Other Games
I've seen and heard about housing in several games. Though I must admit I'm not such a housing freak as other people may be. Yet I still enjoy one or two projects doing some remakes. So back when people heard about housing being customization in Guild Wars 2 the hype was great. Equally great - at least in amount - was the disappointment when the customization provided consisted of fixed nodes you get resources from as well as chests and some special non-playable-characters.
Of course, if you hear customization you imagine being able to place things wherever you want. Well, at least their guild halls implemented that feature. It's like Minecraft, but without snapping. You can do enough with it. Though you're stuck with the size and the rotation of the objects, which really limits one in their capability to let their creativity flow.
This is the same in Minecraft, though even worse. Of course, you can combine different blocks to make them look like something and there are mods out there to allow you to do much more you're yet still limited heavily. The blocks snap and building something huge would require a lot of time setting miniature blocks via an add on. I guess there's copy and paste for that?
Kudos, Carbine, Kudos
WildStar did it. I don't know how many games implement such an item but WildStar gives you enough tools to do your thing. You're fully able to change the x, y, z coordinates of the position, rotation and size. This allows you to freely customize your housing without restrictions like snapping or only being capable of placing objects next to a solid object. The funny part is it's not even limited to the UI objects you have. Entering your own numbers gives you even more options like making objects smaller than one or greater than whatever the cap was which I forgot. Of course, it's still limited as you can't place many animated or objects to interact with and yet it's enough for nearly anything.
It's amazing what people have made. From mosaic-like 3D statues to actual adventure like housings, jumping puzzles, labyrinths, etc. etc.. Or maybe the obligatory level remake from another game like Whomp King's Fortress from Super Mario 64 (yup, that's one of my projects check out my twink Whomp King to see it).
Next Level Housing
So if you ever come across an engine like housing system or.. let's call it housing engine you know what's coming upon you housing freaks. Besides a level editor in an MMORPG? I think that's something totally new and innovative no one has come up yet. Though how much work must it be?
But honestly.. it might just be worth it.
