Workbench for decorative clutter crafting

[LadyWYT]

So it occurred to me earlier that, instead of trying to always loot decorative furniture from ruins, or buy it from traders, or stare in wistfulness at all the fancy stuff NPCs have and you don't...why not add something like a woodworking workbench to allow the player to craft a selection of nice furniture themselves?

The workbench can act similar to the anvil and sailboat roller logs. The player simply interacts with the workbench to bring up the interface and a list of options, picks the option they wish to make, and then supplies the appropriate tools and materials as needed(planks, saw, cloth, nails and strips, etc). Doing it this way offers a more immersive way to craft decor, without the need for a lot of clicking or memorizing grid recipes(or otherwise needing to look them up in the handbook). As a bonus, the player also gets to see the item in question take shape before them, similar to watching progress made on sailboat construction.

But I changed my mind and want to craft something else!

Not a problem! If the player changes their mind before the project is complete, they can scrap the project and get the raw materials back, before picking something else to make.

Further customization:

Use colored cloth on chairs/upholstered seats in order to change the upholstery to that color. The bolt of cloth will be consumed in the process. Some pieces of furniture could probably have special "slots" that the player can use to place additional pieces to further customize the look, such as re-purposing sailboat figurehead carvings to decorate fancy chairs, or socketing gemstones into fancy furniture for that extra bling.

[ifoz]

I was thinking yesterday about modular furniture, since they've posted the modular wardrobe concept art.
It could be fun if putting a table in the grid made it into a "modular table" (or the other way around, depends which one they want as the default) which would connect with other tables. Placing four modular tables in a 2x2 arrangement for example would turn them into one large 2x2 table, still with four legs.

That way you could have an easy way to get nice (and functional for pies!) larger tables in builds without either having a bunch of individual tables or having to make a bunch of random "large table corner" type items.

Edited November 17, 2025 by ifoz

[MKMoose]

It may be really nice to allow creating furniture by adding or removing components on each 16x16 pixel face in a 2x2 sub-block grid in each block. Kind of like individually exchanging each face in the largest chisel size, though with each component having actual thickness and detailing. I'm not sure if I'm describing it clearly enough, though I could probably show what I mean with chiseling if needed.

Think like the current bookshelves have different variants, which are based on the same hollow vertical half-block frame, but some have an additional shelf or divider added in. In this system you could do the same thing and more - take off the top part to end up with a half-block-high bookshelf, remove one side for an outer corner piece or make an L shape for an inner corner, move the backface to the middle of the block so that the usable side is on the external face of the block, add additional glass panels in front for decoration, and so on.

It would not be an easy system to create, but it would allow a lot of freedom of decoration while retaining functional quarter-tile surfaces that could be used just like the four slots of display cases or like bookshelves, or also perhaps for clothes and other stuff.

It would primarily use wood, but there's a lot of potential for glass, ceramic tiles, metal plates, maybe some other materials. Ideally, there would even be larger and more complex components (some of which would have to take up a larger volume or have a bunch of constraints to be functional, not just a face or several of them), e.g. cupboard or wardrobe doors, table or counter surfaces, container lids, table legs, diagonal panels, coat racks, bed mattresses. Potentially also edge components like decorative ornaments and lining or metal frames, unless those get covered by a larger variety of panels.

The main idea is to allow more functionality and decoration variety, but another benefit is a workflow which would be incomparably faster than chiseling, or at least unmodded chiseling. It would also allow some sub-voxel detailing and oblique angles within the predefined components, and still would arguably fit the blocky style of the game with no issues.

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

It may be really nice to allow creating furniture by adding or removing components on each 16x16 pixel face in a 2x2 sub-block grid in each block. Kind of like individually exchanging each face in the largest chisel size, though with each component having actual thickness and detailing. I'm not sure if I'm describing it clearly enough, though I could probably show what I mean with chiseling if needed.

I did think about this, however, we can already do this to some extent with the current chisel system. The drawback is that the furniture isn't always usable(you can sit on anything, but can't lie down on anything, or use anything as a container, etc), and has a blocky appearance instead of the polished look that premade furniture has.

The other big drawback I see is...how do you determine what's a chair versus a bed versus a table, etc? I once watched a "let's play" of some MySims game, and though I don't recall the title, I do recall that one of the features of the game was building custom furniture--not just choosing textures, actually building the model. Which was pretty cool, however, it did mean that throwing a bunch of parts together into what was essentially a junkpile, still made functional furniture...albeit furniture that looked horrendous and had broken animations due to the design.

