Topic
How to Test the New Houses
OK! Now you can test some parts of the new housing system. We're concentrating here on furniture and decoration (later releases will add the ability to craft new furniture, expand houses, cultivate land and use imagination to grow your yard and home street).
To try it out, get in the game type "/home" in local chat (it is deliberately hard to do right now so that people don't get confused and think this is *the* permanent switchover — this house is just for your testing and customizations will eventually be reset). When you're at home, there will be a new button which takes you back to the regular game world.
Once you go inside, you'll see the new furniture tab by your inventory and a "decorate" button at the top-right of the game. Go crazy. Upgrading furniture is all free right now (in the future, some upgrades will be subscriber-only and some will cost credits).
You can't get any more furniture for now and you also can't give, trade or sell furniture until the next release (or maybe the one after that). However, you can bring your stuff over to the new house and not worry about it getting lost when we reset (we'll keep it all safe) — it is just the furniture customizations that you'll lose.
To move furniture around and place items on furniture, you need to be in "decoration mode", which will hide your avatar and allow you to use the arrow keys to pan around your house.
You'll be switched to decoration mode automatically when you drag something out of your furniture bag, but you can also hit the "decorate" button in the top right of the game window.
To change wallpaper, ceilings and floors, hit the "swatches" button which appears in the top bar when you're in decoration mode. You can stamp the patterns on or drag them into place. For wallpapers you can either to a single segment or the whole wall at once.
Finally, though the land outside your house is fixed for now (you can't expand it or add/remove resources yet) you do have a customizable signpost outside: you can use that to add up to five signs pointing to the home streets of people from your friends list.
Any questions? Thoughts? ;)
See also: Blog post • Video Demo
Note: If you don't see any furniture (or just your trophies) inside your furniture bag when you enter your house, type "/home" again.
Note 2: You can type "/home" from wherever you are in the world, including other people's houses.
Note 3: We will give plenty of notice before the real switchover to the new housing system and, if you own a regular in-world house at that time, all of the items inside it will be moved over automatically. You don't have to move everything yourself.
Note 4: Many questions and answers have been summarized in this (unofficial!) FAQ
Replies
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"Please also let us have the option of rooftop gardens in a somewhat sterile mansion"
This, or something like it, will be an option
"but long term (automatic day 0 houses) the badge (as currently defined) is pointless"
yes, we know. this is not long term. this is a demo. seriously. just a demo. -
"I would like to choose the regional back ground for both my street and yard and have it persist no matter where I return home from"
This is how it will work. Changing based on where you come from would be weird - would everyone in a house see it differently? Would it flip when someone new entered? - Ohhh it's really nice! I want the octopus couch, jellyfish lamp, and squid table in real life!
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After filing a bug report about this, I was told that it's a "feature".
I frequently drop bags on the floor of my home. I use the drag-to-inventory technique to move some of those bags back into inventory, especially when they are not in range to be highlighted with the enter key.
Standing in my new house, when I try to drag a more distant bag into inventory, I am automatically placed in Decorate mode, and have to exit Decorate in order to continue with my activities.
Please, if you're not in Decorate to begin with, can dragging inventory items back into inventory NOT toss you into decorate mode? Perhaps, if you place them while in decorating mode, you should have to be in decorating mode to put them back in inventory. It would even make sense for items placed in decorating mode to put you back into decorating mode automatically when you interacted with them.
But there is NO reason for a dropped bag to switch you into decorating mode. -
Suggestion: Right now it seems that the only way to acces someone's street is to add them to your signpost or find them on someone else's. (or am I missing something?) It would be really nice to have, say, an option in the player menu when you click on someone to "Go to their Home Street" so we could visit all our friends more easily.
Edit: To add to what i wrote, the signpost to me seems like a public thing. A way for people who visit your street to wander to your chosen friends'. Having an option in menus would mean that we could go wherever without constantly editing our front yards. Just seems like a signpost isnt the best thing for the go-anywhere purpose. or the go-to-any-friend purpose. Its more of a go-to-a-few-friends and let random or less-random passersby travel through the friend web. - I am absolutely delighted :) I can't wait to see all the great furniture that is to come. The cubimal wallpaper is my life.
