I want people to decorate. A furnished house just feels better to be in than an empty one. Better to screenshot too. Looking nice is a purpose on its own and I don't want to undersell it.
But in vanilla, decorating is something you do despite the game. Trapdoor counters, item frame plates. You can put an hour into a kitchen and the game can't tell it apart from a dirt hut. People who decorate anyway are doing it for themselves and the screenshot, and everyone else doesn't bother.
Atom's answer is furniture. Chairs, beds, lanterns, clocks, a piano. It makes the place look like a home, and it tells the game what each room is. Put a bed and some nightstands down and the room reads as a bedroom. Seating around a fireplace makes a lounge instead.
altA bedroom with a bed, nightstands, hanging lanterns and a piano by the window
How a room picks its purpose
Each furniture piece leans toward a purpose. Some pieces lean hard, a bed is almost always a bedroom thing, and some are just points that nudge the room one way or the other. The room adds it up and takes whatever purpose clearly wins.
Purposes don't mix. If you put an anvil and a bed in the same room, the room doesn't split the difference. It falls back to generic, and you get neither set of benefits. I've gone back and forth on this and I'm still not totally sold on it. For now it stays, because it means a house with actual separate rooms beats one big box with everything shoved against the walls, and that's the build I want to reward. If playtests hate it, it'll be reworked.
What you get
A room that knows what it is gives you buffs tied to what it's for. Some actions only work in the right room. Furniture also feeds the climate model from the last post, so a room can run warmer or cooler because of what's sitting in it.
Two purposes are in the build right now. A proper bedroom anchors your respawn. You come back to wherever you actually sleep, instead of whatever bed you tapped last in a mineshaft.
altA lounge with a fireplace, armchair, grandfather clock and ceiling fan
The lounge is for chilling out. Atom puts a lot of pressure on you between temperature, hunger, and weight. Sit in the armchair by the fire after a long trip and comfort recovers faster than it would standing around outside.
Kitchen and smithy are the obvious next two. Adding a purpose is cheap on the system side, the work is deciding what its furniture is and what the room should unlock.
Generic furniture
Not every piece cares about room purpose. The ceiling fan's the one I like most. Mount it on a ceiling and it cools the room. It just moves air. Similar temperature model as the campfire, pushing the other way. In a desert build that's what makes the house livable at midday.
Next up: farming. The kitchen needs something to cook.
Want more updates? Sneak peeks and in-progress builds go through the Discord first, as always.
Thanks for reading
- Adam