Devblog - Structural Integrity

Structural Integrity

Remember last week when I said something about working on something big for the building system, and everyone thought I just meant the new build system. See Structural Integrity In Action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfaLd-OOm6A Well it wasn't the new build system. It was making buildings fall down.This has wrongly been referred to as a weight system. It doesn't take weight into account right now at all, in fact it's kind of the opposite. The intention was to allow people to be more free in their building, a specific example would be to allow people to build self supporting floors - without a pillar or wall under every floor block. This doesn't work without the structural integrity system because you could build sky bridges. Now we have integrity we can allow you to build floors on floors, because if it's wrong it'll just fall down.So let me be honest. I'm not a mathematical genius. I'm not a structural engineer. I don't know what I'm doing. This system isn't going to ever be 100% true to life. You will be able to build some stuff that defies physics, this is just the way we're doing it. We don't want you to not be able to make the legit structures that you've made before, we just don't want you building stairs to the moon.From a raiding point of view this is a total game changer. We don't know how it's going to affect stuff - but we're going to be watching, tweaking, improving, adding counter-measures over time. There are bug that we know about, and I'm sure there are bugs that we don't know about. Yes - it would be cool if falling blocks killed the player. It's all a work in progress.

New Building System Overview

We've rolled out the new building system. There's a few things I want you to know about it so you don't get angry at the wrong things.

Building Plan

To place building blocks you need a Building Plan. Once you have crafted a plan and have it in your hands you can change the building component by holding down the right mouse button and left clicking on the part you want to use.The blocks start out black. This means they have low health. You don't have to do anything - they gain health by themselves. When looking at at block you'll get a tooltip showing its current healthIf the placement of the block is unstable it will also show the stability as a percentage and the background of the health bar will turn red.

Hammer

You can speed up the blocks health gain by giving them a whack with the hammer. This changes their regeneration speed - which falls back down to normal slowly - so a couple of hammer wacks is all you need to do.When you're looking at a block with the hammer you can hold the right mouse button to see a menu. From here you can do things like upgrade/downgrade to another block type, rotate and demolish.If available for a block, when upgrading to stone (or metal) the block's maximum health will increase. This will make the block turn dark again - you know what to do here.Some melee weapons aren't very effective stone and metal, so it's a good idea to upgrade your blocks to one of those - especially exposed foundations.

Tool Cupboard

Some options on the hammer aren't available unless you're within the influence of an authorised tool cupboard. The tool cupboard makes it so only the people who are authorised