metal items it is touching (this can destroy your build). Also, connecting a lot of activation wires to an Electricity Transformer can create huge amounts of electricity.

- damping box: it basically dampens movement when it is being dragged or pushed: it can be useful when making things hover, or adding air brakes. It can be powered.

Summary:
In general, People Playground has a lot of Items, and when you are planning a contraption / building a contraption, you should take every one of them into account. The items I have covered in this section are the ones most commonly used, especially the resizable housing. Building contraptions will become a lot easier when you have more knowledge over the items.

Lastly, remember that other item textures can be used to add more detail to a build, such as pre-existing machinery or items.
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2-3 : Wires
There are a lot of wires in this game. Here I will quickly talk about them and some tips and tricks:
- General tip: if you are using the invisible wires mod, make sure none of your wires are connected to the background. It is a hassle to delete wires, and it is made harder by invis wire mod, so when you are connecting wires, make sure to check.


1. Electricity wire – simple transfer of electricity. Note that the invisible wire mod can hide the wire, but when it is powered, the electric particle effect can not be made invisible. If you need that to be invisible, I suggest using the breakable copper wires, as it can be made completely invisible.
2. Blood vessel wires and ropes: These have limited functions to building, however they can both be made invisible completely, so use freely. They can also be used to restrain the movements of certain parts
3. Rigid wires – Very straight forward, I believe everyone reading knows what it does. The only tip I would like to give is that heat pipes (which belong in this category) can’t be made invisible with the make wires invisible mod. So you have to make it less obvious. Often this can be quite hard.


(arm section of Trub / Bob return made by Daewo)
4. Propagation wire (activation wire) – comes in red, blue and green activations. Note that activation signals can be passed through objects if the signals are of the same color, but not if the signals have different colors. Some items also have different functions depending on the coloring of the activation signal. This can be useful in some builds.


5. Fixed Cables – these are also very fundamental. Just make sure you don’t accidentally connect anything to the background and you are good to go. Ignore the size of the wire as wire textures are scaled with the object they’re connected from this does not impact the stats of the wire and is just purely for visuals.


- Note that for some builds it is more appropriate to use the destructible variants (e.g. cars, planes or other vehicles etc.) and for some it's better to use the indestructible variants (mechs, human / android sized robots etc.).

6. Springs – self-explanatory, just know that the spring has some very specific uses that I will cover later, and the springs have the tendency to remain in the length at which it was connected at. Also, strong springs might break your contraption (too much elastic force causing the parts to glitch out) and bandages should never be used in builds unless they are for detail


Some examples of the use of wires on a mech.

Build: Legion titan (Kuben Blisk custom version) made originally by Misty radio in a very early version of the game, and edited by me.

8. Mechanical belt – used to make 2 rotating items rotate at the same rate – mainly used to make tank treads or to add detail. It is also possible to make gear systems using these belts


9. Phase link - used to make 2 items disabled collision to each other.

- My Team fortress two Sentry lv3 contraption that uses collision to limit the movement of the sentry gun.

Section 3: Building

In this section, I will be talking about the physics of people playground, and how it applies to building. I will also quickly take you through the main 2 stages of building: Frame + Exterior cosmetics.

3-1: The fundamental rule of contraption building, and the use of structural frames
This rule applies to any contraptions and any build, and it should always be remembered when making or designing anything. The rule has 2 parts, it states that:

Since heavy Items will give the fixed cables a more secure connection,
1. Any contraption should have an internal structure (from here on it will be referred to as a frame)
2. The materials of such an internal structure must all be heavier than the external elements (details, resizable housing etc.)

Why is this rule needed?


（Build: Typhon Robot (from a game called war robots [p.s. not sponsored] Made by me.）

First of all, most contraptions need a frame. A frame or internal structure should be a rough outline of your contraption made with the three types of steel items mentioned in section 2-2, 3. it can include other items such as weapons, pistons, living things like humans and androids etc.). This is like the skeleton of your construction. A frame should come with the majority of the functions that you expect your final build to have, and if it is meant to be enabled collison, then you need to make the frame have enabled collison. For example, if we refer to the picture above, the frame of the mech I am trying to build is on the left. We can see that I have made the weapons, the rotors that they are mounted on; I included the mechanism for an opening cockpit door, a chair for the human, working eyes; I also finished the moving legs and attached them.

