Building in Starbound Part 1: early design and thoughts

As I mentioned last week, I was looking to get into building in Starbound beyond the typical hole in the ground storage space that I often create.  That’s not to say there’s nothing to discuss in that matter, it’s just I was looking to make something a bit more established or realistic (as far as one can go in a 2D space world).

The process to start building first featured a process of finding a ‘creative mode’ where one can spawn infinite blocks to design whatever plan s/he may desire to build.  This came up with a couple debugging mods and community lead creative projects, but unfortunately I didn’t have much luck with getting them to work.  I could put this down to not having much time to properly research the fixes and solutions, but some of the blame can be put down to not being great at fixing mods without guidance.  So, for this initial stage of the project, I looked to use what my current avatar had gathered over the two week period I had been playing on and off. 

Anyway, onto the build...

After a quick Google search of precedence, I had decided that for my first build, I would look to not create some aesthetic wonder house but merely recreate a timber framed dwelling in section akin to my early days of studying Architecture.  The aim of this was to take the parts of a building we’re well aware of (walls, floor, roof, etc) and input detail such as insulation, joists and foundations.  Due to the 2D world that the game offers, I feel this is an interesting way to represent such details and give an insight into basic construction.  Whereas previously I was looking into these massive builds, I am more interested in doing details akin to 1:20 scale drawings that draughtsmen do in practice, of course in a simplified manner. 

Foundation

Foundations of build #1.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

After levelling out a space for my build, I placed a large section of stone to represent the foundation.  In game, I presented this with cobblestone being covered by mud outside the space of the dwelling, as foundations tend to extend beyond the building by a small amount.  I then cut out a section on either side to simulate the start of the wall formations through a darker stone which would connect to the timber frame.  As these are load bearing walls, having the resistance of this stone supports against forces like the wind pushing against the frame and toppling the walls. 

Walls

Wall formation featuring Timber exterior, interior and insulation.  Screenshot taken 20/4/2015

My original plan for this was to feature 5 piece wall formation featuring these pieces; exterior wooden cladding, timber frame exterior, insulation, timber frame interior and interior render.  This became a bit awkward to achieve because of two reasons.  Firstly, the smallest block is 1x1 in an ordered grid fashion, so having exterior cladding that went at a 30 degree angle while keeping everything else to scale would the make the wall much bigger than my original foundation would allow.  Secondly, as I was doing this with my available supplies, I would have needed to gather a lot more wood for the frame and pink moon rocks for insulation.  This wasn’t viable with my available time so I stuck to a simpler wall-insulation-wall setup.  I also allowed for a couple windows where I put in a sill and overhang, but as with the wall would like to do again with a lot more detail. 

Roof

Roof, Guttering and formation.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

This is the section I’m most happy with, as I was able to add a nice couple touches to it.  I did a cut-off point where the wall meets the roof and create a typical gabled roof with a combination of refined wood, unrefined wood and insulation.  I originally thought to do a 30 degree angle (2-3 along 1 up) but keeping with the scale of the rest of the building it would have made the insulation look odd.  I kept with a typical 1 up 1 along set-up with a small overhang for the left-side where an attic room could be placed with a large window.  As a nice finishing touch, I added gutters out of a black block called “heavy dark block” to sit under the overhang to catch the rain.  If I had more of this material (or a similar colour / finish) I would bring the guttering down to the side of the building. 

Interior

Interior structure with joists and ceiling covering.  Screenshot taken 19/4/2015

After deforesting the planet to get enough wood to fill in the interior back walls, I sectioned off the interior to make 3 floors connected by a spiral staircase (or at least an attempt to).  I did have some issues with the wooden platforms turning about on them in a 2D space, but it does the job of movement well enough.  The floors have had joists put in at a ratio of 2:6 blocks to simulate the ordered structure of joists in timber frame buildings.  I also put a covering over the joists to show a ceiling which due to its neutral colour ended up as snow blocks (which thankfully don’t melt even when supporting a chandelier).  Over time, I will add to the interior it’s just was filled in for the purpose of this initial presentation.

As I have presented above, I do have things I would like to improve on and I hope that over the next couple weeks I get to make this into a proper dwelling.  As well as this, I would like to take some of these details like the wall structure and blow them up to a proper 1:20 detail so that we can talk about what goes on inside a building.  I’m kind of looking forward to it and see how accurately it can be done when I have more time and more experience with the tools.  

