A lot of talk recently about people opinion on a wipe (no wipe discussions here please) and a lot of people have talked about wanting blueprints to be added. But without a description of how blueprints would work, its kinda hard to say ‘yes/no’ to the idea of them.
So my question is, what would “Blueprints” be according to you?
My answer:
Select a 3D area and save it as a structure.
Use that blueprint to place a hologram of that build.
You can now place blocks in the correct places, by hand, to recreate said build.
Notes: This does not copy/cut and paste builds. You do not get to keep the blocks from making a blueprint. This does not automatically build the saved build for you. It merely shows a hologram so you can ‘paint by numbers’ it.
This would allow people to sell blueprints, which I think would be awesome for builders.
I have a feeling that most people are using it as a ‘mitigation’ to allow them to advocate for that other heinous thing. In that it would save your structure so that once you have got a place to build, it places it there.
i imagine it like that but a machine does the building instead (consuming fuel, placing blocks slowly)
i would like to have bluperints so i don’t have to rebuild the same repeating element over and over (and to move house easily of course)
the blueprint selling could be a problem tho ( saying that as a builder who could make a ton of coin)
you build a house from scratch, make a blueprint, sell it for 1000c. i buy it, build it with little effort, change 2 blocks and resell it for 500c… unpleasant.
the blueprints would have to be only usable by their author.
edit : maybe an advanced feature where you can replace materials and colors in the machine’s interface
edit2: the machine would consume chisels (type and durability)
If Blueprints are going to offer a way for players to move their builds for some reason (issues with neighbors, moving to a Sovereign or some other reason), then it does not make sense for them to have to place each block. I think the blueprint should be able to check a players inventory and rebuild from that. I do think that to avoid exploiting the function that a player should not get any xp for building via a blueprint.
I do agree that using a blueprint to replicate identical elements would be great. I could more easily place roads or walls with repeating pieces and would do so even if I did not get any XP for it.
I also agree that selling blueprints does not really work very well as there is nothing to stop a player from buying a blueprint and then creating their own blueprint from the build and selling that.
Perhaps just an option to restrict their propogation, no? Like the different levels of commons licences you can whack on your flickr photos.
( which TOTALLY stops folks stealing them. … KIDDING of course )
That way you can ‘own’ the build, but others can benefit from it.
I mean, from your full post, I can already see how someone like @Ovis (or even myself to a lesser extent) could benefit from it on the basis of inventions or building on the backs of others’ inventions.
Allowing someone to not have to fully get the RGB light, but be able to implement it would really give me a LOT of joy, whether money was involved or not.
I don’t agree with the automatic building, as I don’t think a game with such amazing building, should be able to be automatic. You could essentially build a quarter of a build, blueprint it, then repeat it 3 times and you’ve just automatically built the majority of something.
As for the selling of blueprints, there could be a away for the game to know an area that has been built with a blueprint, and not allow that area to be be blueprinted ,unless its decayed/wiped/reclaimed.
(remembering the area that ahs been made with a blueprint could be made easier by having blueprints be constricted to the plots sizes and not custom sizes like 3x7x10 but instead it would have to be 8x8x16 for this example)
if you share it and make it usable by others it is in public domain. can’t really imagine any middle ground where it shareable for profit and not exploited. unless the game can recognize blueprints used in the world
Yeah, I mean, literally flagging a block as ‘fromBluePrint’ feels like something that’s doable, meaning that the engine then restricts any blueprint being made that contains that block.
Version two could even have granular licencing, so, like, you could have:
No reproduction
Some reproduction
Public
Where ‘Public’ is “do what you like” and ‘Some’ is where this blueprint may only be used in another if it is a maximum particular percentage of the new blueprint (either fixed in game, or maybe even variable in v3).
Equipped and used by allowing to mark an area to copy:
Mark beacon.
Mark individual plots to copy (to envelope what you want to blueprint, in case of large beacons where only a part is of interest to you).
