Engineering ·
Building Structures, Not Snap Pieces
Foundations that follow the ground, walls built from real courses, openings that remove bricks and receive lintels, and timber that has to be supported.
Development update. The construction system is in active development, and what is described here may change.
Most survival games build with snap pieces: a wall segment, a floor tile, a doorway prefab. It works, and it is quick, but everything ends up the same size and nothing is really built so much as placed. For Nova Eridani we wanted construction that feels physical without becoming tedious.
Foundations that suit the site
Foundations are defined by their dimensions rather than by a tile count. You set out an arbitrary rectangle at the size you need, and the foundation responds to the terrain beneath it instead of assuming the ground is flat. On a slope, it steps down to meet the ground.
Real courses
Walls are masonry, and masonry is built in courses. Bricks are laid in a bond, course on course, with the offset you would expect. You can place individual bricks when you want precise control, and you can also drag out a run and have the wall build along it.
That is the balance we are aiming for: brick-by-brick logic without brick-by-brick tedium. You should never need to click several hundred times to build a shed, but the shed should still be made of bricks.
Openings and lintels
When you place a window or a door, it removes the bricks it replaces. Those bricks are not destroyed; they are part of the material accounting. Above the opening, a lintel is inserted automatically, because without one there would be nothing holding up the courses above.
This is where the system starts to feel like construction rather than decoration. Openings need support, and the wall around them is still a wall.
Timber and support
Timber posts and beams let you frame structures, and they carry load. Structural support is validated, so a beam needs something to sit on. A beam pushed out past its supports is rejected rather than floating in mid-air.
Roof systems are part of the ongoing work. They are the next big piece, and they will build on the same support rules.
Editable, and recoverable
Everything you build stays editable after you have placed it. Components can be adjusted, and dismantling a structure recovers its materials so they can be used again elsewhere. Construction also saves and loads with the rest of the world.
Buildings that grow up
The same components are used, where practical, for the settlement's production buildings. A Woodcutter Station is intended to start as a simple timber structure and evolve with the settlement: brick and timber later, and eventually an advanced industrial building. Because they are made from the same pieces, they stay part of an editable world rather than becoming fixed props.
We will share in-engine captures of the build mode as it matures.
