Faction Colors hull blocks

[Winterhome]

An extra few block types for each kind of armor. Faction hulls.

A primary color block, a secondary color block, and a tertiary color block should do the trick.

They pull their texture info from the faction they're assigned to, and texture info is selected in the faction screen for each type of color block.



Add these and put them on "official" NPC ships so they can be used with randomly generated NPC factions without said factions looking goofy for not having a solid color scheme later down the road.

 

[Lecic]

I think I've stated an idea like this before on one of my many posts on random NPC factions in threads discussing that. Yes please.

 

[Winterhome]

Edit: Just realized.

If you were allowed to select from the entire list of "solid" textures, you could actually get some really, really neat custom textured armor out of the mix.

I, for one, would really enjoy using a ship with armor textured like motherboards.

 

[kiraen]

I'm all for this.
Not because I'm particularly interested in the faction applications, but because it sets the stage for being able to recolor any armor/hull block. If color is defines thru a meta state or object, we could free up lots of block ids and at the same time allow for a greater rang of colors and designs.

Having said that, unfortunately, I seem to recall there being some issues with this sort of set up. Like drastically increasing memory usage or bandwidth or something. Someone check me.

 

[Winterhome]

I'm all for this.
Not because I'm particularly interested in the faction applications, but because it sets the stage for being able to recolor any armor/hull block. If color is defines thru a meta state or object, we could free up lots of block ids and at the same time allow for a greater rang of colors and designs.

Having said that, unfortunately, I seem to recall there being some issues with this sort of set up. Like drastically increasing memory usage or bandwidth or something. Someone check me.

That was on a per-block basis, I think. There's likely to be a whole different set of issues related to this particular kind of block, though.

I'm suggesting a primary, a secondary, and a tertiary color of each kind of hull block specifically because the texture can be pulled from the ship itself, rather than having any sort of fancy color-select shenanigans that requires a higher bit count per block.

 

[kiraen]

By the same token we could pull a 1st,2nd,3rd color from the ship core. Might as well add 4th. That still frees up 5 out of the the 9 colors, per armor level. I'm not sure if the crystal armor transparency would require a separate block.

So we spend 3 on faction blocks and save at least 15, net gain of 12.

This still assumes the system is even viable.

 

[Winterhome]

By the same token we could pull a 1st,2nd,3rd color from the ship core. Might as well add 4th. That still frees up 5 out of the the 9 colors, per armor level. I'm not sure if the crystal armor transparency would require a separate block.

So we spend 3 on faction blocks and save at least 15, net gain of 12.

This still assumes the system is even viable.

The problem is that three colors is totally insufficient for more creative builds. These would have to be three extra blocks on top of the existing colors.