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Fernstream: yes, you will likely be able to do this from their profile page or in-game menu
WindBorn: Yup, we'll look into that -
Bees!: Yes, ok, I only get one of a piece of clothing, but I can cycle through wearing all the clothes I've bought in turn without ever having to pay for them again. I think it should be like that for upgrades: upgrading a furniture item "unlocks" that upgrade for that item permanently. If I want ten octopus lamps I have to pay ten lots of 25 credits, fair enough, but once I pay for a particular lamp to be an octopus I should never have to pay for it to be an octopus again.
Anything else will take fun out of experimenting with different upgrades once it stops being free, and will strongly discourage people from buying more than one upgrade per item, which will lose you money! - Sequoia Baer: but you can have as many lamps as you want. buy/craft more base lamps. there's no limit to how many lamps (or whatever) you can have
- I don't mind being popped into Decorating mode - it doesn't prevent us from doing things with our items (like cooking). It's just kind of inconvenient that our inventory is automatically hidden by the furniture bag.
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First of all: the new houses are fabulous! I love being able to decorate.
Two suggestions:
1. the ability to re-size objects as well as flip them.
2. more flexibility in placement: allow every object to be placed on either a foreground, mid-ground, or background plane (or anywhere on the wall). -
"the ability to re-size objects as well as flip them"
This is unlikely, though not impossible - the furniture is drawn at a certain size to look good at that size. Many pieces also have in-built platforms and surfaces that would look wrong at different sizes.
"more flexibility in placement: allow every object to be placed on either a foreground, mid-ground, or background plane (or anywhere on the wall)."
while it sounds like a good idea, items are allowed to be placed where they would look correct. if you placed a bed in front of your character the perspective would be very messed-up (there are issues with perspective now, but this would be ten times worse) - I wonder if you can put piggies in the attic...... *mischievous grin*
- RJStormRider: only one way to find out!
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This is really cool -- can't wait to see the finished houses after this glimpse!
I do have one suggestion, and I don't know if it's possible -- but I'd like to be able to use the mouse to move around in decorating mode (dragging the area around, if that makes sense). When I'm using the mouse to move the bits of furniture around, it always takes me a moment to remember the arrow keys. - Satu: good idea, suggested by a few people. we'll look into it
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Bees:
Ah... I suppose as an artist I'm okay with arranging things to resolve the perspective problems myself. (I did notice that some things don't look right in certain positions.)
As for adjusting size: maybe just for the art that hangs on the wall? - Dr.MaudGonne: we have some plans for the wall art. soooooon
- Sorry for asking such dumb question .. but how do you get into the attic?
- small dark line in the top left corner with the undersea wallpaper: http://i.imgur.com/3s0Ro.png
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syntax error: will probably go away on a reload or changing location. known issue, thanks
Morgan Rae: there's some jumping trick involving spinach and triple jumps i think. i don't even know! - Me, I'm very pleased that two-finger moves on Mac trackpads allow you to move the view when decorating (because they send view scrolling info, like the arrow keys). Works great!
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I would love to be able to put one type of wallpaper/paneling on the bottom half of my wall and be able to put a different type on the top half (not a decorator irl, so don't know what it's called)
As well as wall dividers to be able to "separate" my rooms (like the old houses have that have more than one "room" in them)
Also...would love to be able to use the swatches on all furniture and not just walls/ceilings/floors - that way I could truly design my house the way I want with the color schemes :)
And windows - really would love to have a choice of different styles of windows to put on my walls (with a choice of curtain styles, of course :D ) -
"As well as wall dividers to be able to "separate" my rooms"
coming soon!
"use the swatches on all furniture and not just walls/ceilings/floors"
interesting idea, we'll have a think about that. but there will be many more options when we launch for real
"really would love to have a choice of different styles of windows to put on my walls (with a choice of curtain styles, of course"
we're working on some windows (and curtains!) -
Thanks, Bees!!
WOOHOO!! This is just too much fun for words and I'm definitely excited about the future of this!! -
Very nice. I would like to see the items in the furniture tab sorted by type, or at least have the option of doing so easily. (Say with a button.) It would be helpful when I'm looking for a wall lamp to see them all together.
