The games requirements for what counts as a room is frustratingly limiting

[Xanadu2003]

I've been trying to build a greenhouse in vintage story and as someone who has a lot of fun with chiseling I put the effort in to try and make my own glass panes that fit with the rest of the build. However I cant seem to make the game count this as a room, its below the 14 x 14 x 14 limit but I think for some reason the chiseled blocks aren't counting as walls.



I find that extremely frustrating! Especially since the game doesn't have a system in place to tell me exactly what's wrong so I know where to start to try and fix it. (Something akin to terraria's system for determining if a room is valid for npc housing).

Prior to the most recent update, going into the block type files and changing the line sidesolid: {all: false } to true worked to get the game to count this as a proper greenhouse but that doesn't seem to be working anymore.

I'd really love to hear what the dev's intentions were with adding this mechanic because I'm kind of confused on why it is so strict about these things. I could make a cobblestone box with a glass roof and use half the materials in half the time, but I wanted to make something pretty, I think its really strange to punish that :c

[Echo Weaver]

I'm the wrong person to respond because I haven't done a lot of chiseling, but I'm under the impression that a chiseled block does not count as a solid block unless a certain percentage of the voxels are still in place. 

This mod makes chiseled blocks always count as solid. It's not officially updated to 1.21, but it probably works: https://mods.vintagestory.at/cbr

The example shots look a lot like yours. 

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

I'm the wrong person to respond because I haven't done a lot of chiseling, but I'm under the impression that a chiseled block does not count as a solid block unless a certain percentage of the voxels are still in place. 

This is correct. I forget the exact parameters, but basically you can't have holes to the outside or remove more than 50% of the block for it to still qualify as a room. In essence, the chiseled block still needs the thickness of a slab, minimum, in order to still retain insulating properties. If I'm not mistaken, it also helps for the room calculations to have the face of the block flush to the interior of the desired room space.

 

1 hour ago, Xanadu2003 said:

I've been trying to build a greenhouse in vintage story and as someone who has a lot of fun with chiseling I put the effort in to try and make my own glass panes that fit with the rest of the build. However I cant seem to make the game count this as a room, its below the 14 x 14 x 14 limit but I think for some reason the chiseled blocks aren't counting as walls.

Greenhouses are perhaps the most finicky of specific room spaces; I would double-check your glass portions, as these are the most likely culprits to be breaking the greenhouse rules. To qualify as a greenhouse, the space needs at least 50% of the roof to be made of glass blocks or glass slabs. I'm not 100% sure that chiseled glass will still qualify--it should, but it probably needs to be the thickness of a slab minimum, and flush to the interior in order to count towards a legitimate greenhouse.

Edit: I would also make sure that the base chiseled block is glass. If you used a different material(such as wood), the game may not recognize the block as a glass block.

Edited August 27, 2025 by LadyWYT

[Echo Weaver]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

This is correct. I forget the exact parameters, but basically you can't have holes to the outside or remove more than 50% of the block for it to still qualify as a room. In essence, the chiseled block still needs the thickness of a slab, minimum, in order to still retain insulating properties. If I'm not mistaken, it also helps for the room calculations to have the face of the block flush to the interior of the desired room space.

Yeah, it seems like there ought to be a setting where ONLY holes to the outside negate insulating properties.

I mean, technically thin glass lets a lot of cold through, but at some point you just have to say your simulation is good enough. 

[LadyWYT]

13 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

Yeah, it seems like there ought to be a setting where ONLY holes to the outside negate insulating properties.

I mean, technically thin glass lets a lot of cold through, but at some point you just have to say your simulation is good enough. 

Yeah. I'm not sure why it's coded the way it is. It may just be that's the easiest placeholder to use for now, and chiselwork might get some love in a later update.

[Xanadu2003]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

Yeah, it seems like there ought to be a setting where ONLY holes to the outside negate insulating properties.

I mean, technically thin glass lets a lot of cold through, but at some point you just have to say your simulation is good enough. 

Yeah I feel like it was kind of an oversight to not at least allow for chiseled blocks featuring glass to skirt around the usual requirements, kind of makes having a chiseled windowsill needlessly difficult especially since you cant chisel glass planes

[Xanadu2003]

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

I'm the wrong person to respond because I haven't done a lot of chiseling, but I'm under the impression that a chiseled block does not count as a solid block unless a certain percentage of the voxels are still in place. 

This mod makes chiseled blocks always count as solid. It's not officially updated to 1.21, but it probably works: https://mods.vintagestory.at/cbr

The example shots look a lot like yours. 

Something about this most current update seems to break these fixes. I had went into the files and set it to see chiseled blocks as always being solid and it actually worked making the structure a functional greenhouse. It seems like some part of the newest update isn't allowing these fixes to stick? Who knows

[Echo Weaver]

25 minutes ago, Xanadu2003 said:

Yeah I feel like it was kind of an oversight to not at least allow for chiseled blocks featuring glass to skirt around the usual requirements, kind of makes having a chiseled windowsill needlessly difficult especially since you cant chisel glass planes

I think there's a world setting for chiseling glass, but I tried setting it and still wasn't able to. There are many places I might have made a mistake, though.

[Mrozak]

4 hours ago, Xanadu2003 said:

the game doesn't have a system in place to tell me exactly what's wrong

But it does. Look at the command "/debug rooms" (https://wiki.vintagestory.at/List_of_server_commands/debug)
You go into a room and run "/debug rooms hi"
- if it is all green, you are good
- if you see red, pay attention to any blocks that are not in red - those are likely the problem and you need to fix them (replace, add more material to make thicker, etc.).

Edited August 27, 2025 by Mrozak

[Xanadu2003]

1 hour ago, Mrozak said:

But it does. Look at the command "/debug rooms" (https://wiki.vintagestory.at/List_of_server_commands/debug)
You go into a room and run "/debug rooms hi"
- if it is all green, you are good
- if you see red, pay attention to any blocks that are not in red - those are likely the problem and you need to fix them (replace, add more material to make thicker, etc.).

That's really helpful for knowing my building isn't being counted as a room, But I don't think you're right about the nonhighlighted blocks being what needs to be changed as in my experience there's no sense of consistency in what the game chooses to highlight or not

[Mrozak]

2 hours ago, Xanadu2003 said:

That's really helpful for knowing my building isn't being counted as a room, But I don't think you're right about the nonhighlighted blocks being what needs to be changed as in my experience there's no sense of consistency in what the game chooses to highlight or not

You may be right, i do not know for sure, but my experience so far was that the non-hilighted blocks were always the problem.
I used it only 3 maximum 4 times, and it was always the non-hilighted blocks that needed fixing or replacing.
If it was some kind of coincidence, then that was a hell of a coincidence,but you may be right, i cannot prove otherwise.

Edited August 27, 2025 by Mrozak