Blueprint Reservations
By Gideon, HSM team writer
I had the money in hand, or rather in the PSN wallet, to eagerly purchase Blueprint. I had rejoiced at its announcement. I had nodded at its concepts. I though Blueprint could be the beginning of Home taking a monolithic leap forward by handing the users the tools to create the space they want to spend their time in. I was ready for Blueprint to finally allow Home users to make Home a home of their own.
While running around Home doing my routine checks in the regular spaces, I decided to see if there was anyone on my friend list that was in their Blueprint space. At this point I was still sure I was going to purchase Blueprint today, but I wanted to get a sneak preview of what people were doing with it. After all, I do like to know what I’m getting myself into from time to time.
The friend, the wonderful Olivia_Allin of HSM fame, accepted my request and I was whisked away to a slab of concrete, upon which she had built a rather impressive mansion/school/compound. There were many rooms, most were of differing sizes. A large room with a large double opening felt like a garage. A grassless courtyard was surrounded on three sides by the wings of the structure. Yes, the building was large enough that it could be considered to have wings. The place was actually larger than I expected and the complexity of the building was greater than I expected Blueprint would be capable of right off the bat.
The textures of Blueprint are quite nice!
There were little details of the space that I was particularly fond of. The texturing of the walls, which I examined quite closely, stands up quite well when compared other textures found in the rest of Home. Walls seamlessly met one another as they should and the variety of textures from this initial offering should be enough to satisfy anyone’s curiosity. Lights hung from the outer surface of the brick walls and pipes stood at attention against them, proudly perpendicular to the ground.
While I did find issues with this first iteration of Blueprint, none were unexpected, nor were they disappointing. I expected the walls to only intersect at 90 degree angles. I knew it was going to be a single level structure. I didn’t expect there to be a roof to cap the building. I expected the initial offering to have a limited assortment of texturing options. Actually the initial texture and backdrop offerings, purchasable, winnable or standard were a bit more robust than I had anticipated. Why, then, did I not then rush right out and get a Blueprint space of my own?
I just didn’t know what I would do with it.
This is just about my level of interior design skill.
Blueprint might be an interior designers dream, but I am far from a decorative aficionado. To this day, most of my spaces remain sparsely decorated. My interior design is pretty much limited to couch here, a gift machine there, and maybe a Scribble Shooter arcade machine in the corner. I just don’t personally enjoy the time consuming intricacy of finding just the right spot for that plant or making a kitchen complete with all the latest ornamental appliances. While I could see the possibilities of each room in Olivia’s Blueprint home, I just couldn’t see myself filling those spaces with tables, chairs, cars, plants, statues and nick knacks. Let alone placing the walls that would house all that furniture.
As far as I can tell, the ideal use for Blueprint will be as a machinima Studio lot. Machinimists will be salivating at the chance to have a configurable space to shoot their next masterpiece. This was one of the reasons I was so excited for Blueprint to be released. As a long out of production machinimist I am constantly being allured back into warm time vortex that is machinima. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a machinimist and am regularly buying items within Home for that ‘some-day’ that might come where I get back into the craft. Blueprint was going to be one of those purchases.
Want to shoot a Sci-Fi pseudo drama? They have a texture for that.
With this tool at their disposal a machinimist could easily create a sitcom type stage setting with appropriate window and wall openings to achieve the best viewing angles for their story to be told. Do you have a story that involves a long hallway with many doorways for some cartoon style chase scenes? Done! Do you need a specific sized room to create that perfect runway for your next photoshoot? Not a problem. I don’t think there will be one serious machinimist within Home that won’t buy this space.
When I was examining Olivia’s creation, Blueprint struck me as a personal space that would be ideally suited as a Club. As with a few other personal spaces, Blueprint is far too large to feel full with the dozen person limit imposed on private spaces. Even with the 32 person limit, a clubhouse filled to capacity wouldn’t feel crowded. Furthermore, Blueprint allows the creation of multiple rooms so a clubhouse could separate activities easily as well as have official meeting rooms and even offices for the officers of the club. More than any other Club space, Blueprint would allow Clubs to feel more like an actual organization by providing them with a customized lodge in which to congregate.
Although, even if Blueprint were currently available as a Club space I’m not sure it would have enticed me enough to make the purchase. I own a club, I have since day one, but it has been months since I passed through its virtual threshold. For all I know it’s been looted and sacked!
This could do GREAT as a clubhouse!