Revisiting Starbound: Thoughts on 2D Architecture Amongst Other Things

This weekend has been a rather busy mixture of things to the point where I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about.  I’ve been helping out for the upcoming general elections, producing a documentary with my history society and watching the Dota 2 MLG Lan finals all while fitting in time to play some games.  With the start of season 5 (or series 5 the words have become interchangeable these days) of Game of Thrones I thought I would be all for putting stuff down to watch it, but I haven’t even found time to do so.  Because of this, you may imagine something like this hasn’t seen much of the light of day over the past couple days. 

So, as I sat back in my chair watching EG vs. NiP battle it out a random thought dropped into my head regarding my recent return to Starbound, a game that I enjoy that features those building elements purposely built for discussions on architecture.  That being said, I wanted to try and find a way to show what makes it great for me against its predecessors. 

Starbound is a 2-dimension procedurally generated sandbox game that features a strong focus on materials and crafting to produce a vast quantity of weapons, armour and building components amongst other things.  It has a great deal in common with Terraria (also being 2D) but where Starbound differs is through such factors as interacting with multiple worlds, object redistribution and character augmentation that look to present a more RPG-esc mechanic against Terraria and other sandbox crafting games like the highly popular Minecraft.  Having an interest in construction and design, you would imagine I would prefer Minecraft a great deal over Starbound due to the 3 dimensions and tools to create vast builds, but it’s just never got to that point for me.  My time in Minecraft was enjoyable and I liked discussing the concepts of using technology to create alternative means of architecture (see my post on player housing) but as a game I didn’t feel engaged.  So again, what makes Starbound great for me?

Player Ship designed to look like a train.  Screenshot Taken 13/4/2015

From a gameplay point of view, it’s very clear that Starbound (in correlation to base game models) offers a nice mix of character progression and combat beyond the ‘wave stick at skeleton’ that Minecraft survival mode offers.  From an architectural point of view however, I feel that it creates a ‘less is more’ vibe that allows the player to add detail in a different way thanks to the 2D presentation.  You can show interiors and exteriors working together against the backdrop of a verdant valley or night’s sky which can dwarf its surroundings or slip into the environment.  These are all factors of architecture and why in design in particular fashions; as we strive to keep one village as incognito as it first settle some 500 years ago vs. a contrasting villa of modernism shooting out against a forest unchanged for centuries. 

An earlier play-through of mine featuring a more slap-dash approach to the spaceship.  Screenshot taken 12/10/2014

With all this taken into consideration, I looked at my homebase in Starbound couple days ago and it very much sits in the ‘basic / utilitarian’ side of design as its rectangle wooden frame features my crafting stations, storage and bed to present some resemblance of a home.  Since then, I added another floor and some minor artistic flourishes in the shape of a painting, chandelier and suit of armour found on a remote planet, but it’s still rather basic and not being too interesting.  I took a moment to think about what I was doing and came up with an idea that seem only obvious after conceptualising it, Sections. 

The simple dwelling soon to be improved on.  Screenshot Taken 13/4/2014

When design a building, there are a number of drawings you’ll look to do to conceptualise the design for the client.  Plans, perspectives, elevations and axonometric are all used alongside the section which takes a vertical cut through the building to show a number of different things.  A section shows wall structure, windows, stairwells, voids and rooms all alike focusing on particular details like how the exterior wall interacts with a roof.  When I studied architecture, these drawings took a decent amount of time for me but I thoroughly enjoyed drawing timber frame buildings with the joists at a regular pattern or masonry walls with cavity wall insulation and render with the ever so often façade of timber slats or similar aesthetical choice (I can’t remember if those materials go well together but for the purpose of this you kinda get what I mean).  Taking all this into consideration, I built up my walls and started to add all these little features which is slowly taking my simple lived-in house into something special which I’m slowly working on when I have time available.  Much like groups of people who come together in Minecraft to recreate a city, this has got me thinking about rebuilding pieces in Starbound such as ‘A Walking City’ from Archigram but of course on a much smaller scale. 

So to summarise, building in 2D has been an interesting experience that is allowing me to rekindle some of that love for drawing sections in architecture I felt previously.  Thinking about it, this probably goes back into my interest of wanting to know how things work and all that engineering stuff.  These couple weeks have been fascinating for me looking back at where this has all come from.  Hopefully next week I’ll be able to show some screenshots of progress in design and talk a bit more about it.