Q: How did you envision the design of Nightingale’s building system?
JL: When we set out to create a building system for Nightingale, we wanted to give players the right tools and an exciting, versatile canvas to express their creativity. While we didn’t set out to make a game that revolved exclusively around building with zero limits, we also appreciate that any technical constraint can quickly get in the way of that creative freedom and fun that players want to have when crafting their home in Nightingale.
Q: How does the building system work in Nightingale right now?
JL: Nightingale supports two distinct types of structures:
1. Composite structures which snap together with under-the-hood adjacent pieces that are managed as a single entity (these include pieces like foundations, walls, and roofs).
2. Standalone structures are managed as independent entities but can provide more functionality, such as the ability to store items, provide traits to other crafting stations, handle crafting, etc. These types of structures require more overhead to manage, and include objects like storage containers, crafting benches, and augmentations.
In the initial version of Nightingale, we needed to place limits on how many structures could exist in the realm in order to ensure networking between clients and servers remained stable, and the client frame rate remained playable on a minimum spec rig.
Q: Can you talk about how community feedback informed changes you wanted to make in the Realms Rebuilt update?
JL: In the initial release of Nightingale, players found managing three different building limits to be challenging, and sometimes difficult to understand - the three limits themselves were 100 composite structures, 300 pieces for each of those composite structures, and 350 standalone structures. It’s also not clear from the player’s perspective which structures fall into which category, so too much trial and error was required to figure everything out.
In addition to this, players were also frustrated that the building limits for the player were shared with structures that were pre-placed in a realm, which added additional limitations outside of the player's control. This included environmental architecture like statues, ruins, and points-of-interest.
With feedback on the above, we had a pretty clear path forward on what we needed to address to make the experience more accessible, flexible and enjoyable for players.
Q: Can you go into detail about how the building system changes in Realms Rebuilt?
JL: In Realms Rebuilt, we focused our optimization efforts around improving the piece limits of composite structures. For example, an estate building that was previously limited to only have 300 roof/wall/floor pieces can now support up to 1500. This was achieved primarily through low-level optimization of how the structure data is represented.
Additionally, we implemented a new method of spreading networking updates for large structures across multiple server updates, which we hope can allow us to further increase the per structure piece limit in the future.
In order to give players maximum flexibility in terms of how many structures they can build, we changed how we track the structure limits. Instead of tracking composite structures and standalone structures separately, we now count them together but apply a variable weight depending on the performance overhead of a particular structure. This aggregated limit is calculated via Realm Building Points, which goes up to 20,000. You’ll find some structures like walls and roofs contribute very little to Realm Building Points, but other types like containers and crafting benches will cost more. We also keep track of player-built structures separately from the structures that are pre-placed in the Realm - so structures already in the Realm will no longer count towards the overall build limits.
Q: What tips would you give players who love building when creating their estate following the Realms Rebuilt update?
JL: Okay, here’s a few tips:
1: If you consider yourself an avid builder, we suggest turning on the “Advanced Building Information” option in the Gameplay Settings screen. This will show you how you’re progressing towards the building limit for the Realm, the piece limit for composite structures, and the weighted cost for each individual piece. You’ll know what’s “cheap” and what’s “expensive”.
2: One approach to getting the most out of the building system is to prioritize building out the foundations, walls, roofs, which are very low cost.
3: Be conscious when building crafting benches, containers, decorations, portals, etc. that emit traits.
4: Standalone decorations like chairs and tables still have some moderate cost, but sit somewhere in the middle (no pun intended).
Q: What can players look forward to with the building system in the future?
JL: While we prioritized building large composite structures for Realms Rebuilt, in the future we want to spend some time optimizing the decorations, containers, and workbenches you’ll want to fill your estate with. We look forward to being able to have an assortment of low-cost decorations to give players the freedom to furnish their estates to their hearts’ desire.
Thanks to Jacques for accommodating our questions. If there’s anything else you want to know about building in Realms Rebuilt, or you have any other questions on your mind, then why not join our Developer Livestream on September 11th at 11am MST/6pm BST. We’ll be previewing the Realms Rebuilt update and answering community questions. Join our Discord here to participate.
Until next time, fare thee well, traveler.