I think perhaps a better way to handle custom furniture like that, is perhaps to include something like a "seat cushion", that can either function as a decorative(but usable) pillow, or be added to chiseled chairs and other furniture to allow them to easily function like their namesakes. For wardrobes, it's possible to build an aesthetic shell around trunks and store clothing within. Beds are pretty much the one thing you can't really chisel, but I think in that case the bed system itself could be tweaked a bit so that the player has to build the frame separate from the mattress. In that case, the mattress quality is what determines how long the player can sleep. For extra decoration, the player can place different styles of blankets, or perhaps some extra pillows.

[MKMoose]

15 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I did think about this, however, we can already do this to some extent with the current chisel system. The drawback is that the furniture isn't always usable(you can sit on anything, but can't lie down on anything, or use anything as a container, etc), and has a blocky appearance instead of the polished look that premade furniture has.

The chisel has a bunch of other issues which make it largely unsuitable for furniture. The voxel grid would make it difficult for the game to assign proper function to items and would much more easily allow creating horrific abominations that still pass as furniture, even more so than with quarter-tile surfaces. Also, chiseling can simply be pretty time-consuming and tedious, even with mods.

 

15 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The other big drawback I see is...how do you determine what's a chair versus a bed versus a table, etc? I once watched a "let's play" of some MySims game, and though I don't recall the title, I do recall that one of the features of the game was building custom furniture--not just choosing textures, actually building the model. Which was pretty cool, however, it did mean that throwing a bunch of parts together into what was essentially a junkpile, still made functional furniture...albeit furniture that looked horrendous and had broken animations due to the design.

I think perhaps a better way to handle custom furniture like that, is perhaps to include something like a "seat cushion", that can either function as a decorative(but usable) pillow, or be added to chiseled chairs and other furniture to allow them to easily function like their namesakes. For wardrobes, it's possible to build an aesthetic shell around trunks and store clothing within. Beds are pretty much the one thing you can't really chisel, but I think in that case the bed system itself could be tweaked a bit so that the player has to build the frame separate from the mattress. In that case, the mattress quality is what determines how long the player can sleep. For extra decoration, the player can place different styles of blankets, or perhaps some extra pillows.

Yeah, that's the reason why I initially only mentioned quarter-tile surfaces like display cases or bookshelves. Other functions would likely require special components, for example a tabletop covering four horizontal tiles, or a cupboard door two tiles (one block) high and probably requiring empty volume to open. Combining this functionality with chiseling could be interesting, though it feels to me like tacking on a new feature onto a system which was never designed for it. The goal of a more specialized, simpler workflow is to make working with furniture quick and intuitive, without having to account for the quirks of chiseling.

Also, a note on building a shell around trunks for a wardrobe: if you wanted one with two trunks, this would effectively increase the volume (purely in block space, not hitboxes) taken up by the chests from 2x2x1 to something like 4x3x2. While it is possible to work around it in some ways and to add other furniture or the next floor's floorboards within that space, it is regardless highly impractical.

 

To get back on topic a bit, I really agree that we need some more furniture. Most of my rooms feel like it's just a bed, table with a flowerpot, and then bookshelves because there's almost nothing else to put there.

I like the idea for a separate woodworking workbench, as it is a nice piece of usable "furniture" by itself as well and would make crafting wood products much more hands-on. It may also be used for wooden boards and other intermediate materials, for various wooden items other than furniture like mechanical power parts, as well as for some smaller items and decorations. Even woodcarving and woodturning could be integrated into it in some way, unless they get split into separate systems. Woodworking is ultimately on the roadmap, and I feel like a workbench functinally similar to an anvil would be a really good way to get started with implementing it.

A sawmill could also complement a woodworking workshop really well. When powered, it could allow to create boards and perhaps one or two other wood products much quicker. It would be balanced similarly to the helve hammer, primarily serving to reduce workload and save on tool durability.

[Odrayak]

I was just thinking that I need a carpentry system that allows you to customize furniture or repair the ones you find in the ruins, a painting system that lets you decorate walls, vases, and paint pictures, and a tailoring system that allows you to customize textiles like the bed or make banners, beyond what you find in the ruins or can buy. I don’t care how they implement it, they’ll probably make it fun anyway, but I think it’s necessary for players like us who enjoy the creative side of sandbox games to not always have to rely on trading or exhaustive exploration of ruins in the caves.