Topic

Staff 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

Posted 12 years ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • @Princess Fi Oh, I'm not really worried about the animal thing; it was just an example to highlight the weirdness of your whole house being an "enter house" hotspot. Thanks for the tip though!
    Posted 12 years ago by MX Ghostie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks MX, However.. since i put this together anyway, i'm going to post it for anyone that might find it helpful.. (but wow.. my recollection of where i thought my sticks were is obviously belied by what i found when i took these screen shots).. LOL!
    i1204.photobucket.com/album...
    Posted 12 years ago by Princess Fi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Please consider item layering without the need for furniture, as in being able to place items in two rows as well. Also, new poses for teddy bear ala dolls :D
    Posted 12 years ago by Ellisande Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Will we be able to landscape our terrain by using some of the same decorative shrubs and plants found around Ur? Not the ones we can harvest, merely the decorative ones. :) And, what about the possibility of having a scarecrow as decoration for our gardens? He doesn't have to be a vendor, but it would be fun if he was chatty. :) Thanks.
    Posted 12 years ago by Lunarsolar Subscriber! | Permalink
  • omg I like @Lunarsolar's idea! Although, that would basically mean he acts like a gnome, so why not just have gnome costumes that are also craftable? :p
    Posted 12 years ago by Ellisande Subscriber! | Permalink
  • With the Grand Circuit route, all the tree routes, and the planned resources routes, glitchen are putting out NaviGnomes, and NaviNotes.  But notes can be stolen, and gnomes are also problematic (as navigational tools) in many ways that - if it is only one case of gnomes on one street - sounds like a very trivial issue, but if you must stop at each street and wait for the gnome to give the message again (and not be covered by another gnome) and wait for the message to disappear to see the street sign (just to give a few examples of problems), well what is a glitch to do?

    One thing that has been proposed is to be able to change the color of the "wood" in the street signs. That would be good.

    Another idea I would like to propose to TS is if we could pin up a note on our sign post. Only the street owner, and only one note (kind of like the bulletin board), or perhaps let the street owner set up a bulletin board (or multiple ones), but only the owner (and maybe key holders) could post/change.

    (or the owner could set the privilege level to one of: Me, Keys, All)

    hopefully.
    Posted 12 years ago by mr granberry Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love my house in Alakol and honestly I don't care about furnishing my own house - might be nice to 'tweek' a few things though...(add herbs to the planting plots...)  I find the test house and street a bit too bright and cartoon like compared to my serene Alakol pad!  I hope that I'm not going to lose my house as I would be very sad.
    Posted 12 years ago by Princess Monja Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Princess Monja, stoot has said that most of the features of the current/old housing will be available in the new housing, so you'd probably be able to recreate your Alakol house to some extent, at least :) You'll also be able to customize the surroundings of your house. When the changeover happens, you will lose your current house and be given a new house that may or may not be like the tester house that you have now. (Items in your old house will be moved over automatically.)
    Posted 12 years ago by Millie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This question may get lost in the thread however... I was wondering if we will have a warning before the test housing is reset, in order to allow those of us to move stuff out of our new house to our old one.

    Not saying anything will be lost, but in case we get a little nervous about the whole thing. :)
    Posted 12 years ago by Tibbi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • nvm, invalid reply b/c I misread. Bad Millie.
    Posted 12 years ago by Millie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm not a fan of decorating (in Glitch or RL) so this aspect leaves me cold.  The furniture we've been given is sooo very much NOT to my liking anyway.  I'm really looking forward to being able to customize our homes and put in features that we want.  I know exactly what I want but it will probably take a few years (and a lot of grinding) to get  the resources to make it! :)

    I'm not a big fan of the signposts with only 5 slots.  It can get extremely tedious to try to get to a friend's house if they aren't on your signpost.
    Posted 12 years ago by Marla Subscriber! | Permalink
    • Can we have Ix or Bog style  Streets?  (with accompanying resources)   also,  I understand About blocking folks but I am concern about gated communities.  Its Just Creepy. perhaps unavoidable. 
    Posted 12 years ago by meeshynoob Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree, I can't wait to have an Ix / Uralian style street... they MUST be putting that in because we've asked for it for.ev.er.
    Posted 12 years ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm really enjoying my test house and area, but for the end product I'd like to see at least two more patches for each of the gardens though eight of each would be awesome.
    This is a great addition to the game, I hope you keep the new ideas coming.
    Thanks.
    Posted 12 years ago by Doctor Hoo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really like them but i wish we could plant egg plant trees :(
    Posted 12 years ago by Teala Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Speculation speculates that there may be a possibility of egg trees when R2 drops.  But it's just speculation. :)
    Posted 12 years ago by Tibbi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I do not think its right that if you were constantly making furniture like SDB's i think its completely wrong that you would have to keep paying over and over again for the same style, SDB's would be an easy way for me to store things instead of keeping them hoarded on the floor, i think that you should be able to buy a style for any piece of furniture and keep it and you can use it again and again whenever you create another of that furniture. you get to keep clothes when you purchase them and you do not have to purchase them again so why should you with furniture, this sounds absolutely wrong
    Posted 12 years ago by Santa Clause Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Santa Clause:

