Read by Schine Some blocks want to be slabs

[GaeasSon]

Hurrah! Slabs!

Now.... It could be that I just completed a 15 hour shift at work. Or it could be chronic sleep deprivation. Or maybe it's just a y-hole flashback, but I's swear I hear the blocks talking to me. They are very excited about the new slabs, but I think they might be jealous of the grey hull.

Blocks that want to HAVE slabs:

• Light blocks (1/4 slab, non-solid)
• Mesh & Grill
• Decorative (screens, servers, charts)
• Glass & Crystal Armor
• Plex-door (see below)
• Hull

Blocks that just want to BE slabs:

• Controller Computers (flat-screen technology!)
• logic (The better to work in tight quarters)
• activators & buttons, particularly the step-on activator.

A Block that don't even exist, and still wants to be a slab:

• Grav-plate. - 1/4 plate, non-solid. Acts as a combination trigger area and gravity block, but with key differences. The blocks are "r" toggleable but that doesn't activate them, it only changes their function. When "on", any astronaut or NPC triggering the block is attached (attach only!) to ships gravity, oriented with their feet towards the same direction as the one solid face of the block. When "off", the blocks will disconnect a triggering entity from all gravity, returning them to free-fall. The block function can also be toggled by logic, but only engaged for that function when triggered by an entity.
• Usage: SO you can carpet your airlock floor with the things, and effectively turn gravity on and off with the airlock cycle.
• OR for the simple version, place your ON plates in front of one door and your OFF plates in front of the other.
• Or place one three blocks up the wall, and jump into it, now you're standing on the wall, and can just walk up to the next floor.
• Or. arrange them similarly to walk over all sides of your outer hull.

Doors... that go "swish"!

• Have the game engine look for a specific configuration. 2 and only 2 plex-door 1/4 slabs, with identical orientation, placed vertically adjacent along the Y axis. In this configuration, the empty space of the slab becomes a trigger area. When triggered, the door doesn't blink open, it retracts to one side (along the non-Y axis aligned to the slab face). When no longer triggered, the door slides back. There might even be a sound effect.

 

[Ithirahad]

Making all this will require a lot of IDs, but regardless I support this. Not sure if logic blocks or lights should become/get slabs, but scaffold, grilles, all computers, buttons, doors etc... Sure.

By the way, all hull/armour types including crystal armour already have slabs in the latest dev build.

 

[Lancake]

Currently doors/forcefields/hull/glass have slabs. That's in total close to 170 new blocks. I would love to see more of the slabs you've mentioned. Like floor 1/4 lights that you can walk on ^^ (I disagree with the non physical part).

But yeah, we only have 2047 ID's and we're already close to 800 ID's being used. We would easily reach the limit if every block had 3 slab types.

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah. Personally I'd be happy with just the computer, light and button 1/4 slabs... While 1/2 and 3/4 slabs are awesome for building there's no reason why the "space-saving" and/or aesthetic options should be expanded beyond 1/4 slabs.

 

[TomW1605]

Currently doors/forcefields/hull/glass have slabs. That's in total close to 170 new blocks. I would love to see more of the slabs you've mentioned. Like floor 1/4 lights that you can walk on ^^ (I disagree with the non physical part).

But yeah, we only have 2047 ID's and we're already close to 800 ID's being used. We would easily reach the limit if every block had 3 slab types.

sorry slightly off topic. do useless blocks like the placeholders and the dirts use block ids? because if they do then there are some thins you could remove to get some ids back.

 

[Lancake]

sorry slightly off topic. do useless blocks like the placeholders and the dirts use block ids? because if they do then there are some thins you could remove to get some ids back.

They do yeah, but that would only free up maybe 100 blocks or so. Not really significant if you're considering to add slabs for every block out there + even more slab types (like wedge slabs, corner slabs, "stick" slabs,...)

 

[kupu]

Most of your suggestions would require some new texture works. Something we are yet to fully explore with slabs.

Currently slabs are only on basic blocks, such as hull and glass variants. This is because the texture is squashed* and not overly noticeable from a middling distance. Deco screens for example, would look a mess if squashed in with the current set up.

So i'm not rejecting the idea at all, but right now the only slab variants in the next release will most likely be what is in the current dev build until further texture developments happen.

Could be cool to see some light / button slabs though.

Spoiler: Texture Space

This sort of brings up a side issue of texture space. I've touched on this before, but it might be relevant to put it up again for the slab debates.

"Why can't we have slab variants with non-squashed textures for every block?"

Possible? Sure. However we try and stay conservative with resources where we can. ID's, texture space, etc.

*Lets say we don't squash the tiles for our slabs and make a unique texture per slab type.

170 slabs. 1 repeated face around the side per unique slab. 170 tiles.
Each texture sheet holds 256 tiles. Our 170 (current) slabs suddenly use 66% of a texture sheet, pushing us onto a 4th.

"So?"

This uses quite a bit more video memory.

Spoiler: this much

1 texture sheet at 256px resolution is a 4096 x 4096px canvas size. To work out the amount of graphics memory used, we do the following calculation.

A square 4k image that's 32-bit (8 bit per channel, RGBA) will use:
4096 x 4096 = 16,777,216 pixels
8 bits per channel x 4 channels = 32 bit = 4 bytes
4 x 16,777,216 = 67,108,864 bytes = 64 megabytes

We currently have 4 texture sheets loaded. Double this if you are using normal maps / emissive. Going to a 5th will bring us to 640mb for block textures only.

"It's 2015..."

Ok ok, it's not a deal breaker and we have lower res packs available. We will probably run onto a 4th at some point and all will be well, but it's important any more resources used are definitely worth the yield. Non-squished hull is probably not worth that.

 

[Ithirahad]

Most of your suggestions would require come new texture works. Something we are yet to fully explore with slabs.

Currently slabs are only on basic blocks, such as hull and glass variants. This is because the texture is squashed* and not overly noticeable from a middling distance. Deco screens for example, would look a mess if squashed in with the current set up.

So i'm not rejecting the idea at all, but right now the only slab variants in the next release will most likely be what is in the current dev build until further texture developments happen.

Could be cool to see some light / button slabs though.

Get Schema to add directional textures for slabs, if that capability doesn't exist already. Use the fairly squish-safe Display Block side textures (or a recolored, black version, for buttons) for everything but the large faces of the slabs.

 

[jzimmerman4]

+1 for buttons, mesh/grill, and decorative screens!

 

[kiraen]

Definitely mesh/grill. The compressed texture on the edge would just look like some sort of support and well, catwalks.