2022_10_23_11_46_35.jpg (97.28 KiB) Viewed 1336 times
As NPC housing in the game is rather minimal I've started working on doing a general overhaul of the buildings. Making them look more lived in, adding clutter, moving quest/NPC markers, adding internal windows to match those on the outside, removing some pointless corridors and closets, and doing a general cleanup.
It's a long-haul project, and probably won't be finished in my lifetime without some serious help, but buildings will be added to my GitHub as I cover them.
If anyone wants to try what I've done so far and report back any issues or suggestions that would be highly appreciated. It would also be appreciated if anyone else wanted to assist and overhaul house blocks for the game. There are quite a lot of them to get through.
Last edited by PRAEst76 on Sun Oct 23, 2022 9:11 am, edited 4 times in total.
I've coincidentally been looking into writing a mod to modify building interiors for all building types.
I was planning on making procedural code-based modifications rather than using prebuilt building layouts.
One of the problems with prebuilt interiors is that they don't take into account factors like building quality
and regional differences.
In Taverns Redone, for example, a low quality dump looks just as nice as a high quality one.
And then there are regional differences, like type/quantity of house plants and other furnishings.
The problem with procedurally generated interiors is that it would be difficult to lay items out in a meaningful manner.
I think the best tactic would be to combine prebuilt interiors with procedural generation.
The prebuilt interior would provide a reasonable basic layout, the procedural generation would make adjustments to it.
For example, 'Taverns Redone' (or Finding My Religion, or your mod) adds tables, rugs, paintings, goblets, plants, etc. to a building.
The procedural code might:
-replace goblets with crappier versions, or bottles.
-replace or remove the houseplants
-remove some of the rugs/paintings, or skew their placement
-possibly replace bedding, e.g. replace standard bed with 4-post bed, or vice-versa
-make lighting changes. A crappy inn might just have a few candles on the tables/floors, a good one might
have a chandelier. (The crappy inn would be rather dark at night)
-add some dirt and filth, and some mice/rats (I've already written that code)
I think that combined approach sounds best. Use some form of invisible markers to tell the generation where the best places are for the objects and the procedural part picks what fits best in the predefined marker spots.
But agreed, houses do not feel like lived in places usually. Feels like every npc is either completely broke or are still moving into their place.
DunnyOfPenwick wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 5:13 pm
I've coincidentally been looking into writing a mod to modify building interiors for all building types.
I was planning on making procedural code-based modifications rather than using prebuilt building layouts.
One of the problems with prebuilt interiors is that they don't take into account factors like building quality
and regional differences.
In Taverns Redone, for example, a low quality dump looks just as nice as a high quality one.
And then there are regional differences, like type/quantity of house plants and other furnishings.
That's a good idea. I'm finding the most time consuming part of this is changing the structure. Placing furniture etc isn't as much of a challenge. Having some kind of marker linked to the building quality that would place items would be good. Though how it would work in practice is beyond my ken. As long as items were the same size and furniture wasn't heavily modified that might work. Things like lights and paintings wouldn't be much problem. rats replacing food items etc.
If your mod was up and running and we had usable markers I'm quite happy to add them instead of furniture/clutter to any buildings I change.
I should hopefully have some basic procedural code working soon (next week?) so you can have something to test with.
I don't think we need special markers at this time, maybe later if a need arises.
I'm writing code to simply swap out certain items (flats and models) and add some filth if necessary.
Making an early mod release. Just one town is covered at the moment and some buildings still need work. This is to give people an idea of what I'm doing and get some valuable feedback.
I'm trying to implement a custom hatch for e.g. basement access but at the moment it's not working as I've got very little experience of C#. The idea is that it works like a ladder; you interact with it and get teleported between the ladder top and ladder bottom markers.
When/if I get it to work I'll probably release it as a separate mod.
I'd appreciate if people report any bugs they discover or suggestions for decor.
Hmm so if you do one city, do some of the remade buildings also appear in another cities? Or is it only to be found in the one specific city? AKA do you have to manually do every building in every city for it to be complete?
King of Worms wrote: ↑Mon Oct 24, 2022 11:41 am
Hmm so if you do one city, do some of the remade buildings also appear in another cities? Or is it only to be found in the one specific city? AKA do you have to manually do every building in every city for it to be complete?
I think any towns that reuse the same building blocks should feature my refurbished buildings, though there is still something like 8000 of them, so it's unlikely this will ever be "complete" unless a lot of volunteers get on board.
Got it, thanks for reply. 8000 in total, but I doubt all 8000 is used? IT feels like the game rotates max few 100s of em, but I can be wrong ofc. Great endeavor man!
King of Worms wrote: ↑Tue Oct 25, 2022 1:33 pm
Got it, thanks for reply. 8000 in total, but I doubt all 8000 is used? IT feels like the game rotates max few 100s of em, but I can be wrong ofc. Great endeavor man!
I'm kinda hoping so. One of the reasons I'm changing them a town at a time, that way I'm updating ones that I know are being used.
