PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Esthurin on April 09, 2005, 09:13:46 pm
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In this game, eventually players will have houses. Now, what would be nicer than allowing the players to build their own houses? In order to allow any player to build his own house without forcing them to learn some serious 3D modelling skills, a construction set will be needed.
One of the best construction sets I know of is the morrowind construction set. It allows you to build any structure using pre-made building blocks that fit together seamlessly into a 3D structure. For instance, a floor, a wall, a cooridor, etc - The game has a large number of different styles and a complete set of blocks for each style, allowing you to build basically anything.
OF course, planeshift is an MMORPG, and while in morrowind cheating by making mods hurts nobody, in planeshift some careful measures aught to be taken to make sure the system is foolproof. A number of things have to be taken into account.
First, any player will only be assigned a certain amount of land that can be edited, land which must be bought IC. The construction itself will be done OOC, but might take time and money IC too. Also, the exterior building style will be determined by the location of the land bought, and certain problems, such as the maximum size of the exterior structure, may have to be addressed. All buildings should fit the general style and feel of the area they are built in.
Interior areas should not be limited by any regulations. Just allow people to build what they like - It\'s their area and they should be able to build it the way they like it. However, only static objects and furniture should be created in the editor. No NPCs, objects that can be picked up and sold, etc...
This would give players enormous freedom to build themselves a nice place in planeshift, without unbalancing the game too much. It would also allow players to help the devs in creating new towns etc without having to be experienced in 3D modelling. There is one problem however: All mods created by any player have to be transferred to all players. There is a way to do this: A good version management program. The good part is that a mod file can be extremely small: It can consist of a list of references to objects. For the references, a few fields would suffice: Position, rotation, size. Even for a large mod with hundreds of objects, such a file would not exceed a few kb. This can easily be downloaded on a need-to-know basis, i.e. when the player comes near to or enters a structure.
I think such a construction set would be a great opportunity for planeshift to become truly unique, unlike any MMORPG.
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Well, PS levels/areas are created using 3DSMax. There\'s no way we\'re creating a whole new 3D modelling program when people can just use that.
We have other user development applications planned for the future- an effects editor, quest creator, and possibly others. This will allow the community to focus on creating content for the game, giving much more time for the developers to code new features and abilities.
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I\'d rather something be built into the game for house building so that you can make a \"custom house\" in the game somehow, maybe by making you have to make a house bit by bit instead of just placing a full premade house on the map.
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^^ yeah i would like to build the house IN-GAME i mean i hear much talk about using a 3-d editor for making house then turning coat and talking about \"immersion\"
Yeah how immersive\"Aye ive bought be land time to build it\" *leaves world... opens 3d program*.. wow this is an immersive experience..
i thought building a house would be the pride of getting the stone and wood from hours and hours and HOURS of training your masonry and carpentry and lumberjacking and quarrying (it would take a long time after you bought to the land to learn to build on it anything more then basic shacks.. not only making the building skills valueable but bringing great satifaction to the build) and then getting iron and begging a passing smith to make nails.. or train even longer and make them yourself etc.
Not spend 30 seconds finding a stone colored skin a wood colored skin setting up polygons etc. that is like the antithesis of planeshift in my opinion :rolleyes: taking people out of the game and robbing them of a huge RP oportunity (barn rasing anybody? *hey know a good carpenter? Yup my friend so-so is great at it! Well we\'ll also need some ale.. Hey why not invite the barkeep?!*) so on and so forth
Or the hard job of building a skant hut just to stay alive then spending most of your \"life\" (many, many, many game hours) trying to build a house on your own as you RP the loner/dont have friends etc.
\"And thats all i have to say abot that\" -Forest Gump
I was going to go on longer with housing ideas... but i\'ll just make my own thread after a while with all my ideas.. not hijack this one :)
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Foresteer is right, it would totally be kool if we could build our own houses in game, personally I feel only guilds should be allowed to build their headquarters which has living quarters for all or whatever, but then again I guess that would encourage people to think theyr HAVE to join a guild, so I don\'t know.
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If people just uploaded, it would be mas chaos. Think of it. Soeboy is bound to try to add a 50 story tower
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true, you would find futuristic skyscrapers next to paganistic sacrifice temples, it would be pandemonium
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Hence having stuff made in game.. heck you can even train is building different styles of wall (didnt i see architect in the MB skill list?) so houses can be different.. kinda like learning different wall/window/door/etc. \"recipies\" like red paint plus large plank = red large plank.. red large plank + metal hinge = hinged red plank on make it into a door that way or something
cant make a skyscraper that way :) though i think they should in the end go up to maybe four stories (of course hiring the people to build even 2 would be hella expensive.. think more like biggest guild is PS castle kinda costs for 4 levels..as it would take more exp in the carpentry or masonry to build higher up)
And why not have building HP? so building can be tore down by enemies.. also means more demand for builders.. (oh wait.. better just make a new thread before i get off track)
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Ooooh good idea, when/if the devs implement the guild wars and so on that would be a great feature
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Hmmm... an in-game \'barn raising\'. That would be interesting. Like if you needed 5, 10, or 20 people besides yourself to even start construction, depending on the house size and design. People with the skills needed for building and finishing.
Look though some of the other house building threads (there are many) and see what ideas others have come up with.
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I agree with xordan fully. This is not a one player game like morrowind where you only effect yourself...I would rather have the house thing in-game.
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Btw, the idea would be that you pay other people to help make your house for you :P I don\'t want everyone to have to be a master building/carpenter/miner/etc.