When you are making the frame, you should be checking the following things:
1. Does it have all of the functions planned for the final products?
2. Does it have all the key triggers that you wish to use?
3. (if required) Can a human interact with it correctly?
4. Is everything in the frame made of heavy parts?
5. Do the parts that are meant to have collision have collision enabled?
If everything in this list checks out, you are good to go for the frame.


Answers to some questions for Contraption frames:

Question: Why do we need to make the frame? And why make it heavy?

Honestly, making a frame isn’t technically required, but it helps any contraption to stay in shape and stay stable. People Playground has a very special set of cable physics. When a bunch of light things are connected to a heavy thing (with no connection in between each of the light elements), it tends to stay stable. Vice versa, if a bunch of heavy things are connected to a single light weight item, the cable connection won’t be stable, and the contraption will glitch out like what happens in this picture.

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to by builders as “glitching out” or “go Kraken”(kraken comes from kerbal space program). Sometimes if you are not careful, this can happen to your build; and if you didn’t save it, good luck starting from scratch. I assume you don’t want this happening to your build.

However, since the frame is made of heavy elements, when it is connected by Fixed cables, the connection will be very stable, making the frame itself stable. When external elements like resizable housing are added, since they are lighter, they tend to be more stable, as they are all guaranteed to be connected to something heavier to themselves. Hence, making a frame can make sure your build is stable for use, which makes it a must.

Question: What happens if I am building a contraption that is an outfit for a living thing / humans?

In this case, just use the human as the frame and add things over it. If you are using an android, and you want to make it more robust, I suggest adding some steel parts onto it. There are a few examples on the next page.

Examples of frames in contraptions made by me



Below are a few reference image that describes correct and incorrect cable connections



- If you want to test if your contraption has any incorrect cable connections, try dragging it with your mouse or spinning it around in mid air, if your contraption starts to shake and jitter around randomly, then there probably is a bad connection somewhere.


Section 3-2: External Cosmetics
After you end up with a frame, it's time to make your contraption look cool, and look like how it is supposed to look. Now it's time to make the exterior cosmetics of your contraption. This should be on the top layer of your contraption. Remember, in the frame section, I mentioned that the frame should be heavier than the exterior, hence we should only be using light elements when making this portion of a build. Imagine the exterior cosmetics as clothes, and the frame is just the person inside. Once the person wears their clothes, they are ready and they look cool, just like a finished contraption.

When making this section, I highly encourage you to revisit section 2, when I discussed the use of lighting items and resizable housing. But I also encourage you to think outside of the box, and use other items to create different textures and details on your contraption.

Remember: the whole point of the external cosmetics is to make your contraption look good, so:
- If you have a source image which you are basing your build upon, then you should aim to make your build look as close to the source material as possible.
- If you don’t have a source image, and your build is completely original, then it should have some attention to detail.

When making the external cosmetics:
Simply pause your game (space bar), spawn and position all of the parts into the shape that you want it to look like. After that, connect these parts to the relevant sections of the frame, and move them in the correct locations. Like in this reference image:

(remember to use invis wire mod)


- Coloring
Coloring is also an important aspect of any contraption, it gives it a personality. Aside from the contraption that is based on something else, original contraptions give the builder the freedom to color it however they want to. It is important to decide this beforehand, as changing the coloring of resizable housings can be quite annoying, depending on how many you have.

General Tip:
Think about (or research to find out) what type of coloring is used for the contraption you are building in real life (can also be the color you see people use online). It will make sure you have the right colors. You can also use an Image to 6 digit color code converter to find a particular color. (Sometimes due to some rendering issues in People Playground, colors don’t exactly match their color codes, so I suggest you use the converter to find a reference color, and start from there and find a color that looks like the image.)

Also don’t forget to do a “test run” of your contraption after you finish to make sure it works as intended.

