Different coloured Crystals? Pointless!

[Tomino_sama]

can\'t wait to see them in newly generated planets! look great. already can think of soo many uses for these ;D

 

[Ithirahad]

I\'d say that now all we need is the full color range of carpet blocks, PlexDoor wedges, some kind of thin-model door (Like MC doors, but gray, and sliding to the side instead of swinging open), and colorable weapons, and we\'re pretty much set for purely aesthetic things.

 

[awesome270]

+1 on the door wedges and maybe more colours / shades to the current colours such as light blue the blue we have currently and a dark blue. suggestions could be endless

 

[Captain Fortius]

How could I not understand if I already wrote it down above? New crystals. Yay. As the op said, (almost) pointless.

Surely you must see what the competition\'s doing?

That was one of the more important points. Which you\'re not getting. Must be too busy repeating one word.

Basically; while SM announces something negligible, SE releases something game defining.

-And, before you say moo(t) again and I\'ll be forced to call you a cow, they are related. Do you think the kids out there care for a few more types of gatherables? There are already too many item types out there. Congrats for wasting more inventory space. They\'re happy only because it gives them a shiny rimless block in more colors than just the old light blue, thus they can build nicer stuff.

Do you understand now? All that matters is their color. Which, since it\'s a couple of fixed presets, is woefully limited.

 

[kupu]

\"Building nicer stuff\" is an aspect of the game many (if not most) players are interested in.

You\'ll try and reiterate yet again how more colour presets would pale in comparison to RGB sliders... of course, that\'s a no brainer.

But RGB sliders do not change the surface texture or block properties.

In my opinion, adding a custom colour picker for hull and crystal blocks is a great idea. But as far as i am aware it\'s not a priority for the devs right now.


Basically; while SM announces something negligible, SE releases something game defining.


Apples and oranges.

Did you really expect huge visual additions and new game mechanics every few weeks? Or for them just to conincide with SE\'s updates so you can compare respectively?

It\'s fine if crystals don\'t mean much to your personal experience in the game. It\'s an optional aspect of play. As long as you understand their creation and implementation has not detracted from or undermined larger plans and future content. (Which if you did you\'d see the futile nature of your argument?)

 

[Captain Fortius]

It\'s natural to defend what you like, but if you refuse to see the flaws in it, you deny it the possibility of becoming any better.

I would not comment before thinking through all possibilities. Don\'t think I\'m here to troll you either. I\'m here because I still care.

So far texture wise they\'re recolors of the original. Maybe you or somebody else will draw different ones. Unlikely though; As I wrote above, players will use them as rimless lights, for decoration. If they get distinct crystally textures, they will no longer fit that role.

Gameplay wise? Yet again I\'m forced to repeat myself. Too. Many. Blocks. Already. Would you want them to be rare valuables? Or material for recipes? We\'ve got too many of those as well. Think about all the types and levels of minerals already out there.

Maybe just to see different colors while exploring or mining? We\'re back to the sliders yet again. One basic crystal block. Rolls a random color at planet / asteroid generation. Returns to it\'s colorless state if stacked in inventories, keeps original if kept separately. Diversity. Excitement. Standardization. One block to keep track of instead of half a dozen.

Don\'t fool yourself. The idea is flawed from the start and it\'s only redeeming quality is that there\'s nothing better in the game yet.

You\'re also trying a bit too hard to be condescending. Doesn\'t exactly make you look good when you\'re wrong from the start.



ps;

Apples and oranges? Maybe if the apple is unripe, weird looking, and has been hanging from the tree for months without growing, while the orange keeps getting sweeter, larger and juicier every week.

 

[MrFURB]

I definitely see your point, and I completely agree that a variable color pallete of options would match up with the general idea of \'simple yet flexible\' much better than a set of individual pre-set colors. I believe you are going about trying to convince people in an ineffective fasion though. Perhaps if you were to apply the Principle of Charity (An awesome bit of wisdom which is part of the secret to winning over friends and discussions one would normally lose) and look further into what your opponent was saying before creating a counter-point. Perhaps learning the ins and outs of how Starmade is organized would help you to come up with suggestions that \'ring\' with the developers more, in turn making the game closer to your dream game.

 

[BDLS]

You guys do know that it takes literally under a minute (excluding designing a texture) to add any kind of block to the blockset right?

 

[EpicFailLord123]

You fuel the arguement instead of stopping it when its pretty darn close to a flame war.

Also, I agree with fortius on every point. Why add more asthetic blocks one way, when you could do it 100x simpler another way, and then use the time saved to optimize the game further?

 

[MrFURB]

Please, I wasn\'t implying anything. Heck, I hate implied meanings. All I\'m trying to do is understand both sides of the discussion/argument/whatever-the-heck-you-want-to-call-it and find a way to benefit everyone without a further meltdown of communications. If you feel that I\'m \'doing it wrong\' then suggest something in a PM or message. Who knows, I might learn something great!

 

[ltmauve]

Unless there\'s going to be major changes to world generation, I would like to submit my opinion that mucking around in the world generation code isn\'t the most fruitful of endevaours.

