Runtime building design

So I really liked the design approach of Fortnite for their building system. I thought it did a really good job of reducing the complexity in a novel way. Not just for the player but from an implementation viewpoint also.

Anyone seen other building system that take novel approaches like this?

 

Can you summarize how it works, for those of us who never heard of it?

 

ya so basically the object you place in the world is always 3x3x1, same dimensions. They have a floor, wall, ceiling, and stairs object. But once placed you can select individual 1x1 squares to form different shapes, and the base shape then morphs into that other shape.

So normally where you would need a rather large menu, their base selection is very simple. The whole flow is simpler then I have seen in any other game while having a rather large variety of things you can build.

Implementation wise it's nice since it has a simple mathematical base. You just place the base blocks at coordinates divisible by 3 and it's guaranteed to fit correctly against any other placed blocks.

 

Maybe a wild tangent, but my first memorable experiences with runtime building were in text-based MUDs. Given the rapid progress of so many areas of AI recently, what about simply describing what you want to build using text or voice -- "give me a small shed with a sliding door and two windows" -- and let the AI solve it.