Balconies

A balcony is an assembly, not a piece. Three things, each a Kit asset in its own right, and one prefab that puts them together so a level designer places one object instead of three.

Class
The slab balcony A floor that projects out of the facade
The balustrade fence A run that tiles along the edge
The corbels under it trim Projecting, repeating along the run

There is deliberately no railing class. A balustrade is a fence (a run that tiles along its length and pivots bottom-left) and a second name for that would be a second setting to keep in agreement for no gain.

The slab is a floor that projects

balcony takes the floor pivot (top-left of the top face) because its walking surface still has to land at storey level, projecting or not. Drop a bottom-centre prop on it at Y=0 and the prop rests on it, exactly as on any other floor.

But it stands out of the facade, so it is exempt from MSH015 for the same reason trim is: a
balcony that fitted inside its grid cell would not be a balcony.

How far out is a number, not a feel

balconyDepth is 1.5 m. It is the balcony version of trimProjection, and the module balcony slabs tile at along a bay. It is not held to trimProjectionMax; a balcony is supposed to stand well out of the facade.

It tiles along X, the facade, so two slabs make a longer balcony.

New Kit Piece hands you 4 × 1.5 × 0.2 m for Class Balcony.

The railing is an ergonomics number

railingHeight is 1.1 m, and it belongs beside characterHeight

At 1.1 m it reaches the chest of a 1.8 m character. Drop it to 0.9 and the same balcony reads as a trip hazard from the street. Players notice that without being able to say why, in the same way a 3 m ceiling feels right and a 2.2 m one feels wrong.

It sits with characterHeight, eyeHeight and stepHeight in the grid, not with the trim numbers, because it is about the person and not about the profile.

Grid

Metrics everything is built against. These vary per project. The table below is the base.

Metric Value
primary 1
sub 0.25
wallSegment 4 × 3
wallThickness 0.2
doorOpening 1 × 2.25
windowOpenings standard 1 × 1.5 · wide 2 × 1.5 · high 1 × 0.75
stairRiser 0.1875
stairGoing 0.25
stairRiserRange 0.15–0.2
stairGoingRange 0.25–0.3
stairWidths standard 1 · wide 2
stairHeadroom 2.25
handrailHeight 0.9
ladderRungSpacing 0.25
characterHeight 1.8
eyeHeight 1.65
stepHeight 0.3
capsuleRadius 0.3
bayWidth 1
storeyHeight 3
groundStoreyHeight 4.5
trimProjection 0.1
trimProjectionMax 0.25
roofPitch 40
roofPitchTolerance 1
roofOverhang 0.5
railingHeight 1.1
balconyDepth 1.5
hatchOpening 0.9 × 0.9
doubleDoorOpening 2 × 2.25
increments 0.1 × 0.5 × 1 × 2 × 5 × 10

A balustrade is a fence: bottom-left, tiles along X. Build it at bayWidth so it matches the
slabs under it, and it will match the wall behind them too.

What holds it up

A balcony with nothing under it reads as floating, whatever the fiction says. Corbels and
brackets are trim: they project from the wall and repeat along the run.

The two are not the same word. A Corbel is a block of the wall projecting out of it, stepped or
moulded and structural in the fiction; a Bracket is a lighter shaped support under a projection.
A Cantilever is neither. It describes a slab carried at one end only, with nothing under its far edge, which is a statement about how it is held up rather than a piece you can model.

And a balcony is not a Loggia: one projects out of the building, the other is cut into it, and
they are built from completely different pieces.
→ The Words We Use > Balconies and railings

Assemble it back

P_Kit_AbandonedTavern_01_Balcony_Corbelled_01

Slab, balustrade and corbels, in one prefab. A level designer places a balcony, not three assets that
have to be lined up. PRF001 exempts an assembling prefab from mirroring any one model's name. It gets its own Descriptor.
→ Splitting a Piece > Assemble it back

See also