🔨 Many Improvements to The Build Mode, Thanks to Our Playtesters! (Patreon)

Hi!

Anna here, today I’ll show you some of the improvements we made recently on the build mode!

As you may already know, we are focusing on the build mode these days and to help us finish and polish every aspect of it, we do in-person playtests with friends every month to gain feedback from real players. These feedbacks help us to improve existing features but also prioritize features that are lacking. Sometimes playtesters bring forward issues that we never thought of; things that seem logical and intuitive to us devs might not be for new players. 

Note that this post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you!

New Item Widgets: Resize, Scale, Rotate, Move 

The existing widgets for modifying an item (resize, scale) were not always super intuitive to some of the playtesters, so we improved them:

We replaced the blue circles with arrows to help players understand that these are for resizing items because it wasn’t obvious to our testers.

We added an arrow icon to the yellow scale widget so its purpose clearer. We also added a rotation and a move widget because players had a hard time understanding how to move and rotate by directly clicking on the item once or twice. Now, there’s another way to do so! 

New Item Size Selection Menu

Players didn’t realize that some objects were resizable. In addition to the resize widgets, we decided to add a new menu to show size variants for an item in the build mode catalog. This way, you can easily see which items are resizable directly from the catalog (thanks to a button with a “resizable” icon) and you can choose one of the predefined sizes for it.

Resizable beds have a special icon on which you can click to place the item in one of its predefined sizes directly. You can still resize them as you wish after placing them!

New Item Variant Menu

Making the size selection menu also gave us the idea to do the same for different variations of the same item. For example, there are different types of kitchen counters (with or without drawers, kitchen islands, …) and there are also different styles. Sometimes it can get a little overwhelming to have them all displayed in the build mode catalog, so we also made an item variant menu to help with that!

Instead of having to scroll the 60 counter options available, you can now choose the style of your counter first and its type afterwards, in the item variant menu!

New Video Tutorial Tooltip

Some of our building tools are a bit advanced for regular players and might need extra help to understand, especially for features that are not usually present in other games, like the tool to place curved walls. That’s why Alex made this very useful video tooltip because sometimes an image is worth a thousand words!

The grid to place walls can be toggled on or off, as shown in this tutorial tooltip.

Improvement on Eyedropper Mode

The Eyedropper tool now shows the thumbnail associated with the item just like the one in the build mode catalog. It also opens the catalog in the correct category! You can pipette items, but also wall and floor paints, moldings, fences…

Have you noticed that everything is free for now? Oops! 

Improvement on Windows

It used to not be possible to have a window that spread on two different walls, but now it is, thanks to Alejandro and Jérémie!

You can now create big windows that extend over multiple floors! (Note: the floor has no thickness for now, but it is still a work in progress!)

Infinite Max Scale and Resize

Items now don’t have an upper limit on how much you can resize or scale them.

Want to have a picnic with your 37 cousins? Now you can, you just have to resize your favorite table to the length you desire! If you have 137 cousins, or 256137 cousins, that will work too, just try to not disturb your neighbors too much…

Improvements on Snapping and Alignment

Some improvements have been made on item snapping and alignment.

It is now easier to place windows that are aligned to each other vertically or horizontally 

That’s all for today! I hope you appreciate these little improvements. 

With more playtests will come more little tweaks and additional features, to make the perfectly well-rounded build mode we hope you’ll have fun playing with! We will do the same for the live mode just after and we’re looking forward to telling you all about it.

Have a wonderful weekend, 

Anna 🌞