🧱 New Wall Tool Grid + New Build Mode Catalog Interface (Patreon)

Hello everybody, happy Friday! Jérémie here - after a short hiatus due to a medical leave - back to showcase what I’ve been working on over the last few weeks, notably The Grid and Build Mode Catalog UI Improvements.

Because we will have internal playtests starting soon, we needed to give a big push on missing Build Mode features and make tweaks here and there where we knew people might have some issues. Here are some of these new features and tweaks!

The Grid

We love our gridless build tools, and we’ve been using them for years now. This new grid feature is an addition that just gives more choices to the players and allows more precision while building. We want the whole Build Mode experience to be enjoyable whether you use the grid option or not, and everything will work no matter how your house is built.

By default, the grid will be aligned with the road closest to your lot, so you can build something that follows the street!

 Building a house with the grid can be faster if you just want some basic shapes, curved walls work with it too!

We also want the grid to be flexible and allow for even more possibilities when trying to build that dream home! If you build something in grid-less mode, you can change the grid to fit with any wall of your house, thus allowing you to build everything else using the orientation of that wal! You can also adjust its size if you want!

 If you hold shift on your keyboard, you can make the grid smaller while using it, so you can have more precision if needed

 Tweaking the grid mid-build to support different angles and sizes of grid cells

This is just the beginning of our grid adventures! We’ll be tweaking the look, fixing some bugs, but I’m already a big fan!

Build Mode User Interface Improvements

We’ve also rehauled how the Build Mode looks, going from an interface with a lot of text, spread across the screen and very small icons to something more visually pleasing, compact and easier to navigate!

  Before (top) and after (bottom)

Lots of things to take notice of here!

Previously, there were menu items at the bottom of the screen (the stamp-like buttons), at the top (the big text labels) and multiple levels on the side (the red labels); now things are better organized in the top bar, and the sub-categories are all at the same place. 

There is much less text: we’ll be working to make sure the icons are representative enough, and there are going to be tooltips if you’re unsure what an icon is for what at the beginning.

Based on the feedback received during our playtests, we’ll change the categories and functions of that interface as needed.

We’ll be also tweaking the items’ thumbnail style, size and more as things go along.

We also created a big tooltip when you hover items to get more information like their price, and more! We have a lot of ideas about cool things we can do there!

What Would You Like to See in Future Patreon Posts?

It could be related to the Live mode, build mode or Paramaker, but we also could try for a deep dive on other aspects of the game too! If you have ideas or suggestions, please chime in in the comments! I’m sure we’ll find something cool to write about regardless, but I’m curious about what y’all would like for us to go on about!

Have a great weekend, and see you soon!

Jérémie

Edit - June 20th, 2024: This post is now public, feel free to share it!