    So in Real Life if you bought a dining chair you wouldn't expect to buy the other 3, 5 or whatever, to go around your table?
    Posted 12 years ago by IrenicRhonda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Save your anger for later Santa :) You may find the free options will render your point rather moot in your own case! 

    Already I find there are a few nice free options for SDBs and because they're free yu can use them over and over ;)
    Posted 12 years ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • no i would buy a package deal but fact is this isnt real life its a game that people play

    ive got loads of things and sdbs would sort them out nicely, but i dont want to be spending 1000's of creds on just one style as i dont have the money its a major turn off.

    @IrenicRhonda: would you expect to get a few free styles in real life of things, would you expect to go find a rock and start mining it or find a chicken and squeezing it, i doubt it
    Posted 12 years ago by Santa Clause Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm planning on having floors with just SDB's
    Posted 12 years ago by Rook Subscriber! | Permalink
  • OK I love the new house, could be taller ( coming) yard could be a tad bigger to lay out my stuff ( coming also). So far I'm happy with the upgrade selections but want some more space themed gear ( coming I hope).  Best I can do with the furniture once its in is jump on it , so perhaps a bouncy castle theme would go well.  Love the addition of the metal pile  and wood tree for the up coming skills. 
    In these houses will there be fireflies, barnacles and jell sac?
    Posted 12 years ago by Gumby_Roffo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I noticed recently that even when out of decorating mode, clicking on furniture still brings up the verb menu to upgrade etc. Isn't that what decorate mode is for? I think it should be restricted to decorate mode because:
    a) it would make clicking to walk much easier
    b) it would make the furniture seem more like part if the house
    c) it weirds me out to see a verb menu for something to have a verb menu in regular mode without glowing blue (and furniture shouldn't glow blue because of reason b)
    d) it makes decorate mode make more sense.

    I'm going to go put this in ideas too but thought it also belonged in the house thread.
    Posted 12 years ago by Fernstream Subscriber! | Permalink
  • when will the test houses be permanent? i would like to know soon!
    Posted 12 years ago by Atomic-Glitter-Bomb Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When they aren't test houses anymore :)

    EDIT: Sorry, I'll actually be helpful now ;) http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/18876/#reply-196014 <- This post by Stoot tells us that imagination will likely come one week after R2. His other post 'Housing release two will not happen till next week' tells us the R2 update we're waiting for will be this week, as it was posted last week. Since today is getting fairly late, I don't expect it today. So R2 is probably Tuesday-Friday of this week.

    Finally, we know from the blog post here -> http://www.glitch.com/blog/2012/03/23/progress-report/ that the houses will become permanent with the advent of imagination.

    Knowing R2 is sometime this week, imagination is ~ one week after that, and that the houses become permanent with imagination, we can extrapolate that our new houses will be permanent in about 8-12 days :)
    Posted 12 years ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • 2 weeks. I think, maybe.
    Posted 12 years ago by Tibbi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i have a question. so when we stop testing, what will you do about the upgrades? if you have upgrades that cost credits (which i have none), then will you get to keep the upgrades? and when will we be done testing the houses?
    Posted 12 years ago by Jynx101 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ! heres a suggestion. for the upgrades (when we switch), if you dont have any credits, then you can be allowed to keep 5 items less than x amount of credits.
    Posted 12 years ago by Jynx101 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When testing is finished, the test houses will be reset back to what we had when they first came out, walls and a floor, not sure about anything else, i think tree's and stuff get reset too. So there won't be any upgraded items to worry about.
    Posted 12 years ago by ~Annie~ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The houses may just disappear when the testing is finished, and we may just have a plot of land to start playing with rather than any floors or walls; I don't think they've explicitly said on that point (or I've missed it if they have). The blanker the slate, the better in my opinion*.

    Trees will get reset, but they hadn't decided about animals getting reset (I suppose it all comes down to mechanics). I'm pretty sure we won't have any crop or herb plots.