- To be continued

Section 3 continued

Here is an in depth look at the creation process of my Adam Smasher build. I will describe the particular steps I took and which section of the build this belongs to.



Step 1: Main frame - Frame category
Since Adam Smasher is a human who has undergone extreme amounts of cybernetic enhancements, I decided to make him with an android as a base frame (androids are quite heavy, so it is fine), and attach a human head to it (for the iconic look). When I started, the android’s proportions were normal, but after a bit of building, I resized its body parts to make them work better.
Step 2: Secondary frame / armor - Frame category
Due to Adam Smasher being very buff and having tons of health in Cyberpunk 2077, I decided to add a secondary frame that consists of some steel beams and some bulletproof shielding for both explosion and bullet resistance. I attached the parts to the android mainframe after I finished resizing the parts.

Step 3: Internal weapons - Frame Category
After finishing with the 2 main frames, I made the frames for the missile launcher and the hidden arm cannon of my contraption. I made sure they work as intended, and attached them onto the arm and chest of the android.

Step 4: Armor - External Cosmetics category
Since my frame is 100% finished at this point, I made the external layer of my Adam Smasher. For this particular build, I started with the head,gave it the head of a mask, added some details like piping, ventilator (all using resizable housings), and attached it to the head of the frame. After that I made the top half of the chest. I started with making a rough outline, and then I added more parts, and more detail. Then it is the arms. I then made the rest of the body, the arm and the legs in a similar fashion: making general outline, adding detail, connecting to frame. For this particular build, due to there being a huge amount of small piping details and also some parts with a drastically different color, I tried to first make the general shape of a limb, and then add details. For the pipes, I often build them on the side, and then resize them and fit them on to my build, this makes the process of making small details easier.

Step 5: Making the gun - Frame + Cosmetics
I made the gun for Adam smasher using a normal machine gun, and I simply attached some resizable housing over it to create the looks and the detail.

Step 6: Fine Tuning
So after I finished making everything, I assembled everything, and tested the contraption’s stability with the spinning method indicated at the end of section 3-1. Everything worked out, and I have finished making my contraption.
(2023 Bytemanager here, as of right now, ppg's updates have brought new piston physics, meaning Adam Smasher now Krakens :( I am working on a fix but it haven't worked so far.)

I hope this example of my building process offers some help.

Section 3-3: The curious case of “Make Weightless”
When right clicking any item, I am sure most of you have come across a button called “Make Weightless”. When pressed, the item’s weight is greatly reduced (contrary to the name, it still has some weight), and it behaves as if it is under an environment where there is no gravity. Seemingly, this function can provide a huge benefit for us builders, as it allows us to make heavy items lightweight, and to use their textures without causing weight issues. But, when an item is made weightless, the game registers it as having a tiny amount of weight, meaning, any wires connected to it will be weaker than it used to be, which can cause problems, especially when that item under the “Make Weightless” effect has collision, in which case it can cause your contraption to partially or entirely glitch, which is not good.

Also, if your contraption is made with destructible wires, when these wires are destroyed, any weightless items will literally start to fly everywhere, it causes a great amount of lag (if your pc has low processing power, like mine) and looks very weird. (see picture below)


These reasons caused many experienced builders advising new builders to avoid using this function completely, or to avoid using it as much as possible. Although it is a good tip for beginners, I still think this function should be used in some circumstances. Below I will list how and when you can use make weightless to enhance the performance of your contraptions, they are the rules when using the make weightless function.



The rules of using make weightless:

1. Only use weightless items when making the “External cosmetics” layer, and make sure that the only wire they are connected to is the 1 cable connecting them to the frame.
2. A weightless item should not be used if: 1.The item is light weight normally without weightless 2. is used as a part of the frame 3. is an important part of a mechanism (e.g. pistons, rotors servo etc.)
3. You should not make any items weightless unless there is a major weight issue in your contraptions. (e.g. it is too heavy for its size or it can’t balance itself )
4. Avoid making weightless items have collision (if you have to, make sure it doesn’t glitch out under impact)
5. Avoid making items that touches the ground weightless (like the foot of a mech)


Summary section 3:

Steps to building:
Heavy frame → light external cosmetics → testing
Making sure your contraption works:
Correct wire connections + correct use of make weightless

Section 4: Settings and Context Menu

Coming to the last section of our basic guide applicable for any contraption in people playground, let's talk about some things in the settings of this game that can influence the quality of your build. The two main settings that I will be talking about are the collision quality and Physics iterations.



