Speaking of Furniture Slots…
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
We can dream of having more than one-hundred furniture slots for our personal estates and clubs in Home, and we probably all do. Some of us can even come up with clever and maybe possible solutions to the need for more slots for our larger personal estates, but we may never see Sony make any changes in this regard, as it would require a substantial core change. Core client updates to Home have been few and far between, for the most part, and are becoming even more rare. Two of the best possible solutions were suggested by MVP and Home Guide, Danger_Dad, and our own former editor-in-chief, NorseGamer.
Danger_Dad, quoted here with his permission, suggests the following:
“Instead of trying to add more RAM – which we don’t have – let’s just use the existing bank of RAM more efficiently. Instead of dividing it into a hundred slices as we do currently, let’s divide it into a thousand, each one a tenth the size of the existing slots.
“Then, a script runs over the database of inactive items, and assigns each a value from one to ten, depending upon what percentage of the current RAM allocation they actually use. Because inactive items don’t need more RAM than their file size, this could be done quickly, likely without need for revision later.
“Similarly, the script would simply multiply the allocation for active items by ten. Refining it further would be for each developer to do. This would be necessary because active items use more RAM than their file sizes, and only each developer is qualified to determine exactly how much.
“Now, how much would this help? Well, with active items, especially items that use lots of slots currently, there isn’t a lot of empty space to free up, so the savings would be minimal with them. The real savings would be with the inactive items. The actual RAM freed would vary, depending upon which items one used, but if the average is for items to use half of their allocated RAM, we could expect to double the number of items allowable. Generally, a larger number of smaller items, or a smaller number of larger items.”
NorseGamer (prior to becoming a Home developer and gaining access to the HDK) had suggested this:
“Let’s assume the estate defaults to 100 / 11 (one-hundred items and eleven guests, which is the current norm). [My] idea is to have a core update which introduces a user-controlled slider, so that you could subtract from one memory channel to add more to another. You could raise the furniture cap to 200, but your visitor cap would be reduced to six, for instance. And, if you attempted to invite more, you would receive a pop-up prompt telling you to decrease your furniture allocation.
“Or, conversely, if you needed to entertain a large group, you could slide in the other direction and go down to 50 items — but have room for, say, 20 guests instead of 11 (although, at that point, a clubhouse might make more sense). You would then be prompted to remove the correct number of furniture items before the change could take effect.
“It’s exactly the same amount of memory, but the user has been given far greater flexibility over utilizing it — which is exactly what Sony did with the Home 1.65 core client update, by the way, to much popular support.
“In general, the average number of guests per estate (when you look at the user population and its activity as a whole) is quite low — which means that a big chunk of an entire memory channel is sitting there, wasted. So this would be a method for the user to enjoy a higher furniture cap without feeling much of a trade-off — and, indeed, the user would be in full control of the allocation, so if there was a special event which merited a high number of guests, it would simply be a matter of removing the excess furniture and moving the slider back in the other direction.”
While these suggestions are brilliant, sadly neither may ever come about. However, there are several ways to make your spaces look more filled up and lived in, as you’d like them to look.
Where you place your furniture can make a big difference. Try moving your items out from against the wall and set them at angles to corners. Don’t group too many items close to each other. Also, a rug can define a smaller area inside of a larger one, providing not only the look of more than one room in a large space, but an allowable empty space between them.
One obvious suggestion is to use larger furniture and ornamental items. Of course, since the stores do not indicate sizes, (as I wish they would) finding them can be quit a challenge. Any developer that showcases its items at actual size is one way to find larger items. Beware of Lockwood’s public spaces where they change the sizes of the items that you can purchase. You may have noted larger pieces when you purchased them or you can also visit friend’s spaces and make note of any larger furniture items they own. Ask them what their largest items are; they may even show them to you. Large spaces such as the Konami’s Gothic Cathedral are very likely to offer larger items, if they offer matching furniture bundles. The design of the item can also give a hint as to the size. A sectional sofa such as the one in the Island Bungalow Apartment bundle will take up more space than a simple couch.
There are also furniture and ornaments they have combined items within their slot allotment, of course. Game Mechanics is especially proficient at lowering the slot count on their combined furniture items. For instance, their smallest elegant dining table takes up only 6 slots, but has a table, a vase, four chairs and up to four place settings. Juggernaut Games makes many active items with low slot counts, and this sense of movement or “busyness” can help make a space seem more filled. Of course any item that you can ride upon such as their merry-go-rounds will be larger items, also.
You may also want to consider that in some cases less is more. A beautiful ornament carefully displayed before a large window with a great view can be the focal point of a room.
It’s unlikely that furniture slot allocation usage will change. In years past, Home typically got at least two major core client updates. There is a general sense that this may no longer be the case. If 2012 was the Year of the Game, and 2013 was the Year of the LMO, then will there be a new feature introduced that defines the 2014 Home marketplace?
February 11th, 2014 by Kassadee Marie | 5 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
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;^) Very well done, Kassadee.
It is discouraging to think that Sony may never alter the existing furniture tools, but how about if a developer did something similar?
Imagine an active item that occupied, say, fifty furniture slots, but the executable within it used only five or ten.
When placed into a space, Sony’s furniture mover would mark those fifty slots as used, and not put other furniture there.
When run, the active item’s embedded executable would be its own furniture moving tool, sub-dividing its leftover RAM more efficiently than Sony does. Some active items already do this with their own embedded ornaments, but I’m thinking of an active item that would allow us to deploy our existing furniture inventory, instead of limiting us to objects embedded within the active item.
;^) Maybe Loot could give this a try, or maybe Norse could comment….
I like cats.
(Sorry, not much I can say now that I’m on the other side of the curtain these days…)
I have been an advocate for making more room for Active Items since they came out. It was explained to me that the way Home works, they cannot dynamically move RAM from one group to another. For instance, part of the memory is pre-allocated to play video. But what if you never have a video player in that space? They cannot reallocate the space because they have to allocate it when you enter. And they don’t know if today is the first day you are going to pull out something that plays video. Same with visitor memory. They don’t know how many people you are going to invite in so they allocate room for the maximum possible.
With that limitation, they have done about as good a job as you can creating multiple types of spaces that developers can choose from to create and control the memory configurations ahead of time. For instance Cutthroats runs in a public game space that only allows up to 32 players in an instance at a time. By making it public, no one can place furniture (aka no video). By making it a 32 player space instead of 64 we got even more memory.
The suggestions are all good, but as in all game engines, at a certain point, the new features that are the obvious next step require a massive core update. Something unlikely to happen at this point. There is too much in there to start over and remain compatible. It may be possible, but I certainly would not do it unless Home was going to live on more platforms than just the PS3.
As a developer I used to be frustrated at the pace things progressed. Now there are so many new things I cannot keep up. Look for some fun, new features going forward from us and other developers. There is a lot more that can be done even if development on Home stopped. And, as far as I know, they aren’t stopping.
:^/ John, what if the allocation for RAM were decided on a personal space-by-personal space basis, with the owner being able to alter it? Either from the XMB before entering the space, or from within the space, with the caveat that he’ll have to exit and re-enter the space before the change will take effect?
That may be able to allow Norse’s idea of adjusting the divider between two memory channels. And if that were combined with my idea for untilizing the furniture channel more efficinetly, we could squeeze some pretty impressive results out of Home….
I am pretty sure I suggested that and they shot it down. I don’t remember why.
At this point I would focus on putting pressure on the devs to have lower slot counts on their furniture. That can happen today.
I hope they change the way memory is handled, but it seems so unlikely at this point.