by Gedrean » Sat Jan 29, 2011 3:28 am The objective of this thread is to lay out a maximization technique for getting the most out of your house. Maximizing the cellar? That'll be another post I think.
First, realize that to fully utilize your house you will eventually build a Cellar. Cellar doors may be stood upon, walked over, and utilized (to enter the cellar), but nothing may be placed or built atop them. The Cellar door placement, therefore, will effect how we may best utilize our dwelling.
First off, we examine the Log Cabin, smallest of the houses. It is 4x4 squares, and one of the more difficult houses to maximize utilization. If we imagine the layout of our house as such:
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.----.
|oooo|
|oooo|
|oooo|
|oXoo|
.-B--.
We see the structure of the house. B is the door, always in square 2 of the lower row. The X indicates the square we cannot build ANYTHING upon (due to the door), and is thus the basis of our layout. To maximize our storage capacity, we need to place 11. That may seem impossible, but we must realize that when moving objects we can place them just about anywhere the game will let us walk. So, here's the trick. First, build 4 cupboards at each of the left and right walls (north and south on screen when inside the house). There's 8. Next, build our first of 3 cupboards in between. Lift, and place it MIDWAY between the two middle 'o' tiles in the back row. The easiest way to do this is to build it in the tile right next to one of the walls, lift, and try to right-click midway between the tile it was at and the tile next to it. Keep in mind if you get it about right, and it should really only take a try or two, you'll have two rows of 4 on either edge, and a row of three in between, which your hearthling can squeeze in between relatively well. In this instance, the cellar door goes to the right of the X, on our one completely untouched square. 11 Cupboards in one log cabin, and a cellar.
Now for the Timber House. It's a common house build, and a reasonable size, 6x6 squares. This one's a lot easier to utilize without having to resort to cheap trickery like the log cabin, but resort we shall. Let's examine it:
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.------.
|oooooo|
|oooooo|
|oooooo|
|oooooo|
|oooooo|
|oooXoo|
.---B--.
The orientation of our house is reversed, but the principles remain. Now, if we want to use the most space, we must realize that we have a LOT more space in the middle to work with. Let's try this: Place 6 cupboards along each of the side walls, leaving us a 4w6h open space in the middle, minus our forbidden square of course. With a maximum of wiggling in, we could fit 23 cupboards in here total. If we want to avoid moving cupboards and wiggling things in half squares, 22. Fitting 23 cupboards consists of more half-square placements. Considering that the outer 6 sections of o's are taken up, we start with the back row and place one cupboard between squares 2 and 3, one between 3 and 4, and one between 4 and 5. In the subsequent rows, in order to ensure our middle cupboard has access, we are limited to squares 2 and 3, and squares 4 and 5. Go that down all the way to the bottom though not blocking the bottom row. Our cellar door can go anywhere in the lower row, I suggest to the left of the door.
I cannot at this time comment on Stone Mansions or Cellars - their layouts present interesting questions I have yet to answer.
