Cities And Housing Archive

i definitely like the administrable doors idea - adds much to rp and the whole feel of a personal house you own

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a9er wrote:

Hello,

i was sitting in my house and thinking about how the devs could make houses more inidividual for us.

First, donot add features automatically to the house.

Introduce new thing called "house modules"

These modules could be a objects which can be simply activated through menu, or, the feature i like more, thingies which will be produced by architects. With this you can make them a highend priced objects.

These modules, when activated, should add maintenance cost to house pool, so devs will be happy about another money sink

So, lets talk about different modules:

- light intensity - value from 20% to 200% of actual light - sometimes i would like to have nice intime athmosphere with candlelight, but today it is not possible. Next example is related to my other char which is tailor/ID and when i want to look at my customer, i have to ask him/her outside to see under normal light.

- light color - wouldn't it be nice to have yelowish or redish light in your rooms?

- wall color - instead to provide another types of wall textures, which can be really tedious work, how about to introduce that we can change color of wall polygons and give individual touch to our houses. Recommendation is to keep colors to light pale colors, otherwise we will have a lot of dark blue, red or black rooms

- anti npc/animal beacon - i prefer to haveone house outside of city where i can have peace from busy player cities. but it is anoying to be bothered by npcs and animals, when i sit on my veranda or on beach in front of it. I would like to see module which denies spawns to come closer to house than 32-64m (small to large houses)

-balcony item placement - how about placement of up to X number of items on veranda or balcony outside of house? Lets say, 5 items per lot, e.g. 10items for small and 25 items for large houses.

- background music - i see we can purchase jukeboxes since last patch. Why not have a fixed jukebox which stays forever in house, but costs maintenance money

- private/public doors - as with main entrance where you can declare, that house is private or public, it would be nice if you can declare same with every door in house, where you use same options. with that feature, you could have vendors in your front room serving customers, and at same time your private rooms where no one can enter except people on entry list.

- etc. - you will for sure have more ideas related to houses

It would be nice to see that "light color and intensity"and "wall color"modules, could be activated for each room separately, but i think that would be a big piece of work for our lovely devs, who have already a lot of work to do. *wookiehug*

And devs, thank you for all new thinges you implemented for us sofar

Greetings,

Alex

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Great ideas, I like them. Perhaps I will pitch in some of my own later, if I can think of any good ones

With your idea about tinting rooms. I had thought of this myself recently and figured out a 'way' for it to work. Bear with me, this is a little odd.

You add new items to the game. This item is like a transparent shell of a room. One sided (like the paintings are) and when used with a house is dropped in the very centre of the appropriate room.

Essentially, this object is a wall hugging skin that is transparent and coloured (depending on the player's choice.) It could even fade over time to completely colourless if you wanted to create some return sales for Architects.

Elaborating on this, why stop at a perfect skin? (Minus holes for doors and windows, of course).

Have a 'skin' that only tints one of the walls.
Have one that tints the floor.
How about one that adds a mural to the walls.
Or one that adds a border along the room.
Tint your windows?
Paint your ceiling with stars?
Add a decal?

And my personal favourite - one that adds burn marks, cracks and blast marks as a 'decal shell'.

Admittedly, this would require a new object added to the game for each room and each skin-style. Maybe it could be introduced slowly - with (number of house styles) x (number of houses) to begin with, and call them type 1. And you can only have one type 1 in any house.

For example -

I excitedly run home from the local Architect's vendor with a Type 1 (Orange Tint) deed. I have a small generic house style 1.
When I get in, I go up to the house terminal and select the 'room skin' option. It finds any deeds I have and lists them for me to choose.
I only have one, so I select it. It tells me that if I already have a room skin in the type 1 room, it will be deleted and the new one applied. I click 'yes' to continue.
The deed is removed from my inventory and the 'type 1' room for my house now contains the skin! My walls are tinted orange and I bemoan my lack of taste, hastily calling up my Architect friend and begging him to make me a blue one instead.

Some houses, of course, don't have the same number of rooms - maybe a small house only has 2 Types of rooms, whereas a large might have 5 or 6.

With this system, you could slowly introduce the different types of rooms over time as the database space and/or patch space becomes available.

As for the actual creation of the room model - to my ignorant eyes you'd just take the Max file, select the wall polygons and scale it down very slightly to make the skin. It's all texture from there.

And finally, let the Architects choose the kind of skin they're making - whether that be a tint (let them have Tailor colour choices) or decal selections, floor, ceiling or window selections. As and when they're introduced.

(Dear me, I hope that made sense.)

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Tinkergirl wrote:
With your idea about tinting rooms. I had thought of this myself recently and figured out a 'way' for it to work. Bear with me, this is a little odd.

