by
Zathurus
» 02 Aug 2014, 06:49
I watched one of the streaming of an alpha, and in that people put down entire houses as 'built'.
I really think your missing a huge oppurtunity by not having the building be walls, doorways, windows, roofs and floors.
The difference between plopping down a house, all looking the same, and all designed the same, and building a structure are huge.
With pieces that snap together, it should be possible to 'build a house' from many pieces, if it is worry over overhead of there being so many 'individual pieces' that have to have a location recorded, you could easily collate built pieces into one piece during some processing, then render them at one piece till some change is made, or you could link list 'pieces' off of some core piece.
Foundation one, attachment location 12 and 13, piece 7 facing outward.
The advantage, and customization, and feeling of building things really seems to require the ability to build from pieces, and the system to do that does not seem that complicated, simply by first having to 'connect foundation pieces'(and possibly raise or lower ground so they snap together) then having 'attach nodes' between different pieces of what can be added (and different textures for different types of items and different paints) really does not seem to be that difficult considering what it adds.
It also has what you will eventually need for expandability, since with the 'attachment nodes' comes the ability to put things inside of units on walls or floors also.
It also adds the ability of repair and attack, where someone could go through some 'weakest wall' or where a owner would have to fortify some areas more then others (lower walls)
If the clutter was a worry, some physics of needed strength to support levels of elevation, or cost to fortify larger amounts of outer walls, could easily keep bounds on structures. Since the maintance would take resources to counter deteroriation.
I mention this, because if you can adjust the land, you should be able to do more then plop down one of a few 'premade houses'.