Housing, Part 1

Today it was my turn to start working on the Housing part of Secrets of Grindea! Teddy has been working on it already, making a prototype of the system which he used to build this fabulous scene.

We started off with a few questions that needed answers: how would you get access to the house? How would you access the edit-mode? What measurements and guidelines are needed to make sure the furniture fit within the system? What categories of furniture do we need, and what should the menu look like?

If you know Swedish, you'll be able to read what we decided here (with the exception of how to get access to the house - that's for you to figure out within the game!):

Basically, after entering your house, you'll have to click a certain button to access the menu which lets you edit what furniture is on display and where you want to place it. The menu that appears will have 10 categories (so far):

The "hand" tool
which lets you move things around without placing new items.

Floors
Lets you choose which type of floor you want in your house

Wallpapers
Let's you choose what the walls look like

Chairs
Places where you'd be able to sit (if only your character could..!)

Tables (& other surfaces)
Basically furniture which lets you place other items on top of them, if you'd like.

Carpets
Some decorations for the floor :)

"Big furniture"
Will be things like bookcases, fireplaces, beds, big/tall shelves etc.

Wall decorations
Windows, paintings, small shelves that hang on the wall, etc!

Tiny decorations
Stuff you can place on other things (if you like), such as plants, tablecloths, plates, books..

Special Items
Items which do something cool. Like a jukebox which lets you choose what type of music plays in your house, or something that changes the lighting of the house. These items will probably also appear in the other categories, but we thought it'd be nice for them to have a separate category as well.

Actually, here's a quick sketch of what the housing menu will look like:

You can select which category you want to explore in the top right. Once you've made your selection, the items you own will appear in the window below. We decided that if you want to put 5 chairs of the same type into your house, you'll actually need to own 5 copies of that chair, so it feels like you actually own pieces of furniture rather than the right to put out an unlimited amount of that type of furniture into your house.

When adding furniture to your house, you'll be able to use four different buttons that do different things: one that puts your selected piece of furniture into the spot you've chosen, one that brings you back to the menu to select another item, one that lets you rotate the piece of furniture you're putting out (or any item you're hovering over), and one that lets you delete items you've already put out when you hover over them. In order to help you remember, there will be icons (or text) at the bottom of your screen, illustrating which button does what.

Well.. I think that's all for now! Please let us know what you think & leave your suggestions in the comments :)

Time for me to start making the actual graphics for those things, so that Teddy will be able to implement this housing system sooner rather than later!