The bigger the area you mark, the bigger decrease in dura for the blueprinting tool.
Make the tool run on some fuel and need to add more for larger blueprints?
Two versions of the Blueprint Tool: Basic and Advanced.
Basic - copy and paste to be manually filled with blocks.
Advanced - copy and paste with all blocks filled automatically (maybe a bit like reclaim, but in reverse; so a gradual process that would take between seconds and hours depending on the size of blueprint). Placing a blueprint with the Advanced Blueprint Tool would require all needed blocks to be in inventory or storage placed within the same plot as character at time of performing the action.
Issues:
What would be maximum size of blueprint (hardware/connection limitations?)
What would be the placing point (in case of multi-plot blueprints): some automatically assigned central point, or a corner plot of blueprinted area?
What view would be provided to control placing area - a new kind of view turned on/off when needed and with huge zoom-out available?
In case of automatic option with Advanced Blueprint Tool, how would natural blocks around be treated? Should they be removed automatically when blueprint starts to load the content, or should the area be prepared manually (removing all blocks before blueprint is applied, or blueprint auto-fill paused with message displayed to remove natural blocks that caused the pause?).
Should a toon be standing within blueprint area to paste a copied blueprint, or just outside of it?
Should any owned items placed within blueprint area be destroyed or reclaimed or ignored when Automatic Reclaim starts? Or should the automatic reclaim pause and display mesage to remove an obstacle?
Should a beacon be placed before starting blueprint loading, or should blueprint tool beacon and plot automatically, taking needed controller and plots from inventory?
Should beacons have option to block copying or all beacons be available for blueprinting?
You can probably imagine more details like that that would need to be decided on.
If i recall right, Landmark did have a means of flagging blueprints as being owned by the original person. They had a shop, I know I made a whole dollar on a windmill I made. It was a pity dollar from a friend (lol). Pretty drastic changes had to be made (like ALOT as I recall) for ownership to remove the right’s of the original owner and be uploaded by someone else.
If it does not offer some form of automatic building then I think you eliminate a large number of use cases and make the need for a blueprint system much less. Personally, I would not use it, if I had to replace all the blocks. Especially in builds where the blocks are multiple blocks deep and require chiseling. If I missed a block then I end up reworking the build until I get it right.
As long as a person did not get any XP for this, I am not sure I fully understand why this is a problem. If a person designs a road system and repeats it 100 times (with the provision that the duplicated parts do not get XP), how does this damage the game? The person still had to design and build the first segment and they still have to have acquired all the blocks in order to build any additional segments. It is not like it suddenly is creative mode and the blocks magically spawn.
Landmark had a super intricate blue printing system. You could sell them without the buyer being able to sell them on. It was locked to the player who created it unless otherwise specified. You could also give permission for it to be traded at will. When you “reclaimed” a build, or let it expire from lack of upkeep, it automatically blueprinted the entire claimed area. You had to have all the materials in your inventory or bank to set the build back down. Boundless doesn’t have any bank, so you are already going to run into problems with large blueprints right there. The inventory doesn’t have a whole lot of room in it, so where will it pull materials from? Chests? Reclaims? What if you took all the stuff out of reclaim? Do you forever lose the ability to set down the blueprint? Something like the bank would have to be added. (In landmark, you had your inventory, and you had your bank, which was space for up to 100k of every common material to fit in that you could move things to directly from your inventory. No more throwing away half your stuff while mining! Yay! Just toss it in the bank and keep going. Also, no more ginormous color storages. Everything is neatly sorted in your bank for easy perusal and retrieval. A lot of people probably will not like that. )
People did not have a whole lot of luck selling large blueprints. People want to build their own stuff, not copy everyone elses. The blueprints that sold were small, intricate blueprints (i.e. mostly furniture) that people could not replicate themselves, and shapes (circles in every size!). Landmark also had the nefarious micro and antivoxel shenanigans, which Boundless does not have. You were not just copying voxels, you were copying air, which was invisibly chiseled, and did strange, wonderful, and horrible things to your build. Most people had difficulty working with microvoxels and antivoxels, for obvious reasons, and would just copy the perfect versions other people had created. I don’t think I ever saw anyone selling entire houses, or quarters of houses, or anything of the that sort, because there was no one interested in buying them. People wanted tables, chairs, beds, desks, and other intricately chiseled things they didn’t know how to make.
