What were the game engine/computational limitations that brought about the current in game limits on water, cellars, greenhouses, and heating in rooms?

[Quarrys]

I'm looking to what caused the current mechanics in game to be in their current states. I have suggestions to make but first I must know why before I accidently suggest something impossible.

If someone, or preferably the devs could tell me why I would be grateful.

The picture is of a Cellar I attempted to make but had to pause construction of 3 times due to constraints on cellars, and is what brought about the original ideas that led me to ask these questions.

[Vexxvididu]

Hi and welcome to the forums!

I'm not one of the actual devs but I'm pretty sure that many of these limits are a lot less about "computational limits" and more about certain stylistic choices.  You can change a lot of this information with coding mods.  Cellars in particular I think could be much larger if you just wanted them to be.

[Gabusmaximus]

idk but i think it's also a balance thing i have noticed that game is very well balanced. Having huge cellars means you could live and have all your stuff there instead of having a specialized room.

[Quarrys]

On 1/18/2026 at 6:47 PM, Vexxvididu said:

Hi and welcome to the forums!

I'm not one of the actual devs but I'm pretty sure that many of these limits are a lot less about "computational limits" and more about certain stylistic choices.  You can change a lot of this information with coding mods.  Cellars in particular I think could be much larger if you just wanted them to be.

Oh? Is it really a stylistic choice? I for sure thought it was due to some base computational limits due to a potentially expensive to run algorithm that scales heavily with size. At least, that was the only thing that came to mind when I was confronted with the extremely small size limits. I would still like to know what the limits of the engine are and everything being as my future suggestions will lean on this information heavily.

[williams_482]

I'd wager that the cellar size limit is a stylistic choice (real cellars are relatively small, after all) while the size limit on regular rooms is mostly for performance. There had to be some kind of limit, and 14 blocks is enough for most things that people would want to count as rooms. If 14 was chosen arbitrarily or because it met some performance benchmark, I have no idea. 

[Quarrys]

I would still like to know generally, if it's not a computational limit, at what points does it become a computational limit. I would like a small description of the backend of this game and stuff as I'm sick of making suggestions just to laughed out of a forum because what I'm suggesting isn't computationally compatible with the same game people continued to tell me nothing about.

So please if anyone has any info on this stuff, I would like to know it so that I can make an educated suggestion to this game, as I feel as if a couple of my idea at least aren't so incredibly far fetched that with modern hardware it would be possible and even beneficial to the gameplay to add them.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, Quarrys said:

I would still like to know generally, if it's not a computational limit, at what points does it become a computational limit. I would like a small description of the backend of this game and stuff as I'm sick of making suggestions just to laughed out of a forum because what I'm suggesting isn't computationally compatible with the same game people continued to tell me nothing about.

If you can read code, the entire logic related to rooms seems to be here. While I'm not certain about the exact way it scales with room size, I doubt that computational cost is an especially significant factor in the current limits, and stylistic choice seems like a viable explanation.

But either way, if you think it could be beneficial to the game, feel free to make a suggestion regardless. People here aren't typically familiar with the code at a low enough level to explain whether a suggestion is technically viable outside of relatively obvious cases, and they tend to care more about matters like gameplay enjoyment and thematic identity.

[Bumber]

Being a cube, the complexity increases n^3 with respect to dimension. To make up some numbers, it's possible 20^3 (8000 blocks) causes old hardware to struggle, 30^3 (27000) causes new hardware to struggle, and 40^3 (64000) is non-viable at present. 7^3 (343) was probably chosen for having no noticeable impact in the worst case (breaking a shared wall) and being reasonable in concept (heat insulation).

Edited 9 hours ago by Bumber

[pigfood]

You have BY FAR the most obnoxious avatar I've encountered in the last 5 years. Thankfully, animated avatars have gotten banned or gone out of favor for the most part. Your avatar isn't simply extremely obnoxious, it also causes a a very substantial battery drain on mobile devices (I can easily block it on my desktop, but not mobile devices). If you are the last poster in a thread, it's even shown on the forum index page.

I'm on the fence about wasting the moderator/dev teams time asking to ban animated avatars.

I've never seen anyone else with an animated avatar in the Vintage Story forums.

\\

Your original question doesn't make any sense. Cellars have 7-tile limit. Generic rooms have 14-tile limit in each direction. Do you realize what that means in terms of cubic dimensions/block count? There is no chance whatsoever that the cellar dimensions were restricted for performance reasons.

\\

Your contribution to the forums is literally nothing. Yet, you are asking people to spoon-feed things to you.

Edited 1 hour ago by pigfood