Update Preview 2014-10-06: Extended Construction System

Hey folks!

Today we want to give you a small preview of the next update, which will be available shortly and introduces the extended construction system, which has been much mentioned in the past. It will greatly improve your possibilities to build, since you'll be able to place single construction elements - like wooden planks and beams - without any restriction. This also involves rotation around all axes.

Technically, all materials that can be used for blocks are also available to the new construction system, in other words, nearly 200 different materials. However, they'll be restricted to the type of the construction element, for example a wooden plank can't have a metal texture, only a wood texture. But apart from wooden planks and beams, there will be more different construction elements in the future, like stoneplates, metalplates etc.

Of course the "old" block construction system will still be available. That system is easier to use and provides faster results, while the upcoming construction system is a little bit more complicated and it takes a longer time to build, but gives you a lot more possibilities and allows you to build with a high level of detail.
For example, it's recommended to build a big house with blocks (i.e. the "old" construction system), and use the extended construction system to give your house more detail (e.g. for decoration, room partitioning etc.). But when you want to build a shed or a small shelter, the extended construction system is superior.

Below you find some examples of the new construction system. The first three images show a small wooden shed made out of single planks (and you see that it looks much better than if it would have been made out of blocks). The fourth screenshot shows a improvised footbridge in a cave, and the last screenshot just another example of a small bridge.

Stay tuned!

By the way: When this update is finished, we will start working on animals and monsters!

Thanks! Yes, that would be possible, although something like wallpapers are also planned for the future (as a separate feature), which can be explicitly combined with blocks. But the basic idea behind this is correct, building the shell of the house with blocks, and use the new construction system for the interior.
In this case, the extended construction system can be compared with something like wainscoting (since planks have a fixed thickness of 3-4 cm).

Or it can be used for the creation of smaller things: The small shed in the pictures took ~1-2 minutes to build, but for larger buildings, especially with multiple storeys, it's easier to use the classic block construction system

Hehe, yeah something like that After the next update we can fully concentrate on animals, so I guess it would take a few more weeks until they're ready

I like your suggestion! But I'm not sure if the new construction system is able to replace the old block system, even if we're just talking about specific aspects (like wood blocks in this case). Both systems are different, and the main advantage of the block system is, that it's very easy to use. I'm not sure if it's wise to force people to use the new construction system for such a trivial task.

Another problem is that removing wooden blocks now would be a big problem for all existing worlds. For example, if someone already built a whole city (who knows? ^^), and used plenty woodblocks, it would be annoying for him when half of the work was done for nothing

Yes that's true, everybody who plays the current alpha should be aware that a world may not be compatible with a newer version of the game. But we do our best to avoid this, so we implemented a converter that automatically adapts an old world to a newer version as good as possible.

Perhaps we may think about it, but we won't do this change for the next update release. First we want to see how good the construction system works, and if it's really capable of replacing the existing wooden blocks

That's a good idea. At least that solves the "want-to-keep-old-worlds-compatible"-problem Let's see how the new construction system works out finally, and if it's capable of replacing wooden blocks.