You add new items to the game. This item is like a transparent shell of a room. One sided (like the paintings are) and when used with a house is dropped in the very centre of the appropriate room.

Essentially, this object is a wall hugging skin that is transparent and coloured (depending on the player's choice.) It could even fade over time to completely colourless if you wanted to create some return sales for Architects.

Elaborating on this, why stop at a perfect skin? (Minus holes for doors and windows, of course).

Have a 'skin' that only tints one of the walls.
Have one that tints the floor.
How about one that adds a mural to the walls.
Or one that adds a border along the room.
Tint your windows?
Paint your ceiling with stars?
Add a decal?

And my personal favourite - one that adds burn marks, cracks and blast marks as a 'decal shell'.

Admittedly, this would require a new object added to the game for each room and each skin-style. Maybe it could be introduced slowly - with (number of house styles) x (number of houses) to begin with, and call them type 1. And you can only have one type 1 in any house.

For example -

I excitedly run home from the local Architect's vendor with a Type 1 (Orange Tint) deed. I have a small generic house style 1.
When I get in, I go up to the house terminal and select the 'room skin' option. It finds any deeds I have and lists them for me to choose.
I only have one, so I select it. It tells me that if I already have a room skin in the type 1 room, it will be deleted and the new one applied. I click 'yes' to continue.
The deed is removed from my inventory and the 'type 1' room for my house now contains the skin! My walls are tinted orange and I bemoan my lack of taste, hastily calling up my Architect friend and begging him to make me a blue one instead.

Some houses, of course, don't have the same number of rooms - maybe a small house only has 2 Types of rooms, whereas a large might have 5 or 6.

With this system, you could slowly introduce the different types of rooms over time as the database space and/or patch space becomes available.

As for the actual creation of the room model - to my ignorant eyes you'd just take the Max file, select the wall polygons and scale it down very slightly to make the skin. It's all texture from there.

And finally, let the Architects choose the kind of skin they're making - whether that be a tint (let them have Tailor colour choices) or decal selections, floor, ceiling or window selections. As and when they're introduced.

(Dear me, I hope that made sense.)

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You're an architect, e6alfa, do you see it as feasible to have blueprints/schematics for Type 1 House-Skins through Type 6 House-Skins, with various different flavours, or do you see it as an inconvienience?

Would you mind if the types, 1 through 6 were introduced slowly over time?

Would you want the 'tint' first, or is there another style of skin you'd imagine would be more popular to begin with? (Floor tint, wall tint, window tint, decals, borders, ceiling textures, etc)

How many colours would you want to choose from? Would 16 colours do, or would you want the whole tailor range? Would you get hassles from people demanding a type 2 in puce, yesterday?

I'm interested in your (and other architects and interested parties) opinions.

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Tinkergirl wrote:
You're an architect, e6alfa, do you see it as feasible to have blueprints/schematics for Type 1 House-Skins through Type 6 House-Skins, with various different flavours, or do you see it as an inconvienience? Very Feasible in my mind!

Would you mind if the types, 1 through 6 were introduced slowly over time? Hit me with them all at 1 time. The only thing I would say is that like a type 6 is only good for large houses, or guild halls.

Would you want the 'tint' first, or is there another style of skin you'd imagine would be more popular to begin with? (Floor tint, wall tint, window tint, decals, borders, ceiling textures, etc) Wouldn't call it tint, but maybe interior painting. Hey, does that mean I can get the title of a painter now???

How many colours would you want to choose from? Would 16 colours do, or would you want the whole tailor range? Would you get hassles from people demanding a type 2 in puce, yesterday? For me personally, 16 would be perfect. Color vision problem. Can't tell the difference between redish green, and greenish red. Even though I'd be willing to say more colors would be better.

I'm interested in your (and other architects and interested parties) opinions.

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Message Edited by e6alfa on 03-15-2005 08:47 AM

i want to be able to make a custom house from wall/door/window sections as i can do it in UO !! =)

What, no disco lighting? Be great to turn one of my rooms into a dance hall If you can have music, no reason not to have something like one of those mirror balls in the ceiling.

Heck, I'd enjoy more Star Wars touches...perhaps something like a configurable hologram for public-accessible houses, that says 'Welcome to our humble abode...' I still wonder if it'd be possible to have some small things *outside* a house...even a simple 'Welcome' mat. 'Course, I think I might have mine say, 'This is an Emperor-fearing Imperial home, don't let your Rebel butt get caught here unless you want it shot off!

Okay, maybe not, but it would be funny

Your ideas are awesome. It would really be great to personalize your home even more with those suggestions. I don't know how hard it would be to implement but if it was done, I think that many players would enjoy it. 5* for you a9er.