Build Mode Functionality Update and Preview (Patreon)

All screenshots and gifs in this post are done in a test scene with temporary textures, without our fancy lighting and other special effects.

Hello again! Jérémie here to talk a bit about build mode features and functionalities. This is something I’ve been working on in the past weeks and I wanted to keep you updated on some of the functions we have at this point in the game! This post is for Patrons only so please don't share.

You might have already seen some of these features in a previous video or Patreon post but a lot of work has been done to add functionalities, to make them compatible with other aspects of the game (we need to support undo/redo, for instance), to make them more user friendly and to optimize them. We also need to test every feature for weird edge cases, which can take a lot of time as well!

Please keep in mind that everything here is still subject to change (especially how much things cost and how the interface elements behave) and is for Patron eyes only!

First off, the goal of the build mode is to allow players to build houses the way they want without being constrained on a grid with specific angles and wall orientations. With that in mind, we’re thinking about all the different ways we can help players create beautiful buildings without too much hassle. One of these ways is to have good snapping tools and helpful angle widgets.

Using the angle widget, you’ll know when you have a perfect 90 degrees angle. The game will also snap the wall to help you.

Helpful lines will tell you how far you have to go to connect to other walls when you are placing a new one. Please note that there’s a setting to measure in feet instead of meters.

You can see this in motion here!

Wall height can be changed so that each level of your house has the perfect height. This is done with some simple buttons right now, but it could get changed in the future.

Floors can have various heights.

You can see this in motion here!

Regarding our split level tools, they’re pretty simple to use. Right now you need to create walls around your future split-level, raise or lower the floor and then tweak the walls as you see fit.

Step 1: Draw a room

Step 2: Raise the room

Step 3 (Optional): Delete walls

The sky is the limit in the world of split-levels.

You can see this in motion here!

You can change the color and materials of whole walls instead of having to do it tile by tile, so changing the feel of your entire house should be pretty easy and quick!

Painting a wall green.

You’ll be able to paint different sections of walls with different colors if you decide to split a wall in vertical slices.

Painting the bottom half of the walls yellow.

You can see this in motion here!

And of course, everything I’ve just talked about works with curved walls as well (some bugs remain at this point, but we’re working on them)!

You can do split levels and use the painting features even on curved walls.

You can see this in motion here!

Please keep in mind that we’re also working on plenty of other things that might pop up in the future, like having a grid to help you build your walls, improved wall models (to make sure they connect to each other seamlessly), having an interface to pick textures and colors for your walls, etc.

That’s it for me today! Before I go, here’s a quick recreation of my own house, done using the build tools we have at the moment! It’s a bit empty right now, but it is done pretty close to scale!

I can see my house from here!