Buildings with a plan

Felucca's towns need hundreds of buildings that feel built, not stamped. We wrote a generator that plans each one the way an architect would: rooms for what they are for, stairs, doors that face you, bay windows and terraces, furniture that never blocks your way.

A world the size of Felucca needs a lot of buildings, and nothing kills a world faster than the same house a hundred times. So before we fill the towns, we taught the game to plan buildings.

Four inns side by side: two storeys, timber, brick and stone, roofs over each wing

Rooms first

Every building starts as a list of rooms. An inn has a taproom, a kitchen, a store room and the innkeeper's bedroom downstairs, and a corridor of guest rooms upstairs. A temple has a nave, a sanctum and a vestry; a bank a hall, an office and vaults behind metal doors; a smithy a forge that opens onto the yard. There are fourteen kinds so far, from cottages to guildhalls.

The rooms are fitted into a shape: a plain block, an L, a T, a U around a yard, an H, a cross for a temple or four wings around a courtyard. Stairs climb where a straight flight fits under a room of the floor above. Windows follow the walls; fortified buildings get arrow slits instead.

The same inns with the upper floors and roofs lifted: fireplaces, counters, kegs, tables with chairs, stairs

Built for this camera

Felucca's camera never turns, so you always see the south and east sides of a building. Front doors go on those sides, towards you. Corners can be cut diagonally, a bay window can stick out of the front, a lower wing can become a terrace with a parapet you step onto from upstairs, and towers can be octagonal with battlements on top. Some of these wall pieces are new and are being modelled now; until then the game shows stand-ins.

Furniture that makes sense

Each room is furnished from what it is for: beds and chests in bedrooms, an oven and barrels in the kitchen, a counter with the barkeep's space behind it, pews in rows with an aisle to the altar. Every piece is checked as it is placed: if it would block a door, the stairs or the way through the room, it goes elsewhere. Every plan is walked through before it is accepted, from the front door to the last room.

Floor plans of inns, ground floor and upper floor side by side

What is next

You can't climb the stairs yet: movement in the game is still on the ground, and walking on upper floors is its own piece of work. The buildings also aren't in the world yet. Next, towns: streets from the atlas's roads, districts, plots, and these buildings on them.