Glass Blocks

[godsgopher]

So last night I downloaded the new update and I think I spent most of the rest of the evening drooling over everything I saw! What an amazing update! Well done to the whole Starmade Team

However...

Glass Blocks are showing up as white wire frames in all resolution snd graphic style levels. This is very disapointing to say the least. I happen to really like using Glass blocks and these just arn't anywhere near the quality of everything else in the update. You guys are amazing, so I know you can do better.

Thank you.

 

[kupu]

The glass blocks in newer texture packs are purposely transparent with a thin seam on the block boundries.
This was in response to players wanting to see through glass blocks unhindered and builders creating working bridges / cockpits.

I\'m glad to hear you enjoy the rest, however you could ways open the textures in an image editor and change the blocks to your liking. Give me a PM if you\'d like to know how.

 

[NeonSturm]

The glass blocks in newer texture packs are purposely transparent with a thin seam on the block boundries.


But it does not work well on wedges which create a diagonal (1.4m)^2 hole :/

*joking* Can we get glass with predator-birds in the middle? Shuttles may land on earth-like planets where birds crash into the very transparent windows :D

 

[kupu]

But it does not work well on wedges which create a diagonal (1.4m)^2 hole :/


Yea, you\'re right.
The way the textures are assigned to wedge / penta / tetra blocks are not sitting perfectly right now.

I have been playing with the idea of removing the borders altogether and setting a very slight tint to the block. With the gradient in the advance buildmode the borders are no longer a necessity (i think) to see orientations.

This would also help with seamless glass panels on an expanse of any of block shapes (when the lighting is flawlessly calculated).

The only certainty regarding all this is i will never revert back to a glass texture seen in the old defaults.

 

[godsgopher]

I like the idea of Window Tinting. We defantly want transparent blocks, but not so transparent they arn\'t there at all. I think a slightly tinted glass that is highly reflective from the outside of the ship would sell the presence of a clear transparent to the players.

And no reverting to the old glass texture is no option at all. Were moving foward here not standing still. As I said origionaly you guys have done an absolutly fanstastic job. Thats why Im bringing this up I KNOW you can improve this.

 

[ltmauve]

Just going to say that I found having having opacity 80/255 white glass seems to give me good results for noticability of the blocks and visibilty past them.

However, the build icons are still next to impossible to see and differentate.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Maybe not tacky-colored ones, I prefer my colors more subtle and fairly dark like a real tinted window would look like. They should be darker on the outside than on the inside (I really like the current system where you can see perfectly well OUT of a ship but looking INSIDE is a little bit trickier. We should have different levels of that tint, to the point where windows could be nearly completely dark outside and still see-through from the inside.



It would go a long way to making ships more realistic and just plain better looking.





On the side:

Kupu, may I suggest that you make a slightly \'\'staggered\'\' version of the realistic hull textures, where the seams are not in between blocks but in the middle or skewed in such a way as to break the overall block shape into almost irregular segments?

 

[kupu]

We should have different levels of that tint, to the point where windows could be nearly completely dark outside and still see-through from the inside.


This is, as far as i am aware impossible in the current state of the game.


As for a staggerd hull? I used that to some degree for the standard hull, however having anything to detail dense and staggered looks really odd when used in small numbers. Especially in 1x1x* columns.

There are some changes planned for the current textures, nothing is set in stone though.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

structures, it could work.



I kind of wish that something like Space Engineer was possible, where hull get practically random hull textures, making it look like they really are a patchwork of many different parts.

But I am sure that some simple way of implementation exists for this type of thing.

 

[kupu]

Yea, it can be done for sure. It would just be a case of creating a texture that doesn\'t look odd whilst doing so. But like i said, the textures could be changed again rendering that approach a little less important. It\'s all an uncertainty for now.

I think space engineers hull works like a dot to dot colouring book with vertices. So the face of an object expands to the outermost vertices, then applying a texture from a larger sheet. If that makes sense? lol.

So in terms of starmade, adding one new block next to another would just expand the area being textured to a 1x1x2 tile with a large tiling texture being applied over a large potential area before repeating itself, (like 5x5 for example). How this would work penta / tetra shapes i\'m not sure.

Having a pooling or connected textures could be possible, but not currently. A few things would need to be changed and i don\'t think it\'s exactly high priority at this point in time. Especially when the current graphics are in such a state of change.

 

[HJK148]

It would be nice if we had the option to switch between solid textures, wireframes and transparent textures for glass in build mode, half the time when I\'m trying to build with glass I can\'t see what I\'m doing.