4-1: Physics Iteration

This setting basically changes the accuracy of the physics of people playground, and this subsequently affects the strength of wires and the collisions of parts. When the iteration count is lower, wires will have less strength, and parts will start to collide into each other in a weird way, springs will also be weaker in their elastic power. In higher iteration count, wire connects will be stronger, and items will have realistic collisions. We can see the difference below in the 2 reference pictures.


128 iterations

5 iterations

(Build: Atom robot from Real Steel by Daewo)
We can see, on 128 iteration counts, the robot is standing up quite well and it looks pretty realistic. All the connections and wires are secure, and nothing falls apart.
On 5 iteration counts, the strength of connections and wires are drastically decreased, this causes the robot’s parts to flail about and it doesn’t really stand up right. Also, the effectiveness of the gyroscopes which are used keeping the robot standing is also reduced, causing the robot to fall over.

As we can see, the physics iteration settings can impact building performance.

Generally speaking, the heavier a contraption is, the more it will be affected by the change in physics iteration. From my personal experience, I find that a contraption light in weight will still be stable even if we change the iteration count. However, a heavy contraption’s stability can be affected by both an increase and decrease of iteration count.

Hence, I recommend the following for your physics iteration setting:
1. You should never select a physics iteration count that is below the default (16)
2. The best iteration count to use is 128 (maximum is 256 but it costs a lot of processing power, not recommended but optional) as even the heaviest items will not encounter any trouble in this environment
3. To test if your contraption works in a particular iteration, spawn it in, and if your contraption starts to glitch and wobble violently, it probably doesn’t work in that particular iteration.
4. When posting a contraption, kindly leave a suggested iteration count in the description. And remember to read descriptions before downloading another contraption from the workshop.



4-2 Collision Quality, Ambient temperature transfer, and other important settings.
In this subsection, I will just be quickly going over some settings and what you should do with them.
1. Collision Quality: Just keep this on dynamic for better performance
2. Ambient Temperature transfer: Although keeping this on is more realistic, this setting can break some contraptions and make some functions impossible to make, especially when there is a human around
3. This is not a setting, but it is a limitation of the unity physics system: if you multi select and resize something, you can technically make it as small as you want. But after it gets to a certain size, that object will be too small to interact with and will fall through the map.

Section 5 Summary of the first half of guide

So, you have reached the end of the first half of this guide, which totals to about 7000 words long as of now. Congratulations, you are 100% ready to start building, and I can’t wait to see your builds (if you ever upload them to the workshop). No, you didn’t just waste several hours of your life reading this, because if you can grasp every bit of information conveyed through these 7368 words, you will (or have already) become a proficient builder, whose builds deserve at least 2000 views on the steam workshop page. I wish to say my thanks to everyone who finished reading this, because I understand how hard it is to read slabs of writing, and I appreciate every one of you who value my work.

Now, every section you see after this point will be some dot points on some tips and tricks for a specific type of build, I suggest you only refer to them when you are building a contraption in that category (or you get stuck on making something). I will also be showing off some great builds in these categories.

Section 6: Human sized robots and characters

1. For the frame, just use a human or android, especially if you just want a human to wear some clothes. The human and android’s health with make them destructible and realistic
2. Just use resizable housing for the external cosmetics
3. Make weightless can be useful, but be careful
4. You can make parts tiny by group resizing if u need to
5. you can use a life detector to turn a robot’s eyes on and off
6. Feel free to resize limbs to make custom proportions (can cause weight problems
7. In recent updates, when a limb is resized, it makes the human / android’s walk animation break, so if you want them to work properly, try not to resize limbs or move them around too much
8. The points of articulation are located here:


Examples:

Adam Smasher (again, By me)


Team Fortress 2 Robots (all of them are by me)


David Martinez (By Misty Radio)


Trub / Bob Return (full android build by Daewo)


WarHammer 40k Space Marine made by me, based on a design made by Kitchen_ability1313


Servo skull from Warhammer 40k, by me. This is a really small build, which uses a human skull as the base. You can burn a human, and then place resizable housing over the exposed skeleton to build an accurate skull.


