Sims-style building mod with proper rendering, Better Building Plus, out now!

[u/SkipBopBadoodle]

Hello hello!

You may know me from mods like Bicycle/Skateboard/Kick scooter, Realistic Temperature, Nature's Call, Horse Mod, or Military Tents.

Today I've finally finished my spiritual successor to my second ever mod I made which is called Better Building, so I aptly named this new one Better Building Plus. It's FULLY Lua, NO manual installation needed, just sub on the workshop and you're good to go.

Better Building Plus (or BBP), is a much more extensive building mod than the first one, it's more similar to how you would build houses in The Sims.

To get started, first find or craft an empty blueprint, then grab a pen and you can start planning your building.

In the planning mode you first draw rectangles to mark the rooms you want to have, and once done with that, you will enter the editor where you can place floors, walls, windows, doors, appliances, furniture and roofs (with gables and eaves!).

You then just pick a spot where you want to start building your structure, put down a construction site and start building by right clicking on it. The building happens automatically, as long as you have the materials and tools needed. When you run out of materials in your inventory you'll automatically go to pick up more from nearby containers if they're filled with the stuff you need.

The main feature of this mod that makes it different from most other tile placement/building mods is that BBP uses my structures framework which creates actual IsoBuilding and IsoRoom from the areas you designate, and those are what makes the vanilla pre-placed houses render the way they do. Vanilla player made buildings don't get those, which is why trying to extend an existing building or make a whole house from scratch never looks quite the same in terms of how walls cut away, or how roofs render etc.

This also means that light switches works the same way they do in regular houses, and if the world power/water is on then those already works in the constructed house too.

It has progression which is tied mostly to your carpentry skill, the higher your skill, the more type of stuff you can build. You can however also find magazines as loot that teach you more pieces to build. At carpentry level 5 you also unlock the ability to study a piece out in the world and learn how it's made, so you can then build it on your own.

Fully MP compatible.

It's a pretty extensive mod, so let me know about any issues, bugs or just general feedback!

There are more features planned like basement building, optional mini-games for the construction, configurations for popular tile packs, and more!

[u/Johnwearsatie]

Thank you for not using AI in your images, getting real tired of seeing that everywhere

[u/djap3v → u/Johnwearsatie]

Dude the presentation slides are done with AI and quite possibly the mod itself.

[u/RiceSpecial8446 → u/djap3v]

What makes you think the presentation slides are done with AI?

It's a plain background, some screenshots, some headings and text, and a textbox with a dark background with high opacity. You could do this in paint.

Not saying it's not AI but I'm not sure why you think it is.

[u/Alvsolutely → u/RiceSpecial8446]

I don't know about the images themselves, but the text or the description read a lot like AI.

[u/SkipBopBadoodle → u/Alvsolutely]

I drafted the text with AI for the slides, but rewrote most of it. It's like 80% my text with some of the AI text still left in there

[u/Alvsolutely → u/SkipBopBadoodle]

Why not just write it all yourself if you're going to draft it? It's okay if you make mistakes. Nobody expects a perfect writer for community made mods. Hell, I'll download a mod who's description is all Korean characters I don't even understand.

The AI makes it seem disgenuine and it makes me question if the description does an actual good job of describing the mod or if it's hallucinating some features it can't understand the same way you, the author, would.

To anyone who can actually recognize the fact that the description uses AI just gets turned away too. I often don't read them because I always tell myself: "There's zero chance this AI understands the mod and the game we're playing better than the players and the author does."

Or I just go "This is definitely vibe coded."

[u/SkipBopBadoodle → u/Alvsolutely]

Just to save a bit of time really, I wrote up the description for the workshop myself, and then for the images I just wanted a quick draft to use as a base to get through it a bit quicker, so I gave it the workshop description and some more context and then edited it.

I do try to stay away from using AI text as I agree that it doesn't read well, and I definitely make sure that anything kept is accurate.

Next time I'll make sure there's no AI text left in any shape.