Adaptive Roofing

[ifoz]

I'm sure this has been brought up by other people in other places, but I thought it'd be nice to make a proper suggestions thread on it, especially with the upcoming 1.22 trader houses nearing completion in the dev streams.

Roofing in this game is kind of weird. You place down different roof pieces, they always have to be at a 45 degree angle, and then they have blocky undersides.
Meanwhile the new trader houses (which, let me clarify, I think are absolutely awesome) that players will now be able to find scattered all over the world have smooth chiselled roofing.
I think it'll be a bit of a disappointment to new players when they find out it's extremely difficult and time-consuming (sometimes impossible, if the trader house uses creative mode roof beams) to create a similar dwelling.
I've already heard of similar new player reactions to the treasure hunter's shack in 1.21, excited to build something similar only to find out they aren't able to.

I think it would be really nice if roofing either adapted to whatever block it was placed on top of and inherited that texture, or if roofing was more like large support beams you could stretch across a build to make a frame and then add material to fill in. Either of these would allow for roofing that looks sleek and do away with the bulky undersides, as well as allowing different shapes of roofing beyond the 45 degree angle.



EDIT: I think ideally the way dynamic roofing could work would be detecting the shape/thickness of the block below, then using that texture and thickness to give the roof its blocky underside. That way roofing could be precisely aligned to walls of different chiselled thicknesses, and only have the blocky underside when it is actually on top of a block.

Edited Sunday at 06:01 AM by ifoz

[MKMoose]

One of the things I really don't like about these new huts is that they throw the idea of being reasonably replicable by the player completely out the window. They are almost entirely made using complex chiseling, with many items which are outright unavailable outside of creative mode, and using techniques which are quite difficult for the average player to figure out even in creative.

I find that most if not all features of the VS Roofing Mod could be integrated into the game. Or if not that, then simplify the system by adding a couple roof frame blocks similar to current roof blocks, on top of which any types of shingles and stuff could be placed. A couple of shingle position and type presets could defined by the frame, while the shingle model could be independent and defined by the material. This would make the system much more expandable, as well as get rid of the solid undersides in favor of a more reasonable stick or timber frame, which would keep the roofing material entirely or mostly invisible from below and could be matched to the build much more freely using different wood colors. Adding some dynamic elements would be great, including potentially automatic corner pieces and different slopes, but it doesn't need to be particularly complex to be a massive improvement.

[ifoz]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

One of the things I really don't like about these new huts is that they throw the idea of being reasonably replicable by the player completely out the window.

The warm and cold climate variants actually are player-replicable for the most part, which is neat.
They're mostly made of daub and mudbrick, with aged thatch (not obtainable in survival, but normal thatch is) for colder climate roofing.
But yeah, I do wish this kind of architecture was easier/possible to create in survival. Especially since in the lore these huts are meant to be thrown together in a couple of weeks, as Elvas said on the stream.

[Facethief]

Where can I find the dev streams?

[MKMoose]

1 minute ago, Facethief said:

Where can I find the dev streams?

The devstreaming channel on the discord, or directly Elvas' Twitch for the building streams specifically.

[LadyWYT]

22 hours ago, ifoz said:

roofing was more like large support beams you could stretch across a build to make a frame and then add material to fill in.

This seems like the best solution to me. For builders and non-builders alike, it opens up a lot more possibilities that are fairly easy to pull off, as well as making a more immersive way to build other than "make block place block". It'd be in a similar line of thought as the wattle-and-daub building blocks.