Can you imagine building a world with World Machine and using it as the surface layer in Boundless? That would be awesome.
The world building process in Boundless is extremely programmable allowing a creator to have extensive control over the generation of a world. You can use the tool to create, within the limits of the blocks provided, almost any topological shapes. Then decorate them with prefabs.
As anyone who’s played with the tool will have discovered - it’s takes quite a bit of getting into. And we can’t simply expose the tool to everyone and say good luck! For the initial release of private worlds we intend to allow players to pick from a limited set of premade world configs.
If the feature proves to be popular we can then explore allowing more customisation.
36 Likes
Do you have an idea what it might cost James? I’d like to save up before hand.
Also, can we have smaller world’s? Maybe not so big? Maybe they are all the same size?
4 Likes
If we purchase these prefab’d worlds to show you how interested we are, will we be able to switch them out later when increased customization hits? Honestly, I am not thrilled by the prospect of dealing with prefabs, but also don’t want you to scrap the idea because of a lack of intrest due to the lack of customization options.
7 Likes
Might I suggest someone makes a post with a poll of things they want on their rental world’s? Maybe then everyone can be happy.
1 Like
I’m hopeful for an answer on this. This is exactly my concern for rental planets. I think probably most casual players will have the same issue. I have the means to pay, but I don’t want to sink a bunch of time and money into something I’m stuck with and have buyers remorse. So it’s my intent to cautiously observe how they are introduced, what options are available and of course the cost. Because I don’t initially come running with cash in hand to grab a planet doesn’t mean I don’t want it… I’m just waiting to see if it works for my interest.
So definitely having a discussion or some preemptive information I think will add to the success of the rental planet release.
6 Likes
I’m simultaneously for and against this. I think it’d be a great way to show the devs what folks are thinking/desiring but I feel like they’d already hit tricky edge cases and I don’t want to slow down development any more because someone shares a really good idea 
If only there had been some devlogs at the beginning of the design process I think some edge cases and ideas could have been caught early on instead of appearing in all of these various rental world threads that keep popping up 
2 Likes
Even sexier would be the ability to reconfigure them at will.
I feel that if the world owner wanted to go from a prefab to customized either;
- Player owned blocks get reclaimed(oh no not my hard work)
- The world around your plots will change(wonky/ mismatch landscape that may possibly look horrible)
Losing absolutely everything seems a bit extreme to me. I also think you should be able to have a free re-roll in case you don’t like the landscape.
That’s the wrong way round for me. I’d love to rent a planet but want the customisation else I’m not very interested. I can see why you’d want to know if the worlds are worth further resource investment but if it’s too limited then you lose some market and may not get good data about how popular it might be. Maybe send a survey to existing account holders too or something?
1 Like
Maybe it’s a good idea for them to go ahead and add the private planet update - then make needed changes in the future. Some people will rent planets when they 1st come out. Some people may hold off for a bit.
We shouldn’t hold back huge updates just because they might refine or add to it later 
Game content can always be changed or refined and progress should not stop/wait because of this (imo).
5 Likes
I’m of the opposite opinion on this one I’m afraid. Rental planets are a big thing and in my opinion something that won’t stand up very well to iterative design. I know I wouldn’t be too pleased with paying for an “ok-ish” (i.e. not my ideal) premade world, only to have fully customisable ones become available after I already started rebuilding.
I think it’s something they should try and get right first time around, giving everyone a chance to get their ideal paid planet with all the customisation possibilities from the outset.
10 Likes
I hear you, but I would hate for the rental planets to be delayed beyond this year because they were trying to add other things or going back to the drawing board. Even if they got it “just right”, I’m sure there will be changes and updates to them in the future.
Edit to add: I 100% agree that they shouldn’t put out something that’s half-done. It seems like they’ve been gathering data from testing & working on this for quite some time.
December '19 https://forum.playboundless.com/t/testing-238-prototype-creative-mode-and-modding/39256
3 Likes
I’ve been messing with worldbuilder since it became available. Been fine tuning what I would consider a world that has an environment that suits my greatest building ambitions. The news of prefabs has pretty much killed the game for me after all these years. It’s quiet sad.
Hope they have some pretty extraordinary prefabs available.
Indeed, I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to buy a world with one of the pre-made designs then have the tools come later on to customize it to your heart’s content after you’ve already built up on it.
5 Likes
It kinda reminds me of the feeling I had when Creative Mode went into testing… Was sooo pumped to check out the sample planets, and then I saw them for the first time and their color palettes hit me and I was like, “… Oh. I would never build on this planet.”
The new system may prove to be unpopular precisely BECAUSE it doesn’t allow customization. I understand your logic of having some premade planets, because some renters simply won’t want to be bothered with the world builder - but for some of us, that may be exactly the thing that we’ve been looking for.
Do you have a ballpark estimate of how many worlds the “limited set” will include? The level of variety here might make or break your initial rollout of the system. If you’ve got enough of a mix of generic and unique design types, then even people who thought they wanted to use the world builder might just settle and never look back… but if not, then the whole thing could be dead on arrival.
I may have missed it if it was already mentioned, but I think that allowing for full control of the color palette on the premade worlds would probably go a long way toward making them more acceptable.
3 Likes
Would we at some point get some examples of prefabs before they come out. Examples of what kind of biomes each would have? And a number of choices?
Personally, I’d love a hilly desert planet, similar to Arrakis from Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. Or an ocean world with small and medium sized islands.
2 Likes
I’m hoping for some flat-ish green fields with rolling hills and nice large trees. Also would like some blue water/lakes/rivers. 
(Kinda the opposite of the worlds I like to explore hehe)
3 Likes
i want an icy world with “temperate bands” along with ice cliffs and flat ice/temperate plains
2 Likes
I just wanted to have Solum as my rental planet…just add #255 gleam to it.
2 Likes