Imc rifleman from titanfall 2 made by me, the leg strap is made Peter_Tench, his design is way better than any of mine, so I used it here. (Peter, Sorry and thank you, if you ever see this)

Section 7: Mechs

1. Make sure you are using fixed wires when connecting stuff
2. Make sure the frame is sturdy and can withstand some weight
3. Make sure it has a cockpit, and a human can be attached safely (use immobility fields, dampeners or gravity)
4. There 2 two really good mech builders in the people playground community, they are Daewo and Misty_radio. Check their workshop for more
5. There are 3 possible ways to make a mech frame (BIpedal).
- Daewo style: it holds the mech up through the use of a bunch of normal gyroscope stabilizers. (watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILa3oCjPL_8&t=535s, this will make your frame) This frame can be unstable, but it allows the mech to fall over and freely move its limbs around
- Misty Radio Style: The mech is held up by industrial gyroscopes, and its legs are connected together, with springs connecting these into the crotch section of the mech, so the legs can be dragged. (Check out Misty Radio’s mechs: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199069659163/myworkshopfiles/)
- Walking style legs: These legs are made with Rotors, and they are able to walk. Often they are made with Klann’s mechanisms, which emulate the walking animations of animals. (Check out these builds: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2881369678, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2796143025; for uses of Klann’s Mechanism, check out: Nelthy’s workshop at: https://steamcommunity.com/id/NelthyIsSoDamnCool/myworkshopfiles/ )



Example of Klann’s Mechanism

Also, I recently invented a hybrid form of Misty’s and Daewo’s leg designs for mechs. Essentially, it is made just like misty radio’s leg design, but I swap out the industrial gyroscope for a normal one. I made it so that this gyroscope is barely strong enough to keep the legs in place. This allows for a more dynamic posing of the lower leg and will make your build look more natural. This technique might not work for 100% of mechs and will be really messy with decals turned on. But it is always worth a try.


(David Matrinez cyberskeleton from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, made by me)


Gundam S - Deep Striker - made by me. This build is a massive build with 1000+ parts, it mainly uses servos to move round its limbs

Section 8: Weapons

1. Use a weapon that is available in game as a frame, and add functions like barrel expanding / extending, blow back from recoil etc. via the use of pistons (in the weapons section)
2. Only make a weapon that fires like a weapon available in people playground (for accuracy and avoid reloading), unless you are making weapon mechanisms (in which case I suggest you check out Break action Noob’s channel at : https://www.youtube.com/@breakactionnoob, his gun builds are insane)
3. You are not limited to using Resizable housing as external cosmetics (e.g. use a clamp as a silencer and slap a resizable housing over it to make it look cool)
4. Avoid using a full black color (000000) on a gun. Even if a part of a weapon is meant to be black, try using a dark grey color. (I recommend “2b2b2b”) It just makes the contraption look more natural, and it fits in with the theme of people playground.
5. To make a human hold a custom gun you made, drag the internal frame (i.e. an in game weapon) into the human’s hands, press f or activate, and then drag the frame back into the external cosmetics, and then move the entire weapon into the human’s hand (see image below）
6. It is possible to remove parts from sentries / cannons with multiple parts through resizing a part of it (see section 4-2) or by spam clicking the disassembler to make a part disappear.
How to hold a custom weapon:



Examples:

Militech MK31. HMG made by me


Railgun cannon made by me


Bolter gun from Warhammer 40k, made by me


A bunch of Tf2 weapons I made

Section 9: Vehicles (ground / hover / flight)

