interior design
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IKEA's latest idea is an online design-a-room service
IKEA is offering customers online sessions with an interior designer.
Flameseeker Chronicles: I'd like to build a Guild Wars 2 home
Happy 2014, everybody! For the first time in a long while, Guild Wars 2 has gone without updates for a few weeks while the ArenaNet team took a well-deserved break. The next content release will drop on January 21st and will reportedly herald the beginning of the end of the Scarlet Briar story arc. I've been spending my free time reading through the latest collaborative development initiative thread on the official forums. A few weeks ago I wrote about horizontal and vertical progression in GW2 and the CDI thread related to it; at this time the discussion on the forums has narrowed specifically to horizontal progression and what players would like to see from it. After posting our top three priorities for horizontal progression, we were asked to further narrow it down to one, in order to develop a proposal. Since it's been such a popular suggestion in the thread, I think it's a good time to talk about a subject near to my shriveled, cold Necromantic heart: player housing.
MyFourWalls is a great Mac app for home interior design and planning
Often during the holidays people begin to think about updating their home, their furniture, or just rearranging. MyFourWalls (U.S. $29.99) for Mac may be just the ticket to help you visualize those changes. The app contains some intuitive tools to set your exterior and interior walls in place, elect carpeting and ceiling material, then start to populate your room with chairs, couches, tables, bookshelves etc. until you have the room built. There's everything from Flat Screen TVs to component shelves, office furniture, and kitchen equipment. You drag what you want into the room, and size it accurately with the handy guides. Once your things are in, their dimensions can be adjusted. Thinking about a new lamp. MyFourWalls let's you insert a lamp or lighting fixtures, and see the effect in the room. Views can be overhead 2D or a very nice 3D rendering, and you can move wherever you want to really get an idea how the room will look. I could duplicate my family room quite easily, and adjustments were easy. If you get stuck, there is a handy and complete help guide just a click away. MyFourWalls is not really a CAD program, but it is great for visualizing how a room will look or change. The views can be day or night, and you can have any number of floors to your home. You can also import photos or objects and use them. MyFourWalls is clever, useful and worked well without my diving into the help pages. If you are considering changes in the house it's a great tool for visualization. It's not a 5 dollar app by any means, but for all that it does it is reasonably priced and is easy to use. The app supports English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. It requires iOS 10.6.6 or later.
Leaderboard: EverQuest II's housing vs. Aion's housing
Everyone loves player housing, right? Oh, quiet you in the back. Look into my eye: Everyone loves player housing. It is the number one most requested, demanded, and mandatory feature of every MMO. In terms of priority, "having monsters to kill in the game" is lower than giving us sweet pads to decorate. This is the way the virtual world should be and always has been. Well, now that I've dipped into the well of delusion, it's time to emerge with my hair sopping wet and my mind open to the possibility of a player housing revival. With the advent of Aion's 3.0 update, players in this now-free-to-play game can move into a suburban dreamhouse and spend countless hours figuring out the exact decor to match the subtle majesty of the bathroom's toilet. But is it enough to challenge the de facto leader of player housing, EverQuest II? Mountains of novels have been written on this game's housing system, novels that were then used to construct a giant book fort in the middle of the grand ballroom. Because that's just how flexible that system can be. So pitted against each other in an interior design contest, which game would emerge triumphant? Cast your vote after the jump!
Allods Online gets fabulous with Astral ship interior design
Ahoy there, Astral ship captains! Is your ship looking a little dull? Perhaps you'd like to go all Queer Eye on your captain's quarters. Well, now's your chance. Allods Online's patch 2.0.06 is en route to players, and it brings Astral ship owners the ability to customize the interiors of their vessels. Perhaps you think that painting tasteless. Replace it with a Van Gogh! Tired of dirty Gibberlings tracking mud all over your expensive hardwood floors? Put down a rug. Then wrap them in it and throw it over the balcony. The possibilities are endless. The new decorations can be purchased with Ship Coupons, Collector's Coins, Special Coins, and gold. So get our your color wheels and get to coordinating. You wouldn't want your drapes to clash with the carpeting, would you?
TUAW's Daily App: Home 3D
Lest you think that all we'll be spotlighting in this space is games, here's an interesting app meant for anyone thinking about adding a couch to that living room or putting an extra bed in the back bedroom. Home 3D is an "architecture and interior design app" that allows you to model out your home in 3D, including doors and windows on a floor plan, wallpaper, and furniture, allowing you to test out your choices on your device first before tearing out a wall or repainting a room. Having all of this functionality on your iPhone or iPad is impressive (and the best home design software costs a lot more than this one -- US$3.99 for the iPhone and $4.99 for the iPad), but Home 3D does it with an impressive interface and a surprising number of features. You can use a color picker and choose from a set of pre-loaded furniture, buy more with in-app purchases, or try creating your own models or even using the iPhone's camera for textures. It's not perfect -- if you want to do serious home design, you'll probably have to go for something a little more dedicated on the desktop. But just for moving some furniture around, or maybe seeing what a room might look like with a different color of paint, Home 3D does the trick.