Also while I believe cluttering up the inventory with additional blocks is bad and having a more customizable system with fewer blocks is better, I still think that adding additional decorative blocks is worth it.

 

[Cboehme]

How come I don\'t see anyone complaining that Minecraft has preset wool colors? I mean, that\'s pretty much what you\'re doing, is Minecraft a horrible game for having only a few wool colors? Nope, Would a color slider make MC a better game?, for the ammount of work it would take, Not Really.

And SE doesn\'t have Shields, AMCs, Salvage Beams, An Economy, Planets, So many Blocks!,LAVA!!!!!!!!!!!!,Shops,NPCs,Docking,Missiles!,Handguns,Factories,Free to Play, and Schema.



SE has none of that, so yes, SM is an orange that keeps getting sweeter, larger and juicier,and SE is an apple that keeps getting sweeter, larger and juicier, just in different ways. oh yeah, and SM has LAVA!!!!

 

[NeonSturm]

And SE doesn\'t have Shields, AMCs, Salvage Beams, An Economy, Planets, So many Blocks!,LAVA!!!!!!!!!!!!,Shops,NPCs,Docking,Missiles!,Handguns,Factories,Free to Play, and Schema.


Space Engineers? has no AMCs, but machine guns. It has dumb fire rockets (but not balanced like here) it has no salvage beams, but drillers (or how it is called in english).

It has a machine hand gun, it has a factory (yet not completely functional last time i played), it has docking, better inventory-management...

Star made has no real economy either. if not setup a good one on servers (admin-script managed shops, custom prices/recipies...) but that is not starmade but player-made stuff.


SE has none of that, so yes, SM is an orange that keeps getting sweeter, larger and juicier,and SE is an apple that keeps getting sweeter, larger and juicier, just in different ways. oh yeah, and SM has LAVA!!!!


That is closer to the thruth.

Space engineers have a team with bad reputation? But Star Made will completely fail if one developer has an acident or gets ill...

I think it is a fair challenge between both games and we will see what comes out on top. I hope Star-Made, because it is free-to-play and more customizeable.

Although that (customizeability) needs some improvement to completely statisfy me and restriction build tools to keep big things unique/worthfull is not exactly my oppinion. We will see what the future give us. Maybe all comunities make some open source stuff together? :p nobody knows

 

[Lecic]

You could probably copy the code to generate Ice Crystals, and move them to other planet types.

 

[lazarus78]

Free to play, for now. Given the very early state for Starmade, theres a lot to be done. Space Engineers is more polished and further along in development, but lacking in some of its bigger main features.

I would say Starmade has more content and Space Engineers has more quality.

I personally own both, and I prefer Starmade. My personal wish would be for starmade content with Space Engineers graphics. XD

 

[NeonSturm]

You could probably copy the code to generate Ice Crystals

You don\'t need to. just copy the CONFIG

 

[kupu]

Hey guys, this topic got everyone debating much larger implications than block colours which for the most part, was really constructive and provided a good platform for debate.

Now the Q&A is out in video format (see the news) i would recommend giving it a watch to get some official responses to the questions and ideas brought up here in this thread and elsewhere.

There are some concise and specific answers to the following topics;

- Colour sliders,

- Inventory clutter and multiple block types

- World gen and terrain types

Hopefully the new information it will satisfy some of the querys!

 

[NeonSturm]

AFAI understand it, it says:

Color sliders (full RGB) would increase block size (memory) from 3 to 12 bytes in the gpu and in ram.

• but I would be happy with just 8 colors (3 bit). Autogenerated or with paint to not impact the block-config size for each of our 5 block types and 2 hull hardeness levels.
• Or a forth bit for those who also want all of orange, grey and brown hull too - 16 choices should be enough for color.

Inventory clutter gets removed?

I prefer text, because it is a real information overload. Especially for those who have some problems understanding spoken english while doing other stuff btw also very time consuming.

 

[kupu]

I might be reading your suggestion wrong... so correct me if i am.

Below is a 3bit RGB colour pallette, we already have these colour equivilants in a less eye burning shade.



Even if we changed the colours of the above pallette with our current colours we loose 1. Adding a byte per block so you can use sliders for this seems like a step backward.

Especially when we consider the new inventory and build mode overhauls.

There is talk of adding a slider in build mode to scroll through the 5 different block types of hull.

So if you have 1 block of hardened hull, you can scroll through the block types (penta, tetra, wedge etc) and pick the one you want at the cost of 1 hull. This saves inventory space as you would no longer need 5 block types of the same hull in your inventory. Just a single stack of hard hull.

The same system could also be added for colours, meaning N colours could be added as unique block ID\'s with a simple colour selection in build mode. Again, reducing the amount of hull types in your inventory. However these would remain preset colours.

Calbiri goes over the system in the first or second dev Q&A video. His explanation is a little more concise than mine :P

 

[Titansmasher]

To add the block ID\'s, copy the block settings, modify the colours and then link up the images to the blocks takes the best part of 2 minutes per block. adding it to the world generation wouldnt have taken all too long either, just a simple copy and paste of the current ice crystal generation, so id guess its fair to say this wouldnt have wasted more than 20 minutes, no matter who did it