Building Stuff

Well, stuff like Tetanus Fields would likely have taken a while to fully construct, given the complexity of it. It all depends on that factor, I suppose. How complex are you planning on building? How many structures? How many people are assisting? All of these affect the speed that something is built. If you make a small village consisting of simple houses, it can go relatively quickly, I imagine. Even with a single person. However, constructing elaborate looking structures, and in large amounts for making a full fledged colony, it's definitely going to take a fairly long time. Hell... for instance, my ship isn't even close to the size of some of these colonies, and it's design is relatively simple, and that took me about a week of working on it, on and off. In addition, the speed will also depend on the ability of yourself and anyone you have helping you.

Hope this has been helpful.

 

Personally haven't seen Aiko's Bar, but if it's just a single building, I doubt it'll take too long to build.

 

My bar ain't that special, ahaha. I've rebuilt it like 5 times cause wipes of '14, took about an hour or so each time. Maybe less

 

I just kinda wing it

 

How long depends on the player and style. My personal advice to you is not to make skeletons for buildings unless you are 100% sure what you need will fit. I tend to, like Aiko said, more or less wing it. I go room by room, so I can adjust sizes znd shapes as needed. There are tons of neat tricks you can do with messing with foreground vs background blocks, block layering, and prop use beyond a bunch of one block walls. Just have to experiment and find what works best for you.

 

^ He said it best, just experiment and stuff

Here's some super simple tips, really the only thing I can give since I'm no guru

Whenever possible, avoid just a big box. Give things some curves, angles, etc etc.

Lighting = Ambience, and it's important.

You can use black on the paint tool to give somethings a really cool depth look. I picked that trick up from Alioth, actually It's pretty smart.
You can make rotated supports/angled whatevers.

Avoid empty rooms, avoid cluttered rooms. Find a perfect balance inbetween the two.

Using just one plain block to fill the entirety of a rooms backwall usually ends up looking like crap. Try to imitate supports, designs, wall trims, all that stuff.

 

Block interactions, both with other blocks and with the paint tool are among some of the most important things you can do to familiarize yourself with for advanced structuring. As Aiko mentioned, lighting is a very powerful tool as well. The idea is not only to provide yourself and someone else a building, but to convey the atmosphere as well.

There are is a remarkable wealth of possibilities within the limited tilesets the game offers for those who use them creatively. Practice building, you'll find a technique you enjoy, or find perhaps building complex construction projects isn't for you. I know my own builds tend to be quite vast in scope, but I feel as though they have only improved as I have done more and more.

I look forward to sharing my new temple grounds on Alioth with the community, I feel it is coming along quite nicely.