Interior Designing in AC: Differences between Welcome amiibo and Happy Home Designer

[Alolan_Apples]

Now that the MoonGlow Tours is over, it's time that I move on to a new subject.

After the Welcome amiibo update came out last fall, ACNL has greatly improved. It has even more items than Happy Home Designer ever did (even if you exclude Sanrio cards), it had mini-games, and it imported ACHHD's core mechanic. Due to amiibo Festival's best game being available in ACNL, amiibo Festival can now be ignored. Happy Home Designer on the other hand, has not been completely ruled out. There are still some aspects of interior designing that did not make it to ACNL. Some, I am disappointed. Others, I wasn't surprised.

What they both have in common:

• You can use the stylus to move items over - this was a lot easier than just pushing or pulling furniture around, like you did in the previous versions, as well as in ACNL before update. You can move furniture even in places you can push or pull them through. It's also less tedious than picking up items and placing them, especially if your pockets are full.
• Including Wall items - before the update, if you placed a wall item in the wrong spot, you have to take it down and place it somewhere else. After the update and in Happy Home Designer, you can drag them with your stylus somewhere else.
• You can stack items on top of each other - for smaller items marked with a yellow-green dot with + sign, you can place them on top of the squared blocks with + signs.
• Tapping an item causes it to rotate - this is so much easier than doing it manually. Plus, rectangular items have unlimited rotations as long as there's enough space.
• You can hang clothes on the walls - only shirts and dresses though. Although I could care less about this, this is a cool feature.
• You can drag multiple items at once - you can move tables with items on top of them, but you couldn't move a couch and chair both at once manually. Thankfully, you can do this with this interior design mechanic.

What's different in each game:

• In Happy Home Designer, you can duplicate items by pressing L or R while holding down with your stylus - the first thing that came to mind on implementing this feature in future AC games is the duplication feature. This was handy in Happy Home Designer rather than just going back to the menu then putting the item out multiple times. But I didn't think you would want that in New Leaf. It would make ordering on the catalog obsolete, and doing this for free would really make it less challenging.
• In Happy Home Designer, you can delete items by picking them up manually or dragging items into the trash can - in New Leaf, you can only delete items by throwing them away in trash storage furniture. But once deleted, it's gone forever. Picking items up only fills your pockets. Also in Happy Home Designer, you can un-delete objects inside the trash menu.
• You can carry your character around in Happy Home Designer - I thought this was cool. Your character (or other characters) can be carried with the stylus like furniture pieces. If you put them into chairs, they will be seated, even when they are out of reach. But characters being carried will be freaking out when you're doing this. You can even carry over characters in visit mode. In New Leaf though, you can never do this. When it comes to the design mode, your character disappears as you move items around. Disappointing isn't it.
• You can instantly refurbish items in Happy Home Designer while carrying them - in New Leaf, you can only refurbish items at the Re-Tail.
• Item Capacity - in Happy Home Designer, the maximum number of items one room can have is 64, including rugs, wall furniture, and ceiling furniture. New Leaf has always been 48 items.
• Precision - in Happy Home Designer, all main spaces are broken down into 2x2 blocks. This gives you more precision, but a full space occupies four smaller spaces. And if you want to fit your character through these small spaces, he/she can slide through sideways. In New Leaf, even after the feature was implemented, you still didn't have precision.
• Room Size - in New Leaf, the maximum size for one room is an 8x8 squared room. In Happy Home Designer, you can occupy a space of 12x8 rooms. But the secondary rooms in houses can only go up to 6x6 rather than 8x8.
• In New Leaf, you can only design your house - in Happy Home Designer, you never had your own house. You can only design animal houses and facilities.
• Missing Features - in Happy Home Designer, you can change doors, windows, curtains, and even ambient sound. None of these features were in New Leaf. Happy Home Designer also had ceiling furniture and rugs, two things we didn't see in New Leaf. IMO, I felt that it was too late to implement these features in ACNL anyway since ACNL is over 3 years old when the update was made.
• Using furniture - in Happy Home Designer, tapping A on some furniture pieces can trigger a one-shot action or toggle on and off, but only when designing. When you tap A on some items when visiting, they do something else. For example, when listening to radios, they can play instruments instead of change the music. They can eat doughnuts rather than open/close the doughnut boxes. In New Leaf, you don't have these cute actions in any mode.
• Stacking furniture - now this is where New Leaf is better (as of what I know). After the amiibo update, smaller 1x2 items and 2x2 items (such as the Flat-Screen TV and aquariums) can be stacked on top of tables, but only if the table is the same size or larger. I don't think you can do that in Happy Home Designer. But at least all clothes in Happy Home Designer can be stacked on tables.
• Loose Junk - in New Leaf, loose junk (such as fruit and pitfalls) can be passed through when on the floor. In Happy Home Designer, they count as actual items like furniture pieces.

And that's it for today.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

I think they would probably apply a lot of the features from HHD into the next AC game.

 

[sizzi]

I really wanted ceiling furniture to be available in the welcome amino update (I want my chandeliers haha)

Oh well ^^