What was enticing about I saw with Blueprint was the amount of potential it held and its possible impact on the future development of Home. Future additions to Blueprint could help it grow to be a force to be reckoned with in PlayStation Home. The ability to share Blueprints would be a boon to the Home Community so that those of us who aren’t willing or able to spend the time to create the complex structures that are possible within Blueprint could still take full advantage of the space. I have a feeling that if I bought the space it would remain a concrete slab. Well, I’d probably have an armchair in the center of the space just so it wasn’t completely empty.
As for the space itself, additional floors (both above and below ground level), day/night options, roofs (both cosmetic and accessible) advanced building blocks that break the 90 degree mold and the addition of backdrops could make Blueprint a one-space-fits-all option for those wishing to create content within Home and make a space their own.
Is Blueprint the monolithic leap forward for Home that I thought it would be? That really depends on what’s next from nDreams and the community.
Will I buy Blueprint? I have no doubt in my mind that I will.
Just not right now.
August 2nd, 2012 by Gideon | 7 comments
Gideon is a team writer for HomeStation Magazine and likes cheese in all its forms. Whether it be block, slice, cream, wheel, log, string or aerosol, Gideon cant resist the pungent bitter taste of good cheese. Heck, he'll even take mediocre cheese, as long as its slapped between two pieces of whole wheat bread with a little bit of mustard.
“I just didn’t know what I would do with it.”
My thoughts exactly. I was planning on buying it but I’m not sure that the product lives up to the promise.
Do I create machinima? No.
Can I use Blueprint to build better personal spaces than the ones I already have? Certainly not yet.
Would I like to build an apartment just to say that I did? Possibly.
Is Blueprint a revolutionary new concept in Home personal states? Definitely.
Am I going to buy it? We’ll see.
Gotta say the same guys! I was all reved up for it and even had my money in my hand, then a friend sent me an invite. After a 30min conversation that was pretty much just
“Honestly, I can’t see any house!!!”
I decided to give it time to iron the bugs out a but more, which I must say (all due credit to nDreams) that particular bug (non-load up for visitors) was fixed by the next morning of release.
They’re obviously very on-top of this project, which is admirable, but I just don’t wanna pay to be the lab-rat this time, well not yet anyway. However, that damn space is playin’ on my mind and burning a Blueprint shaped hole in my digital pocket. I’m not sure how long I can last…
Blueprint certainly has potential! I could say lots about what it could be. So instead I would just say this.
Please take very good care of the texture levels if this is all that will be offered for sometime. It appears that the memory allocation is based somewhere around the clubhouse settings. If so, it would be nice if it could be offered at no cost to the user as a 32 user space.
All and all, it is the right direction, and judging just from how many people I knew who were poised to get this space, it WILL be successful!
Go Blueprint!
I spent my second evening in Blueprint:Home constructing a SciFi/Horror Maze. I made lots of little rooms arranged in a brick-work grid, punched doors and windows to connect them, changed room textures to add variety, and then added “monsters” — Singe the Dragon, the Human Plush, the giant Hamster statue, the grizzly bear from Old West Saloon, VICKIE, and the Drey Black Stallion. Then I just ran around and giggled. I don’t think I’ve had so much fun with a set of blocks since I was ten. If I can just stop playing with it long enough to write something, I’ll have an article!
Feverishly outlining new machinima plots to go with some of the Blueprint Home possibilities……
I have been experimenting with BluePrint and am finding all sorts of ideas as I go along. The first one I created was much too big and looked empty with all the furniture I could put in it. So I went smaller, still looked too empty. SO I went a bit smaller on the third go around and also added a small “guest” house to help fill that vast expanse of pavement that was left.
I think the main problem I have come into here is the 100 item furniture allotment. Though it seems to be plenty for the pre-fab places we already own, this space is so huge that even if you use large pieces it has an empty feel to it, kind of like when we had a 50 item limit with the larger estates.
So because of this we have to downsize the space to fit the furniture allotment, which makes me wonder why they made it so huge in the first place if we can’t use it all.
I am sure they are going to give us many more built in “features” like the stove and glass walls, but those aren’t furniture really.
I love this space and all of its possibilities, I just hope we can get more walls that are less garish colored and perhaps even be given walls we can add singly instead of as a part of the structure, similar to the Loot wood and Ghostbuster blue ones, which fit there nicely by the way. I think any developer, NDreams included, would make a killing with these, not just for this space, but for many others as well.
Nice article as always Gid.
For those HOME users like me who been creative for past 3yrs with LBP community will find this a must buy. Im no interior decorator, bit i know my way around a Virtual world toolset and a thermobar. I’ve even built a train station with blueprint. it will take a few pushes and Ndreams marketing people to get off there highprice horse with add-ons but yes the HOME redefining moment is there ready fro the community to take.