Architecture vs. Decoration

 Valheim does a decent job of being a Viking architecture simulator. You can build whatever you want with the logs and stones and walls and roof pieces provided, and it'll even fall down if you try to cheat physics too hard. Then you can walk around inside your structure and see the views and the way the light comes through, and it's lovely.

We're probably not doing that, so I'm not sure why I'm mentioning it. It's just to peek out at one end of a spectrum.

The other end of the spectrum is... shoot, I don't know. SimCity? You put down pre-made buildings (when you're not just zoning land), and you don't customize any of them. The choice lies in how you're laying things out on a grand scale, and how many fire stations you think you need or whatever.

We're also not doing that.

Then there's... I'm reaching my limits here. Animal crossing? Where it's not about the architecture per se, but much more about how you decorate a given space? I didn't get very far in Animal Crossing. 

I swear I remember some houses exactly like this in Los Angeles.

Then there's the question of messing with facades vs. messing with interiors. I think there'll be both happening, if we want to make a settlement, plus our little person's special house within that settlement.

NOTE TO SELF. If we have an "interior" view for decorating houses, for godsakes get the windows and some lovely lighting in there. It's not a hobbit hole. Unless you want to make a hobbit hole, in which case, that's cool.

I thiiiiink, I think what I'm going to do is draw like 30 little living spaces (inside/outside mix)—color 'em too, just to be thorough and explore styles—and see what things I start wanting to do with them by the end. Messing with materials or windows or towers or fortifications or chandeliers or trim... what of those are the parts that keep me interested and moving forward?

Thirty, Annie? That sound like a lot.

Forty.