1. Generally, if you want to make a realistic vehicle, it is suggested that you use steel binding, as they are destructible. The more you use these wires, the harder it is to damage the vehicle.
2. Despite not being as strong as other wires, it is still recommended to use steel binding to make the frame of the vehicle. This allows the vehicle to be fully destructible and more realistic. However, if you want to use rigid cables, its ok but generally people don’t use this much in vehicle building unless you are using thrusters.
3. Rule of thumb for steel bending: the more binding you use, the stronger the connection. This connection strength is not about the strength of the individual wires, but more about the connections between parts in general. This is important to keep note of, as it is often beneficial for you to make some connections stronger and some less strong. (p.s. the correlation between the part’s weight and wire connection strength still apply here).
4. Based on rule 2 and 3, if your build requires the use of gyroscopes for tilting, it is recommanded that you use fixed cable and directly connect the gyroscope to the frame for better performance
5. For all types of seating, make sure that you are leaving enough room for the largest size of humans. It should be noted that sometimes resizing the seats make them have very weird physics and humans can’t sit in there properly, so it is suggested that you do not resize them
6. Also, note that some heavy weaponary will have a very strong recoil and might impact the performance of your vehicle. Also, remember that weapons have a certain travel speed, and it does become faster with the vehicle’s moving speed in people playground (this is different from real world physics, and some how also applies with lasers). Therefore, you should make sure yout vehicle is not too fast.


- Ground vehicles
7. If your vehicle uses wheels, note that there are 3 ways to make working wheels: 1. use a pin to attach a wheel (no power, suggested for front wheels) 2. use motorised wheels (powered, inbuilt suspension, good for back wheels) 3. Wheels connected to a rotor (slower, heavier but more stable, useful on tanks and heavy vehicles or to make treads. This does not have suspension)
8. For the best performance, it is suggested to make sure your wheel line up with its center of rotation. You can use the detail view (press s) to see the center of mass of the wheel, make sure that point is the center of rotation. (you only need to worry about this if you are using a pin to connect a wheel or you are connecting a wheel to something else that rotates it).
9. you can attach springs to wheels to enhance their suspension (use the method mentioned in no. 8)


(A car from cyberpunk, made by me.)
- Heavy vehicles + treads
10. You can make treads in two ways: 1. using the mechanical belt 2. using steel parts and wires to make working ones yourself
11. The mechanical belt is suggested for builds that rely on good traction and stability of the treads. Simply make one wheel that is powered, and connect it to all other wheels in something similar the following configuration (i.e. 1 thing rotates, everything else rotates because of the belts)


(credit to Sd.Kfz. 251 by Котофей)

12. The working treads similar to how treads work in real life (i suggest researching it for better understanding). They are good for accurate builds that are not to heavy (if your build is too heavy, it can glitch through the treads). If you want to use this technique, it is suggested that you try it first, and if it doesn’t work, go use the mechanical belt. An example is sown below


(credit to T-34 85 (Soviet Medium Tank) by CyberPlays26)

13. It is suggested that when powering ground vehicles, do not use anything more powerful than a generator, because power corresponds to how fast the car travels, and in ppg, physics breaks down if something is traveling too fast.

- Flying vehicles
14. All vehicles that can fly must have some sort of “seat belt” system that keeps the human on the pilot seat (the human will die without it), it is suggested to use immobility fields (it gets stronger the more electric power it has), or simply use the copper wire attachment.
15. If you want to make airbrakes, you can use Dampening boxes (their effects also get stronger the more electric power the object has)
16. With these types of builds, you can alter the orientation of the contraption by connecting it to a rotor and an industrial gyrostabilizer, like so:



- hovercrafts
17. To make things hover, there are 2 main ways. 1. Hover thrusters: these provide basic hovering that has some altitude fluctuations (your contraption will go upland down constantly), the strength and height of this item can now be toggled by electric power and activation signals (see in game description). 2. Perfectly powered propellers which happen to negate the contraption’s weight force. This will look better than a hover thruster, bus I have not seen this done ever. Yet, it technically is possible. I will also mention the use of thrusters here but generally they are not used for hovering, and similar to propellers, technically possible, never done before.