    You're right that there won't be any upgraded items to worry about. We might get a piece of raw furniture (think something simple like a chair) to upgrade as we choose, but we may not since we'll have the skills and tools to make our own at that point.

    *I realize others may not like tabula rasa, but I would hope if it were that blank, there'd be easy options for those not as inclined for designing houses to make up something quickly and satisfactorily.
    Posted 12 years ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Looking at the photos here:
    1
    2

    My guess is that you will start with a complete blank slate in R2 (I.E. you won't be limited to just the cottage style house) 
    All of the contents of your old test house (resources, dolls, gems, potions) will either be inside your new house or in your moving box.  
    I don't think any of the decorations will be there from the old test house.

    I don't need to speculate much.  I'm sure we will find out something by the end of this week.
    Posted 12 years ago by Awesomasaurus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really *really* hope that the contents of our houses aren't just dumped in our yards... then anybody could take it!  <:o
    Posted 12 years ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Of course they won't dump house contents onto home streets.
    Posted 12 years ago by Fnibbit Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Little Miss Giggles wrote: but they hadn't decided about animals getting reset 

    Jade said in Live Help that animals would be turned back to eggs.
    Posted 12 years ago by IrenicRhonda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Little Miss Giggles wrote: but they hadn't decided about animals getting reset 

    Jade said in Live Help that animals would be turned back to eggs.
    Posted 12 years ago by IrenicRhonda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ooooh that's awesome, I can't wait to see all my eggs in my home and yard.  :3

    I had another dream last night, this time about crafting.. I dreamt R2 happened and I went in-world as soon as I saw, and we were given the opportunity to craft stuff, so I picked from this little pop-up list, crafting basic storage display boxes.. and the whole dream was just me crafting SDB's lol.. :>  You know a game is good when it gets lodged into your subconscious like that..
    Posted 12 years ago by ♪♥~ Auren ~♥♪ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Awesome to know, IrenicRhonda. :)
    Posted 12 years ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Charcoal stucco & Violet Voyage wallpaper arent working for me & just showing a white box with a grey X. Anyone else?
    Posted 12 years ago by Dagnabbit Rabbit Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I can't use those items either.

    -edited out since i added it to the R2 thread instead-
    Posted 12 years ago by Liathea Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with Liathea, works fine maybe in an empty house but to drag it in to where you already have lots of stuff is a pain in the behind :(
    Posted 12 years ago by Grovery Firefly Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Feedback: As Stoot said recently, now you have to drag something into your house to be able to upgrade it (change its design). However, it would be nice to be able to see what designs are available for an object before we build it. A catalog perhaps?
    Posted 12 years ago by KatGamer Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Found one, In R2 when you jump for the door of your house and a chicken or such is also in the way you get the multi option screen pop up . All good there but it does not display a door icon , just a blank space.
    In the mean time I'm loving the changes. 
    Posted 12 years ago by Gumby_Roffo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've tried to keep up with this thread and don't recall this being asked: Will credit-purchased upgrades for walls, ceilings, and floors be sell-back-able (at a loss) the same way wardrobe items are?
    Posted 12 years ago by Sirentist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sirentist, while this is far from official word, I would doubt it.  Since these items can be traded amongst players, allowing them to be returned to the server for a partial refund of credits would be... well, let's just say problematic.
    Posted 12 years ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, I didn't realize it would be possible to trade the wall, ceiling, and floor upgrades! I thought it was just the furniture stuff.
    Posted 12 years ago by Sirentist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So we'll really be able to buy a furniture/wallpapers/ceiling/floors with credits but then you can sell for currants here or I'm getting all wrong? *confused face*
    Posted 12 years ago by Lila Clemenceau Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's an assumed extension from furniture to other upgrades on my part, actually -- I could be entirely wrong on all the counts!

    Lila, it has been confirmed with staff that furniture designs bought with credits will be just like any other furniture, and thus you can buy/sell/trade/give/whatever it.  Here's a link! (You can scroll down for further clarification from stoot there as well.)
    Posted 12 years ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, ty so much Magic! I was told it was going to be like that but I never saw Stoot's answer. Ty for showing me. That will be so cool! <3
    Posted 12 years ago by Lila Clemenceau Subscriber! | Permalink
  • 1 more post until 900 Posts. O_O

    Anyway, did they fix the flying-item trick with the shelves?
    Posted 12 years ago by I Love You TS Subscriber! | Permalink
  • THE 900TH POST! OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY 4 EVERY1!!!!!!!!!!
    Posted 12 years ago by Misty Power Subscriber! | Permalink
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