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Originally posted by Moogie
Well, PS levels/areas are created using 3DSMax. There\'s no way we\'re creating a whole new 3D modelling program when people can just use that.
We have other user development applications planned for the future- an effects editor, quest creator, and possibly others. This will allow the community to focus on creating content for the game, giving much more time for the developers to code new features and abilities.
they could use Blender (http://www.blender3d.org/), too.
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Originally posted by Under the moon
Hmmm... an in-game \'barn raising\'. That would be interesting. Like if you needed 5, 10, or 20 people besides yourself to even start construction, depending on the house size and design. People with the skills needed for building and finishing.
Well yeah it is sweet... but you don\'t NEED anybody to start building ANYTHING in fact some of the best buildings and architectural acheivements have just been one guy working at it for years :)
I mean give me 20 people i can raise a barn in a day
10 a day or two, But i can always just raise the barn myself in about a week :/ (just the shell the inside stuff takes the longest.. just need to make it where it can stand and take the weather)
Also a basic twigloo/dig a small cave/hovell (nothing fancy in the least) can be managed by just about everybody XD so everybody wont have to be.. but they all could do the basics, i mean building/finding shelter is a basic skill all intelligent and semi-intelligent animals posses so :rolleyes:
But i think anything above a twigloo should take a long long long long time (like even a cabin can take WEEKS.. not in modern life but.. just felling and cutting 1-2 logs can take all day especialy in medieval times)
You need to strike a balence sure.. you dont want everybody to to build anything but everybody has to be able to build something (how can you keep your head dry?)
Also kinda ties in with another idea i had about some \"sims-esc\" bars of food, water, heat and cold (maybe sleep?) as in you would need special clothes to keep from freezing/burning to death in certian climates/seasons, and special building types for different climates to accomodate your needs (IE. a cabin is nice and warm for the forest especialy in winter.. but in a desert you would burn to death in one.. not to mention the trees are nowhere to be found)
Reason i say we have said bars.. it adds a lot.. realisticly and RP (HELP HELP my friend seems left for a quick desert trip and i haven\'t heard from him in several hours! he didnt pack much water and wasnt dressed right! *rescue mission = Hella++RP*) also another reason we shouldnt have tells (damn all me ideas interject its hard to keep em on topic ;( ) also we will NEED some housing or at least access to shelter.. especialy during rain extreme temperature (heck if your homeless just duck inside the tavern :D )
see just some little things to help \"force\" RP in a fun way that adds emotion into it (i\'ll make a thread sooner or later and stop veering off i promise :P )
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Btw, the idea would be that you pay other people to help make your house for you I don\'t want everyone to have to be a master building/carpenter/miner/etc.
Pay others or threat them :P
Evil players can do that... eheh
/me notices that he has been having lots of evil ideas lately although he\'s good aligned so he gives the \"The Devs want a realistic game\" excuse.
I\'d rather something be built into the game for house building so that you can make a \"custom house\" in the game somehow, maybe by making you have to make a house bit by bit instead of just placing a full premade house on the map.
I agree, but when the buiders can er... build they\'ll have some sort of in-game tool to do it, right?
There could be some \"standart\" wall, roof, etc... textures and models. For a more \"custom\" house it would have to be made with 3ds max...
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You\'d have premade bits of house done for you, but you choose where those bits go.
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Heyy thats and idea... i could set up a carpentry shop in a town and sell prefab house parts :D (hope the implement that :) )
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Guilds would probably get one of their own to become a carpenter, and if so then they may offer their services to make money, you would be in for some stiff competition
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ooohhh kewl :D
Speaking on constructing stuff, what was the polygon limit for buildings (or whole regions) made by players? Just wondering... I can\'t seem to find that anywhere...
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Moogie:
I don\'t think it\'s very realistic to expect people to buy a professional software package like 3DSMAX that costs thousands of euros, just to build their own buildings... I can imagine you guys don\'t want to code your own 3D modelling software. Blender would indeed be a nice alternative.
But what would be needed in order to allow people with limited 3D skills to create their own buildings, is a planeshift toolkit: A set of high-quality building pieces (textured meshes which fit to each other) which anyone who has done a basic tutorial in a 3D modelling program is able to piece together. Such as the morrowind CS provides. Of course, these premade meshes could be provided for blender too.
By the way, to the people who would like to build their own buildings ingame: I would prefer that over an editor any day, but that would be extremely complex to code. It would of course be possible to sell housing parts ingame, but that would hardly be realistic or even better than an editor. I find it hard to imagine a more realistic approach...
If people just uploaded, it would be mas chaos. Think of it. Soeboy is bound to try to add a 50 story tower
That\'s why I propose to allow players to build structures out of premade blocks: for instance a tower, a domed structure, a piece of wall, a window, a bridge, etc. That will limit the exterior size of structures easily enough, and has the essential advantage that you don\'t need to download entire meshes and textures when you enter an area: You just need to download a references file to meshes already on your harddrive, packed with the game. And to prevent that someone builds a 50 storage building through abuse of building blocks anyway, there could be a maximum height included too.
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umm... there is a distinct option that might help... you could redo the ui so that it\'ll be easier to use, but a full 3d app that is open source could be a option.... look at blender ( http://www.blender3d.org ) and it\'s dev site ( wwww.blender.org ) for details... oh, and note that the crystalspace support for it is somewhere in the projects list.
some random notes:
blender has support for 3ds, lwo and wings3d... and it is a fully featured multifunctional app.
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I got both 3ds max and blender... think belender has a converter to the format Crystal Space uses.