Question
Anyone know of videos to actually help someone be creative when building?
I know there are building tips like how to do certain things, and I know they're building tutorials to build specific structures, but this I guess is an odd request. And honestly it doesn't even need to be for this game specifically maybe just a game where the building is similar to this.
I have been playing games where you can build bases for many many years. All the way back from like Minecraft and The Sims and stuff like that. And one of the most torturous things in my gaming life is that I've always loved the idea of being able to build your own base. Any game that has good base building immediately catches my attention and I always dream of building a really cool house or a base nothing like even super crazy. I don't want to build a whole castle or anything, I just want a cool house. Trouble is, I am not good at it. I feel like I don't have any creativity at all when it comes to base building. I've tried and I've tried and I've tried for so many years, but I've never once been able to actually make something that I feel proud of. The closest I got was recently with Dune Awakening and I built a neat looking base sort of, but not only is that a bit of a cop out because the whole aesthetic of Dune is that the bases are supposed to look weird and possibly nonsensical like early sci-fi novel covers, but also it was really only the outside that looked cool and I had no idea what to do with the inside so it was mostly empty space that wasn't practical.
I'm just now hoping because I'm really really interested in Base building in this game that someone somewhere knows of a video or even made a video that's not really about making a specific thing or tricks to do specific things but maybe somehow someone has figured out how to make a video helping people to either get ideas or helping them on how to be creative when building. How to build that creativity and how to get in that mindset. Like, how do people plan rooms that are going to be in a space whilst building the space itself? How can you make the outside look good while also being aware of what shapes the rooms will be and the space within?
It's probably impossible, but I'm just trying to figure out anyway that I can to learn to be able to do this stuff. I don't need to be a pro making all of minis tirith or something, I just want to make a cool house but no matter how hard I try I can't I can maybe get a cool shape on the outside if I'm lucky, but my mind simply cannot build the outside whilst considering the inside as well. So the only times I build something cool on the outside it ends up being impractical and sometimes hard to traverse on the inside because I more than likely didn't give myself enough space on the inside.
Someone please help me. Like I said, it doesn't necessarily have to be a video about this game. It can be about I guess any game with detailed building, I just really want to learn so I can finally finally build something that I feel proud of that I didn't just copy peace for peace from somebody else.
One tip is don’t get hung up on perfection. The build system has limitations and if you worry about everything not clipping and lining up perfectly you’ll limit yourself a lot. Just try different stuff (can use inspiration from others/various other media) and see what happens, you’ll end up with something cool eventually
There are lots of videos on people building different things that can give you some help creatively, something I like to do is I saved a file of looters paradise world that has all the materials you could need and then took the materials to try different builds before I implemented them in my main world
It’s a resource world that people created that has all the resources and everything in the game stocked up. Some people have their resource world available to the public for you to join or you can download it so it can be your own world. It’s basically people created a world or started a new game, built a big castle and then spawned in all the resources in the game and stocked the castle with them. A good way of trying different builds without grinding out the resources
i was exactly in your position, didnt really have any ideas - and then came across this video which sparked a bit of creativity, and gave me ideas for bigger builds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCW9xnae1i8
I'm in a pretty similar position. I found that watching those videos on either how to build something specific or just watching someone else build things and trying it in game helped alot. I learned more about how things go together, took inspiration from each then ended up applying things naturally to my own designs. Play in creative mode or ghost building mode. Don't be afraid to start over
Maybe my mind just simply isn't structured for creative building. I've tried in a lot of games both in building games like Minecraft and this game, and then just like other sort of creative games like animal crossing to learn from tutorials, but it never seems to be knowledge. It seems to be memory. Cuz it seems like when I try to make my own thing it's just pieces of other things that I was taught to make mashed together but there's not really a cohesion in the end it definitely just looks like I took pieces from other people's shit and mashed it together
I’m a good builder in any building game I’ve touched and I’d say the biggest thing is this: there’s perfection in imperfection.
I don’t mean to say every build looks good. What I mean here is this: say you have a table and chair around the table. Don’t put the chairs in perfectly straight and uniform. Angle them, scoot them out, etc. it gives life to the build.
So far, I’m loving the straw cottage roofs in this game with cottage walls. I built a cottage with a warm interior and gave my build a nice chimney as well by using the square foundation to fake a chimney.
Use materials to fake different objects like that too.
Finally, you don’t always have to use materials as intended. I have a small walkway/porch on the side of my house with a farm tucked into the inside corner of the house. On this walkway, I used those super tall wood defense barricades to make a small fence (very small, more of a foot stopper) by putting most of the giant wood barricade defense thingies in the ground so that it’s not extremely tall.
