Open Social Useful porches - decoration and self-expression

Banth said:

Firstly I love the idea, would be great to see this on porches and balconies.

Balconies would certainly be easier imo, as they're not accessible unless you're in the house to begin with. The porch might be a little more challenging.

I think for this to work there might have to be fixed, pre-designated locations where you can place objects...think SWTOR decoration placement if you're familiar. So from the terminal you might "load" an object into a certain position on the porch which creates a mirror of the object, rather than the object being actually there. There should definitely be some logic like "you cannot pack up this house with items on the porch" to avoid that issue.

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Yeah if that was the only way to do it, but it would lose a lot of the customization.

I wonder if the locker could just be a list in the house terminal (similar to vendor inventory), and objects are placed in there.
Players then use a slash command on the porch to drop the item (a popup of the list lets them choose which) and the game checks that the player is standing in a suitable location. A similar check would be done when using the decorate move/rotate commands. The game already recognizes ground for these stoops as mayors can place small decorations on them and they don't fall through to the dirt. The check might have to be just a check straight down below the object so players could still raise them (a pumpkin on a table, or a web by the door).
Houses could have a pre-determined outdoor item count (Small Tatooine: 4, Medium Tatooine: 6, Large Tatooine: 8, Guildhalls: 10) and maybe even upgradable for a fee.