Boundless has a far simpler and easier to uses building system. There is no copying of weirdly shaped air. There is no copying of air at all, so far as I am aware.
I also think people are underestimating the difficulty of placing a large build back down. It only really works if you are placing things on completely flat surfaces. Otherwise, you end up with parts of the build buried underground, or hanging in the air. It looks weird, and takes AGES to clean up. Its not just copy and paste.
I think a blueprint system shouldn’t be the ‘go-to’ way to build, it should be used for those specific situations. For example if someone wants to build a hopper statue (or some of those Egyptian Anubis statues you’ve made), it could be quite complicated to build. So that would be a perfect way to use the blueprint system to replicate those complicated builds. I don’t think anyone would use a blueprint system to make a road.
Having it automatic would also take away a lot of the ‘accomplishment’ feeling from building stuff. Which is really important for building games.
Its not a case of damaging the game, its just too exploitable and will remove ALOT of gameplay time. A build that could take someone days, would take them no time at all, then they’re more likely to run out of things to build and get bored and leave.
Yeah I also remember any terraforming got copied as well, so if you wanted a clean building you’d have to make the blueprint, then clean up all the dirt that came with it and then recopy it clean.
I like the way Fallout does blueprints. As long as you have the materials needed, you can use the laser ghost camera view to place your entire build/camp. You have to keep moving it around until you find an acceptable area to place your build. It depends on how far into the ground it needs to go and how big it is.
I would not use blue prints if I had to re-build it block by block. That defeats the purpose. You already built everything - you’re just moving it. Going block by block would be useful if everyone was limited to 8 plots and had small builds, but there are players that have huge builds - cities that can be seen from other planets.
Things would be dependent upon how much block/chisel/color data a blueprint could hold. Blueprints need to be useable by a variety of builder types, not just small ones. Maybe we need to spend cubits on a “Builder’s Token” that can be used to move larger places.
Consider the way Boundless landscapes and towns might be changed by them too. Are blueprints shareable/sellable? If so, we might see the same blueprint stamped everywhere. Does a blueprint have to be placed on the ground or can you place it anywhere? (ie: can you stack a blueprint on top of itself over and over like pancakes?)
Edit to add: I don’t know if anyone else has played Hokko Life, but I love their blueprint method for decor & furniture. You build the design in-game and then you can place it anywhere and can make it available for other players to use. Creativerse also does blueprints well, imo (the market is nice to have).
I will disagree, after laying out all the roads I have around my new builds, a blueprint system that placed the blocks would have made it less time consuming and much less boring.
While I can understand where some people might feel this way, I know that others (myself included) would not. And no one could force anyone to use a blueprint, so if you wanted the feeling of accomplishment from placing all the blocks in a complicated build then you can. If you want to quickly build infrastructure or repeat a building quickly using blocks you already have but want to speed up the process, then you can use a blueprint.
You can also offer an alternative to fill in the blocks or not when placing the blueprint which allows both side to handle blueprints how they want to. More options, I would argue is better and allows for more play styles in the game.
In my opinion, a blueprint system that does not place the blocks is not worth the the development effort. I am not able to determine right now, when I would use it. As far as the comment on things like the Anubis I built. All I had to do was to build it in Magika Voxel and I can use that as a reference for any future builds. So it might be an outside tool, but it is one that lets me know where to lay blocks and I can share it with others if I choose to. So tools exist for this without any development effort.
In that it would save your structure so that once you have got a place to build, it places it there.
… KIDDING of course )