Example:

(speederbike, made by me)


(some spaceships made by cub 6, some of them uses thrusters as hover devices, but they also fly)

- Propellers
18. There are two types of propellers, the blacks ones lift, and the grey ones push. So with aircrafts you generally want to use the black ones. These in game propellers don’t look that good, but we don’t have any other options and can’t really make our own. You can however, make fake propellers and make the working ones invisible, which could be a good idea.

Example:


(credit to Western Company cargo bo made by Kuvalda_Burgundy)
19. If you want your flying or even ground contraptions to fly with no visible particle effects, you can use propellers to move the vehicles (e.g. making a jetpack). These propellers can also be powered, which varies their strength
20. This is especially relevant to helicopters: Do not use a normal gyroscope to make tilting / throttle, ppg game physics does not take this nicely, I suggest using the method mentioned in tip no. 17

Thrusters:
21. There are many types of thrusters, including: 1. Thruster - basic thrust, mid power, good for most builds that need a bell thruster 2. Mini thruster: Not very powerful, used to push small objects or cars 3. Thruster bed: Despite its size and massive thrust, don’t forget you can resize them, they are not only good for rockets, they can be used similarly to normal thrusters when resized. 4. Ion thrusters: The only thruster that do not burn humans or produce heat, good for jetpacks 5. Jet engine: easily breakable but very powerful, can be used similar to a thruster, but you need to be cautious of temperature, collision and if the thruster is too powerful.
22. As a summary of the above points, most thrusters can be used for the same purposes, so if would be a good idea to consider how your contraption’s thrusters / thruster flame should look like when choosing which thruster to use
23. Thrusters produce more heat the more electrically powered / stronger they get, so cooling is a must
24. Note that thruster flame does push all items with collision back, so be careful. This can ruin your build if you are not careful and the contraption krakens.
25. Thrustes break very easily, for convenience i suggest just making them indestructible.

Section 9 continued

Wings

I believe this is hands down the most complicated people playground object in game right now. The following information may not be entirely accurate, and might be subject to change.

26. There are 1 wing item, and two modes it can be in. The left is the wing, which tgries to lift the connected objects upward. The right is the stabiliser, it helps whatever it is connected to remain in the same altitude.



27. Generally, the wing is used for takeoff and landing, while the stabiliser is for mid-flight. This is done by connecting wing(s) to a rotor and switching between the two modes using the right click context menu. (However, I am yet to see a fully functioning plane in people playground that can perform takeoff and landing without causing mass casualties. The above tip is derived from my personal guesses as to the purpose of these items)
28. The strength of the wings’ abilities are determined by their size, however, the larger they are, the harder it is to rotate them. This is a problem that is facing most plane builders today.

Section 10: buildings and maps

1. Try not to use too much resizable housing, because your contraptions are probably going to be very big, and using resizable housing also takes a bunch of processing power from your pc. So using them can cause a lot of lag, which means you should avoid them.

2. Make sure a human of every size can fit, I suggest making the building at least 3 meters tall. This also applies to anything in the house, make sure a human can use it. (unless of course, you are building it for something else).

3. There are 2 types of buildings: destructible and non-destructible. The same applies to maps. It is important to decide which one you are building, because you will need to use different wires (fixed cables or steel bindings) for different types of builds.

4. Other than the type of build, think about what the purpose of your map is. For example, if your building is made to be destroyed, then probably don’t use too many wires.

5. Features in a map or building are also very important, such as places with lava, water, gaps etc. . Therefore, it is a good idea to think about how you can use the in game terrain to your advantage. in my build of 2fort, I know a part of the map is a sewer system and has some water in it, so i spawned it in a map with water and made sure that it is possible to submerge a part of the map within the water

6. Sometimes, if an item has its layering set to the very top, it can appear on top of the water filter, which makes an item look like it is outside of water, despite being submerged. So make sure you don’t do that and sort out your layering.

7. Speaking of wires, having a lot of steel bindings connecting the same parts will not make the connections stronger, but it might increase the durability of the build because you have to break more steel bindings to actually separate the two parts. This is just something you can try to do if your contraption keeps falling apart. Normally, 1~2 steel binding is enough.

