The Sims like building system

Been working on a “The Sims” like building system for a couple of days now and have something I’m quite proud of.

Its all done in blueprints (I’m no programmer) and I will be adding more functionality to it as I move forward.

Also if someone could explain how you embed a video that would be amazing.

Neither option on youtube works and I have no idea why.

remove the $ sign and paste this line to your post:

$video=youtube;wEmBsoYMUME]Building Demo - YouTube]

preview:

are u planing to build any tutorial?
interested to know more about those window part.

Ah thankyou, thought it might have been something simple.

The walls are all actors (probably not the best way of doing it), considering how many actors your likely have for a full building. However that way each “wall” stores it own properties (material/paint/wallpaper, which decorations or lights etc and what window or door they have).

If people want screenshots of the blueprints I’ll happily put them up, I’m planning on just releasing it all for free if I can get done what I’m planning.

  1. Wall, door, window. All doors will be interactive by the ai, open, close, locked.
  2. Painting, colour walls. Trying to set them up with material id’s so you can paint the wall on the inside different from outside. Possibly the whole room, haven’t even thought that far ahead yet.
  3. Building on different floors, not sure how to trace that yet, possible have to trace for hit at certain z values.
  4. Larger playing area and movable camera.
  5. Did have random terrain with terraforming, but it was awful and collision was impossible.

That’s really neat! Thank you for sharing.

This looks promising! Definitely looking forward to checking out the completed version.

Quick update, got stuck when adding floor/foundations.

Think I’ve sorted out the solution, hopefully will be adding an updated video and some pictures of the blueprints (there not pretty).

Obviously with Christmas and Newyear haven’t been able to work on it as much as I’d have liked.

I’m very interested in seeing more! I’ve been working on the play mode aspect of the Sims myself, with needs and what not.

I’ve been planning on doing this for a while. All started when I was following the AI tutorials, I had a Hotel like system set up. 4 Random AI’s would spawn, with a “family tree” (parents/kids, or 4 friends, 2 couples) and would move through a basic level to a door that was assigned to them when they approached the box (front desk). That went the way of the dodo with all my 3d files following a friendly virus forced a reformat.

However update.

I’ve had to go back and rework some of the blueprints due to a problem while creating the floor/foundation creation system. My initial thought process/plan failed terribly (please bear in mind I’m not programming expert or unreal guru, this is something I’ve got my teeth into and am actively pushing myself to complete). Hence its going to be blueprints only, which everyone can insult, praise, question and/or learn from when I start throwing some picture back on here again.

My current system which just needs a drag box trace (**** you half size) implemented will also hopefully enable using the same system/actor to create floors and roofs. Plus with the system it should be possible to create as many floors as need be by just increasing height in Z.

The wall system is currently in pieces (although far easier to add back in), it will however have a significant upgrade as I’ve learnt quite a bit from all the forloops, array creations and casting I’ve had to do in the last 4 days. I also plan on filling in the end gaps which are frustrating (you can just see them in the video). Door has been implemented although its just the opening. Discovered that if there’s a hole you don’t get a hit (silly me) so I’m having to create lots of new hit traces channels.

Well I have another Video and I’ve discovered I have to do loads more work making it viable. However I’ve been learning loads recently which is a good thing in the long run.

As you can see I implemented a floor, the plan was to have the grid change height and trace for supports/underlying floors etc. It didn’t turn out that way.

I would put some pictures of the blueprints up but they are going to be completely gone come tomorrow. Fingers crossed I will finally have a workable solution.

This is perfect :D. I cannot wait for you to release it!

Quick update, finally.

Can’t say much about it take a look and throw any question you have my way.

If I can get away from painting my new house I shall post up some more.

Amazing Work! Congratulations!

Would you make a tutorial for us please?

I really would like to learn the steps you made to get this amazing results

It would be apreciate by the community if you share your knowledge with us…

Thank you and good job my friend!

Currently stuck between 2 projects (this being one) and painting a new house, had to watch the video again to get an idea of where I was then.

Going to be re-doing the system with instanced static meshes which I learnt from my Survival game building system. Should make it possible to build even more crazy structures.

When I do get around to re-doing it I’ll do a video breaking down what I’m doing.

Its look fantastic : )

Cant wait for release ^^

Is it possible to make a tutorial ?

Hi I’ve been experimenting with instance static meshes and this makes it far more efficient. I’ll see what I can do for the tutorial.

would like an update on this project if possible. looks promising.

Something like this for level designers, great tool !

Looks like a useful tool! You should definitely use static mesh components instead of actors, though it doesn’t necessarily need to be instance static meshes (really depends on how many of the same mesh you need to render at once). Keep up the great work :slight_smile:

Hello All,

I’ve gone back to the project, but I’ve started if from scratch. I learned a lot from my survival building project.

The actors used in the original video were used because I was hoping to allow more manipulation on each actor, (think adding a light, door, window frame). However when considering how large this “building” could become the performance would suffer, think 200 wall segments.

Currently I’m looking at instance static meshes for all building assets, these will be stored in a actor (think building library). Currently have plans written for colouring walls and how that is replicated in the instances (I had written code (blueprint) which creates a new instance static mesh component based on a colour change). Ideally I’d like to work on a whole section of code which would create a dynamic mesh of each wall, would allow huge flexibility for creativity, however that’s for the future.

The build-able area is now contained within a actor (possibly the one mentioned above), this will change the height of the building “zone” to accommodate different floors, again these floors will follow the supporting structures beneath. Having it designed this way allows me to place an actor anywhere on a 3d terrain, set the length and width of the “zone” and this restricts building outside this area.

Will hopefully get my head down and get messing around with Unreal again, wish me luck.

@Zedrophobe this is brilliant work. I am probably much more of a beginner than you are at this point and am looking to create a similar builder project. Can you provide tutorials or any helpful links to help me start off? Thanks