I did some work on the building block system today. Building blocks are things like a wall, a foundation, a floor, a window. I dramatically simplified the code and I made them upgradable.
This is only boilerplate right now - it's a start. When you place a building block you'll place a frame. Then bash that with the hammer to give it wood, and it'll upgrade to level 1. The level 1 blocks are all what they used to be. Keep hitting it, giving it wood, you'll get it to level 2. Get some stones, keep hitting it, and it'll upgrade to level 3, then 4. Get some metal fragments and you'll get it to level 5.
There's a lot of balancing that we need to do here.. but the intention is that instead of placing walls that are inpenetrable from the start.. you'll have to actually work at it to get to that level.. and you'll probably only fully upgrade the walls at ground level etc.
Right now none of this has any art. And it looks terrible. It's literally just coloured versions of the old meshes.
But our intention is that each level will have a different mesh and texture. So upgraded buildings will be made out of stone a metal. I made a slideshow illustrating
how we're probably going to do transitions here.
I'm hoping that over the next couple of weeks we'll start to finalize our ideas for building levels - and start to get some of this stuff in game.