8. If you want to make doors (which sadly don’t exist in people playground), you can simply use a wooden item and make it have no collision. Alternatively, try other doors, like a piston sliding door. I wouldn’t recommend using mods just for a door.

9. If your building is destructible, or you use steel bindings, try hiding it behind parts, even if you have the invisible wires mod. This is because for some reason, invisible wires mod cannot remove the texture of a steel binding correctly after an item is spawned in.
Section: 13 Vehicles example of a piston door

10. You can recreate the black floor of the map by using resizable housing, but it does make the game lag a little

Overall, I have to say I am not very good with making maps or buildings because I don’t have a lot of experience with it. However, I believe that these tips will help you when building a map. Again, experience is very important, make a lot of maps and buildings, and you will become good at it.

Examples:

2fort from tf2 (by me)


Sniper Tower from “meet the sniper” made by me


A very nice wooden build by Stranger, check it out here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958241464&searchtext=

Section 11: Builders ads / stuff to reverse engineer

Phew, it's almost over! Before I conclude this guide, I will introduce a few notable builders / content creators in People playground and I will include what they specialize in. Please feel free to go search them up and reverse engineer their stuff to learn from them. They are listed in no particular order.

Misty Radio - mechs of all kind, especially gundam and Titanfall mechs

Daewo - a very famous youtuber in the ppg community for his great videos. He also makes great contraptions as well, everything is available on his steam workshop page.

Betta: Quite a skilled builder who specializes in complex mechanisms and accurate interior design. I recommend his “Project Aventador”. He also has a server with many great builders on there.

Nelthy: Again a great builder of many things, especially mechs. I highly recommend his contraptions if you want to build a non-humanoid mecha.

Noob: Another youtuber, he makes a lot of guns with actually working firing mechanisms accurate to real life. Search “@breakactionnoob” on youtube if you want to find him.

BrickRigsPlayz: Vehicle specialist, he makes a lot of great destructible vehicles with interesting details.


- These are just some people I know. If you want to see more builds, try going on to the steam workshop and look for some quality builds yourself.

Section: 12 Conclusion

Welp, that’s it! You have finished reading my guide. Thank you all so much. Honestly, I have a few extra sections planned for this project, such as how to build mechanical systems, potions etc. However, due to time constraints and my lack of expertise in these fields, I am not able to include them here. Nevertheless, I hope my guide can be of use to all of you, whether you are a total beginner or an advanced builder who wants to enhance their skills. Again, I appreciate all of you for reading this guide, and this is Byte manager, signing off.

[DINOPIZZAROCKET]

theres a mod you can use to make the builds not have the "this contraption requires" thing:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947471983&searchtext=remove

[woven moments]

so when i saw the mechs i skipped to the comments and i cant tell the difference ok i'ma go read some more

[Fluffythrone]

I'm gonna be honest, I skipped and instantly went to the comments

[Bytemanager]

intern 443, turns out I still remembered I made this guide. Uh evidently yes the chat is dead. However, I will likely not make a section on boats a I am not much of an expert in that field. Generally speaking, boats = a normal built (with what ever materials you like) + a bunch of floating barrels at the bottom

[intern number 443 (CEO of dying)]

1 question and 1 request.
question: is this guide chat dead?
request: could you add a section about making boats or water vehicles?

[Bytemanager]

Also, this error happens sometimes when you copy weapons attatchments, see if u have these

[Bytemanager]

SUPERPROT the contraption saving error could ba caused by a lot of things. I would advise you to mainly check if any mods are enabled. Tip: if you can copy and paste something, it means you should be able to save it, so try copying and pasting diffetent parts of your contraption. If the game doesn't paste what ever you selected, it means one or more parts in that region has an error.

[PROT]

Id like you include a section for how to do the contraption saves correctly. For example, when i need to save something with any NPC, it says to me: CONTRAPTION SAVE WITH ERRORS. And i cant spawn it

[Darix]

the gyro stays up the industrial gyro stays at its angle

[Snail]

i dont have the creative capacity to think of something to make, but i have the knowledge of how to make it work.