Better Wall Building

[KomodoDave]

As commented elsewhere, "wall building is a pain".

 

Structure building could be yet another glistening gem in this game's crown, but it feels awkward compared to many other gameplay mechanics. Lining up blocks one at a time is cumbersome and leads to anything but the simplest of constructions being an offputting task.

 

So how about swapping it out for a smart straight-line completion logic?

 

Place a starting wall block which appears as a ghosted sprite, move character to another location, place an end wall block as a ghosted sprite, then the straight line between them is automatically filled in with real wall blocks.

 

If player has insufficient inventory to build that far then the action is cancelled and the ghosted sprites disappear.

 

Collision detection can be performed at the point each wall block would be auto-placed. If any collisions are detected then the action is cancelled as above.

 

The number of pieces which will be consumed can be shown on the endpiece ghosted sprite which hovers in front of the player character.

 

The time taken to build the wall can be made the same as building the individual pieces. The player character could even automatically move along the line of wall blocks building each one individually as we currently have to do manually. Any player interaction would interrupt building of the current block, just as happens now.

 

This logic supports both PC and PS4 control schemes.