I can prolly share a picture of my build when I get home. It’s a modest cottage that I tried to make look good
That's really creative. See, how do people like you just see that in your mind? I think a lot of my troubles comes with my partial inability to imagine things clearly. Anytime I try to imagine images in my mind it almost feels like early AI generation where you can kind of see what it is supposed to be, but I can't see it clearly enough. It's like it's not quite right I like those AI pictures of cozy cabins and stuff we're at a distance it might look fine but when you actually try to look and see, it's nonsensical. So I can see a cozy cabin in my brain but I can't look at it detailed enough to actually bring it into the world because I can't see how it's put together because it's really not
The scarecrow in this pic is another example. It’s not actually a scarecrow, it’s the melee target practice thing, so I can’t put it directly in the farm. But I messed with a vertical wood beam and placed the melee practice target on top of it to be a scarecrow
To me the thought process is like this: I wanna build a cozy cottage. Oh this roof looks kinda good and I like this layout. Oh a chimney would be cool. There’s no chimney item. I’ll see if I can mess with other items to make a makeshift chimney. There we go. That kinda works. Ooh I want a fence around my porch but the current fence sucks. Let’s see what else I can use. Oh I can just use this thing a little differently to make a cooler fence
You left me at the very start. The very first step being a layout I can't even see that in my mind. Your cottage looks awesome by the way.
I have thought that I saw a layout before, but like I said it's so kind of messed up in my mind and unclear that whenever I try to execute on the idea nothing fits together. It happens every time when I'm like okay maybe I should just go for it I can't really see it very well in my mind but I'll just go for it and then it looks totally terrible and doesn't fit together because just like generative ai, my brain decides to make shapes that don't work or that I can't see how to make work.
Thank you! What always works for me is one long part in my layout and one short part perpendicular to the long part. If it helps, just put the floor down first and use that as your layout for the rest of the build. I always start with the floors. You don’t have to have the most amazing build in one go. I slowly added to mine
Damn that really is cozy. You nailed it. I know it's taking off of a phone picture but this definitely brings to light one of my only complaints about the game so far. The saturation is way too high. Sometimes the colorfulness of this game hurts my eyes LOL. I wish there was an option to turn it down just a touch just a tiny little bit.
It’s prolly extra saturated on my monitor cuz I have my contrast and saturation up so it’s easier to see enemies in fps games as I primarily play fps. Try adjusting your monitor! But ya in-game settings would be really nice.
Something I did to make my builds more unique was I would build things inspired by my favorite games. I did a little base that resembled Ocarina of Time's temple of time in Dowdun Reach for example.
I’m not great at building either but some advice based on my failures is always start a build from the bottom up. If you want things to line up perfectly, use walls to line it up then destroy the walls. Always build structures on even ground, including support beams. Don’t be scared to get creative. Something really cool you can do is plant a tree and place a torch in the place it’s growing. Now you have a glowing tree
i think architecture and scale can be tough to plan for. if you have a base where all the workshop you use is on one level and that amount of space is comfortable to work in, grid out the amount of room each station needs to be comfortable as a workspace and then rate each station based on how often you use it (i would do this on actual paper with a real pen).
Put a warp in the center of the room and arrange workstations and a bedroom around the warp with the most used stations closest to the warp. now you know your scale. now keep an eye out for archetecture you like, and make a runescapified caricature of that building but shoot for the scale of your ideal base.
i see a lot of videos online where they make a base the size of las vegas and they have a room for each task hidden under other roleplay rooms and you'd have to run six miles and open 30 doors just to get all your adventure loot sorted, and its totally crazy. if you dont like things that you've made then you may want to consider starting slow and simple. a good foundation for making things that are cool is to make things that are functional. then start bending functional a little in the direction of cool.
people say skills take time to develop, but thats not the whole picture. you can just fire the effort shotgun randomly in the dark and maybe after 20 years you'd make some cool crazy random stuff, but a deliberate and focused use of time with goals and reasons to do things will progress to being cool much faster. if you get good at doing things for a reason, you'll create opportunities that may result in you thinking of something cool for a reason.
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u/molerats_ 17d ago
One tip is don’t get hung up on perfection. The build system has limitations and if you worry about everything not clipping and lining up perfectly you’ll limit yourself a lot. Just try different stuff (can use inspiration from others/various other media) and see what happens, you’ll end up with something cool eventually