Dev Blog #48: Round Building Kit + Doors and Windows

Hello Voyagers! Stephiroth here with another development update. In our last dev blog, we promised we'd be talking about the long-awaited round building kit. And now it's time!

The Round Building Kit is one of the most-requested features in Voyagers of Nera, and we're so excited to show it off! It's coming with 1.0 rather than the December patch, because it still needs a little more time to cook, but we wanted to give everyone a behind-the-scenes look at how it works, and some developer insight on the challenges of building a round kit in a square world.

We'll not only talk about the round building kit, but also functional doors, windows, and other upcoming quality of life improvements for the building system!

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How does building work in Nera?

Let's do a quick refresher on what makes our building system a little different from other survival games.

Instead of placing every wall plank, floor board, and roof tile one at a time, players place frames. Frames are divided into segments, and each segment can accept a wall, a window frame, or a doorway. Placing a piece into a segment is just like building any item, but it slots into the empty segment transforming it into the chosen piece.

Every frame has an established footprint, which allows us to design big, expressive roof shapes and unique wall designs that would be really tough to assemble from smaller modular bits. There are definitely some trade-offs with exactly how customizable buildings can be, but we know a lot of players enjoy being able to quickly build large, beautiful bases without all of the piece-by-piece fiddling (like trying to figure out how to fit dozens of little roof pieces together).

A round kit in a square world

Our original build kits were all rectangular, which is much easier to design for. But we wanted to add the round kit to create more diversity in the types of bases players could build and give a lot more visual variety in the world. But our whole game was made around a square grid, so introducing the round kit presented a new set of challenges.

• Measure twice, build once
• Round rooms come in two sizes: 12 meters and 6 meters. Because a curved wall looks different at each size, every piece (walls, windows, doors, and more) has to be authored twice while keeping the two sets visually consistent.

How do circles work!?

• Kyle, our senior environment artist, mapped out the entire kit in Figma to make sure the round and square kits would play nicely together. Platforms and hallways keep the same 4-meter footprint across both kits, so a round platform connects to a square one, and players can build long, winding platform paths that mix the two.

(Not So) Simple Geometry

• Each circular room is divided into four radial chunks. As platforms extend outward from there, the math gets trickier, since a railing that fits on an inner piece also has to line up with the angles and distances of the outer ones. But through some complex math (or more realistically a lot of nudging back and forth), we got this working and all of these pieces should fit together, whether it's the inner or outer part of the curve.

Connecting Round and Square buildings

• These shapes don't naturally fit together, however hallways stay rectangular in every kit, which means they can connect to either a round building or a square one. That lets players link the two styles together and build out a whole village.

Mind the Curve

In our building catalog, every buildable that players place typically has its own individual entry, even if they are very similar (like platform wide and platform narrow). This works well for most items since there are not usually that many total variations. However, curved stairs have to curve either left or right. The old approach would have been separate "curved stair left" and "curved stair right" pieces, and with every new shape the build catalog would quickly balloon out of control. Instead, we added new logic so a single stair piece swaps its shape based on where the player is aiming. Aim a little to the left, and the stairs curve left. Keep going, and they'll spiral right on up.

Railings got a similar upgrade. Rather than a whole family of railing variants, the Elderwood kit now has just one railing that adapts to wherever it's placed. On a square platform, it becomes a straight railing (short or long, depending on the spot). On a round platform it curves, and it knows whether to use a wide curve or a narrow one. This helps make it a lot easier for players to pick the right piece from the catalog as opposed to fiddling with a lot of similarly named but slightly different assets.

Who's there? Doors and Windows!

Players have been asking for doors for a long time. When we first designed the buildings, we pictured them as a bit more open-air. But we quickly learned that nobody wants people to see straight into their living room!

With 1.0, doors and windows will be available across all of the existing build kits, not just the new one:

• Doors have open and closed states, and closed doors will keep enemies out. The one exception is the makeshift palm-leaf door, which works more like a curtain over the doorway.
• Windows slot into any window segment. Any square window fits any square window frame, and round windows in round frames.
• Progression is part of the fun here, too. Early windows are pretty humble (the makeshift window looks a bit like a prison window, so players will probably want to upgrade!), while higher-tier windows use glass panes made from Sea Glass.

The Elderwood kit includes a new type of piece: an arch! This piece is fun for defining transitions between outdoor spaces, and we'd love to incorporate them into the earlier kits.

One of our ongoing art challenges is making upgraded pieces feel like technological upgrades, while maintaining the fantasy of Nera. Even the fanciest builds should still feel handmade and grounded in the world, while giving players that satisfying sense of having really made it. We think our round kit really achieved that, and we hope you love the style as much as we do!

Quality of Life Improvements

(Picture taken with the in-game Fly Camera mode in Build Mode!)

Whenever we sit down for a full playthrough of our own, we often find little annoyances or bugs that get in the way of the experience we want players to have, like trying to place an item high up on a wall and having the camera freak out, or scrolling through a million build options to find one item you've already placed before. Our goal is a building system where players can seamlessly create beautiful structures without pixel-perfect placement. Gameplay can be challenging, but the interface shouldn't be! Here are a few improvements that came out of that. And you won't have to wait for 1.0 for the flying camera and taller builds; they're arriving early in the December patch!

• Eyedropper tool
• The more pieces we add to the catalog, the more scrolling it takes to find the right one. Now, players can hover over any piece they've already placed and middle-click to make it their active build piece without having to open the menu. This one is a little hidden, so be sure to try it out!

Free Fly Building Camera

• Press B, then T, to switch to a free-flying camera that moves through walls and up and down freely. It makes it much easier to line up tall builds, roof structures, and lights.

Sky's the Limit

• Buildings were previously capped at two stories. That limit has been lifted, so players can now keep building up, and up, and up. We can't wait to see the amazing mega-builds that our dedicated builders come up with!

But wait, there's more!?

The round kit isn't stopping at the Elderwood. The upcoming Burning Isles biome will have its own round-themed building kit with its own materials. We're working on that now and we're excited to share more about it soon!

What's next?

Thank you all for your ideas, feedback, and support. So much of what's in this blog came directly from what players have told us, and it's a huge help as we head toward 1.0. We can't wait to see what everyone builds once the round kit arrives.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for the December patch, and stay tuned for future dev blogs where we'll share more about what's coming in 1.0!

What's the first thing you're going to build with the round kit? Let us know in the comments below