Bit Town v3: Houses, Compromise and Main Floor Zoning Laws.
One is that it's supposed to allow people to customize their own houses.
The other is that it's supposed to be standardized enough to allow for competitions on a "fair" playing field.
I think I've found a compromise. Each house is allowed to have a "main floor" and a "basement". The main floor is accessible from the rest of the town and has tight restrictions on the construction.
Basements have much more lenient building guides (hence forth "zoning laws") The Basements currently can only be accessed from a single warp in that House's main floor. That warp must be allowed to be blocked off in major competitions in-game. The basement may have one or more "Up warps" entering into the main floor.
Zoning Laws
All measurements will be using the following terms:
A "centi" refers to the area of the smallest grid squares.
A "pace" is a linear measurement of a ship's side (three centi long but zero centi wide.)
A "square" is 100 centis in area, it refers to the medium sized grid squares.
A "lot" is 2,500 centis in area, it refers to the size that a Main Floor can take up.
Main floors
1) Main floors must be reasonable in total size. Each house may take up no more than 2,500 centis. It is recommended that the builder attempts to fit their main floor within 2,300 centi, (23 squares) just to be sure that they don't go over. Remember that THICKNESS of the exterior walls COUNTS.
2) The Goal Zone must be reasonably accessible with limited time when undefended. A bot must be able to fly into the house, pick up the flag from the goal zone, and fly out of the house within 6 seconds if unobstructed by force fields and enemy players.
3) There must be at least one entrance from the town. It seems like it should go without saying, but the main floor must be possible to enter from the town. Each entrance must be at least a Pace (3 centi) wide in order to be considered an entrance.
4) There must be a reasonable limit to the number of force fields and turrets in the main floor. Main floors are limited to one forcefield and two turrets. They can be set to recharge 10% health every 20 seconds but no faster. All must be possible to disable using phasers by flying in through at least one of the entrances from the town.
5)There must be a limit to the number of non-barrier items in the main floor. This limit is 20. That means you can have your warp (to the basement), two turrets, a forcefield, a goal zone, and 15 other non-barrier items. This includes resource items, test items, health packs, energy packs, speed zones, loadout zones, slippery zones. No flags, soccer balls or nexuses may be used. There must be exactly one goal zone per house, and only one warp per main floor (and this will eventually lead to your basement).
/End main floor zoning laws.
Please everyone interested, send me an attempt at your main floors so I can look them over and clear up any misunderstandings.
I will eventually type up the zoning laws for basements, which will be much less restrictive, but follow along the same lines of limitations.