Building Mode - What's the Best Way to Relocate Stairs in a Tiny House?

[Sephrenia]

Hello,

I’m not sure if this is the right place for this question?

I set myself the task of creating a Tiny House for the smallest plot of land and worked on it for a long time.
Unfortunately, I discovered at the end that there’s a gap between the exterior wall and the stairs.
I played around with the house for several days with a Zoi and was amazed that everything worked. But this gap is really getting to me.
Trying to fix it will probably cause errors in the room logic because of the platform, and then I can’t, for example, apply wall coverings in certain spots anymore.
I would also be grateful if someone could tell me where I can get more in-depth information about build mode or where I can exchange ideas with others.

[NyushaDm]

I don’t quite understand what problem you’ve encountered. You showed how it was before, but you didn’t show how things look after moving the staircase. From my own experience, I can only suggest one “life hack”. If you lose items that are hanging on walls and lose your selected textures when moving walls… Then you need to copy the needed wall (from a good house) or several walls depending on the task. Place the copied walls in the construction zone (put them next to the house). You can modify your object however you want (move the staircase). Once you’ve made changes to the project, replace the bad walls with the ones you copied (the good ones). The items will stay in their places. Sometimes there are exceptions and items disappear, but textures always remain.

[Sephrenia]

Thank you for your reply.

I’m actually not looking for a workaround, but rather trying to understand how the build system works. I’m interested in why the combination of the staircase, the raised platform, and the tiny house layout seems to create conflicts in the room logic, and which part is actually causing the issue.

At the moment I’m rebuilding the house from scratch using the cleanest build order I can, hoping to better understand the cause of the problem.

If you know of any resources or communities where people discuss the building mechanics in more depth, I’d really appreciate it.

[NyushaDm]

I don’t know of any communities where builders interact. Discord is where they discuss everything there, inZOI is where they share their creations and more. As for understanding the building mechanics — don’t bother. While the game is in early access, it has a lot of bugs in the building tool. I’ve been playing since the initial launch for two years now, and from my experience, the building mechanics change constantly. Bugs, incomplete features, changes with every new update. I’m tired of building with broken tools.

[Sephrenia]

I loaded the house into Build Studio as a template and then rebuilt a new house next to it following the exact same layout. This time, however, I worked together with ChatGPT, which suggested a structured construction order.

First, I placed the exterior walls for the ground floor, then added the interior walls and checked that the room logic was correct. After that, I built the exterior walls for the upper floor and then added the interior walls there as well. Next, I created the space for the future platform, raised the floor, removed the necessary wall sections, placed the staircase leading to the platform, and finally added the staircase connecting the two floors.

I kept checking everything throughout the entire process, and I didn’t encounter any issues.

One thing I also did differently was that I placed almost all of the walls in one go. Whenever I made a mistake, I usually used Undo instead of correcting it with the hammer tool.

Normally, I don’t build with a fixed plan. I usually start with a rough idea, and the house develops naturally while I’m building. I constantly make changes, move walls, or add new rooms whenever I get a new idea.

This method is a bit more time-consuming, but I think I will continue doing it this way. I will first build the house until I’m happy with the overall design, and then rebuild it from scratch using a more structured construction order. Small mistakes don’t really bother me, but I tend to keep modifying my houses over time as my gameplay changes or I come up with new ideas.

I don’t know whether the construction order actually makes a difference, but in my case rebuilding the house this way worked perfectly, so I wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone else.

[Moooody]

That’s a really clever tiny house! Tiny builds always seem to expose the “quirks” of the building system.

I’m not sure if it’ll help in this specific case, but have you tried temporarily deleting just the staircase, fixing the wall/platform first, and then placing a new staircase afterwards? Sometimes rebuilding the stairs as the last step can make the surrounding geometry snap a little differently. No guarantees, but it might be worth trying before rebuilding larger sections of the house.

As for learning Build Mode, I think the forums are honestly one of the best places right now. There are quite a few talented builders here, and the Build tag is growing with people sharing tricks and solutions. The official Discord also has builders exchanging ideas and showcasing their creations, so that’s another good place to ask questions.

By the way, if this gap turns out to be impossible to remove without breaking the room logic, it might actually be worth reporting separately as a Build Mode issue/ Bug. Ideally, moving or replacing stairs shouldn’t leave behind geometry that can’t be cleanly corrected.

[Sephrenia]

Thank you! It really means a lot that you called the tiny house clever. I actually spent quite a long time building it, trying to make the most of the limited space without interfering with the Zois’ routing. With tiny houses, creativity and the logic of the building system sometimes seem to collide.

I actually tried your suggestion, along with several other approaches. I removed and replaced the staircases, rebuilt different parts, and experimented with multiple solutions, but unfortunately the issue remained. There was always a narrow strip where I couldn’t apply any wall covering.

My guess is that the problem was caused by the way I built the house. During construction, I deleted, rebuilt, and rearranged a lot of things. In that area, there’s a staircase, a landing, and a wall that only connects to an exterior wall, plus another staircase leading to the landing. I suspect that all those changes somehow confused the building system’s internal geometry or the way those elements were linked together. Of course, that’s only my theory.

When I later rebuilt the entire house from scratch using a much cleaner and more systematic approach, the problem never appeared again.

I really hope that when Canvas Town arrives, the forum will have a dedicated section for building discussions. It would be great to have a place where builders can share ideas, discuss creative building techniques, and help each other solve tricky building problems.

[Moooody]

I think you might be right about the system somehow messing up the geometry because of an intrincated process.

I’d love a build mode section in the forums, and even a build mode tips chat in Discord so that we can help each other, discuss and share tips. It’s actually not a crazy idea to make a forum related wishlist asking for that.