Also, do I understand correctly that there will be no limit to the number of furniture items we can possess? So, it will be like the wardrobe in that respect?
edited to add: If the number of items will be unlimited, the sorting by type is even more important. -
but you can have as many lamps as you want. buy/craft more base lamps. there's no limit to how many lamps (or whatever) you can have
There isn't? Oh, ok! While I realised we'll be able to have more than currently I didn't realise it would be unlimited. Since crafting furniture won't cost credits, as long as you do warn people that upgrading an item more than once is generally a bad idea that all makes sense. Being able to cycle through a list of unlocked upgrades would save inventory space and avoid having to physically swap the items, but I can probably live with it :) - Audaria: no no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit
- lol Bees! ty ty ty ty ty ty ty ty ty ty ty! Now, about that suggestion...?
- sorting by type would make sense! not sure why we don't
- I understand why we are able to upgrade the same item multiple times now given that we have only a limited number of items to work with ... but I'm not sure that having the option later makes sense given that items won't "remember" previous upgrades you purchased for them. I can foresee a lot of future gnashing of teeth related to this, especially as it's related to real-world money.
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Ok I am so sorry if this has been mentioned before, but last night, this thread was manageable, and this morning, it is too much to go back and read through it all.
One thing I would like to be able to do is preview all upgrades together without purchasing, as we do in wardrobe. I want a "cart" that I can put items in and remove them.
For example, maybe I don't want that wallpaper anymore when I see it with the furniture I like, or maybe I would decide that i want one decoration over another but TOO LATE because I already spent credits on the first one. I want to be able to place and play before I buy.
That said, I realize that it's all free right now, but in the future, it won't be, and I will run out of credits, so I would like the option to preview and test before I confirm purchase. -
Beads?!
Not related to housing but I just wanted to say thanks to stoot and Bees! and the rest for taking the time to respond. Though my time spent in Glitch has waxed and waned it's nothing to do with TS (or the game itself, really); I am continually impressed by the amount of respect you show your customers/fans. Good on ya! - I typed in "/home" and nothing happened! Tried home, still nothing. Since I was at home I left and went into the world, nada. What am I doing wrong
- Thank you Thank You Thank You Thank you I love my house. I love to decorate. One comment or request.. Need more Purple Color Items ;)
- Jo Jo: if you were already home when you typed it, then nothing should happen. What happens when you try when you are out in the world?
- Kristen Marie: i don't think we'll do that - it makes everything more complicated for players. you don't so it in your own house irl, but you manage to get by ;)
- This basically ruins the point of Ajaya and Neva Neva right? Since you can just go back to your house, drop off your stuff, and go back in again?
- I don't see the need to try all upgrades together before buying, but it would be nice to be able to see an individual ITEM before buying. Some of them change sizes rather significantly, so it would be helpful if there were some sort of preview available. In our own homes we can take measurements and visualize how something will fit in. It would be nice to have a tool here to do the same.
- I just want to jump in and say that I'm loving the new housing! Congrats, stoot and ts! Well done!
- I just noticed that you don't get the "new day" notice while in decoration mode.
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AwesomeCardinal2000: we have a plan to make this not suck, don't worry
Audaria: you can! when you click on it in the upgrade dialog, it previews in-place. drag the dialog to the side to see if your screen is small - Question: any thoughts on creating your own blocks, ala the current housing system? I realize the signpost thingy kind of lends itself to this but what about (perhaps in the far future) allowing players to put their houses on another player's street (or a collective street) to create a neighborhood/block?
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"the ability to re-size objects as well as flip them"
This is unlikely, though not impossible - the furniture is drawn at a certain size to look good at that size. Many pieces also have in-built platforms and surfaces that would look wrong at different sizes.
Perhaps simply offer a large and small version of certain items, instead? -
shipwreck: as you correctly guessed, this is the purpose of the signpost, while still allowong the owner control, over their public street. group controlled land is a planned future thing, but is a ways off.
megashub: that's certainly possible - I don't know if it's been mentioned, but when I place an icon on top of a counter it looks as if it's floating instead of resting on top of the counter.
- when are we going to be allowed to update our houses and stop testing? Sorry if this has been asked :)
- Thank you Bees! for keeping up with every question/thought in this thread. I appreciate it!
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Mal'akh: mentioned many times! we will fix it
Pickle Bob: in the future! "soon" - awww....ok *sits and waits*...