Other Change 'this is not valid housing' message

Laluzi

Laluzi

Skeletron
Because this message is the equivalent of the engine tossing up its hands and going 'I dunno', which really doesn't help a player make the housing valid.

Off the top of my head, there are two things which flag 'this is not valid housing' - being too close to an evil biome, and having the floor entirely consist of some combination of platforms and blocks covered by... either chests or any furniture object, I'm not as certain on this one. I think chairs are fine? The root cause is that NPCs don't like to stand on platforms and also don't like to stand in front of certain furniture items, and if the house can't find one solid block to assign the NPC's night position to, it'll say the house is invalid.

The second one is very much not readily apparent (and you can screw up a previously valid house by placing a chest, can confirm), and the first can be tricky too - ignoring spreading biomes, the 'too much evil nearby' amount isn't as high as the amount necessary to change the background and music, applies if any spot in the house passes the rating (so you could have a long rectangle where only the farthest edge is too corrupt, but the NPCs still freak out), and evil plants and thorns do count for evil blocks, meaning you could have built a house in an area that was valid housing and then later find the NPCs left and the house is now invalid because a patch of thorns grew in the Corruption biome 30 blocks away and pushed it over the edge.

So proposed messages instead:
"This house is too close to [the Corruption]/[the Crimson]/[a hostile biome]."
"This house requires a solid, unobstructed block for the occupant to stand on."

There might still be other fail states, and messages for those would be appreciated, but at least this would cut out the most common ones and help players build their houses.

(As an aside, I wish they'd get rid of the 'this house is too big' restriction. Since when is having an enormous mansion to yourself a complaint?)
 
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Laluzi said:
So proposed messages instead:
"This house is too close to [the Corruption]/[the Crimson]/[a hostile biome]."
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The housing messages should say "This house is corrupted" if the house is too close to the Crimson/Corruption. There seems to be a gap in it though, where it's close enough to be invalid, but not close enough to trigger the right message.
 
Sigma90 said:
The housing messages should say "This house is corrupted" if the house is too close to the Crimson/Corruption. There seems to be a gap in it though, where it's close enough to be invalid, but not close enough to trigger the right message.
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Very interesting. I've never experienced that message, even when a sky island gets shot through with evil; it's always been 'this is not valid housing.' Perhaps I've just never had a house around enough corrupt blocks to trigger it. Meanwhile, 'this house is too small' has always fired correctly for me. (PC user regarding both.)
 
Oh my goodness. I cannot express to you how many hours I spent in my younger days trying to figure out why the heck my apartment was invalid housing.
 
Yes yes yes yes perfect. If the message of "this housing is so invalid, I'm not gonna say what it is but like you probably should feel ashamed" could actually point out the issue then that would be excellent.

From what I know the "not valid" message only shows up because of the obscure housing rule of the "solid-ground free standing space" thing (the partially-corrupted scenario he said might be saying that the house itself still counts fine for now except it can't find a proper standing space anymore? And then it converts to completely corrupted and changes to that message). But the thing about the rule is that it seems to check for a 3tall possibly2wide zone with any 1 of the blocks below it being solid (EXCEPT if the solid block was right in the corner because that doesn't count for some reason, but if it's a single line of platforms with just 1 solid block elsewhere it works), and I found 2 specific things that can cause problems with it
  • Walkable ground-placed furniture items all mean nothing to it even if you fill the entire row, except chests (specifically only chests, no other ground furniture) will always invalidate its space as the wanted zone, presumably its whole 2x2 space counts as an obstruction for the zone. Maybe it's something from special properties kinda shared with altars or a thing where they just don't want the NPC laying in front of it. So there's value in the message also specifically pointing out unobstructed by chests (instead of vague furnitures that can actually be fine).
  • Wall-mounted furniture universally counts as an obstruction to the zone. Besides paintings and stuff this is actually mere torches (if mounted specifically in the background wall). If you make one of those 3wide 10tall prisons, placing a torch in the 3rd block up in the middle will invalidate it, nowhere else, just there. Some other layouts still can be obstructed by torches except it takes multiple torches. Place one of those huge paintings in a small room and it gets invalidated because the NPC doesn't wanna have its spot forcing it to touch it with their feet or head.
  • Also it doesn't like if the designated zone isn't flat at the ground and will fail to find one.
So like if the message was changed to mention something like "space on solid ground unobstructed by chests or wall-mounted objects"
or even "person-sized" space
 
Oh, thank you so much for the clarification!

I'm pretty sure the restriction exists for chests because NPCs blocking chests is a common community outcry, and if their night position ended up in front of a chest, they'd block you from accessing it for seven realtime minutes. I can't think of a gameplay reason for them to be so averse to torches and paintings, though - and I appreciate the in-depth explanation, because I knew that about the torches, but I didn't know that it held for purely decorative wall-mounts as well. Explains a lot in retrospect.
 
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