That Missing Bit of Artistic Cutomization

[kiddan]

Ever wanted to create a faction symbol without blocks? Maybe to be able to PAINT it on? Think no more! I have some awesome ideas for ya!

1. Spray Paint: Rough spatters of color you choose! Make some cool art or graffiti someone's ship parked on your planet...
2. Paint Roller: Straight up/down stripes of paint you choose! (Maybe about 1/3 a block wide)
3. Paint Bucket: Color whole hull blocks different colors!

The point? What if you want to make a nice flat symbol on your ship without adding sticking out blocks or replacing that hardened hull; you use paint! What about when you wanna add some camo to your base? Or maybe cool paint on one of those race-car substitutes?

NOTE!: Maybe you wouldn't be able to paint on ships unless the shields are down, causing people to not graffiti your ships. :p

Symbols, camo, and decor; no longer a PAINT in the butt!

 

[Megacrafter127]

All I am worried about with this would be performance.

 

[kiddan]

All I am worried about with this would be performance.

Yea, maybe server owners could set a max of square meters allowed per player in paint in the server.cfg?

 

[молоток]

I wouldn't mind seeing a paint tool that can change the color of a block that is already placed, at the expense of a "paint" item. It would also be cool to be able to attach a flat image to a block (like the computer screen works now) but they should be limited, and not save with the ship.

 

[kiddan]

The main idea is that you could have multiple colors on a block at once, hence allowing you to paint a faction symbol onto a ship using a smaller area than block-art. To change the color of en entire block you would use another tool. Maybe a paint bucket?

Or there could be a canvas block you could place on your ship with a max resolution of 64x64. Players would have a default limit of 50 or so, server owners could change this however they like.

 

[PreparationsA-G]

YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YES YES YES!

I've been thinking they should add paint into the game for a quite a while now. Just never really felt the energy to post/create a thread about it. :/

(I know its long, but hear me out: )

I think adding paint, would SUPER increase the amount of creativity in the game (especially in ships). Because the 2 MAJOR sides/philosiphies of shipbuilding in the game are Prettyness, and Efficiency. Many players favor one over the other, many try to combine them, but you can never truly have both completely. Sacrifices must always be made to one to achieve the other.

And this kinda ruins the creative possibilities of Starmade. I would even say it's the game's biggest problem/struggle.

The main problem: HULLS. They look good, but that's it, and they seriously decrease the efficiency of your ship if used for exteriors (and/or interiors).

I like to build cool looking things, but I also like my ships to be effective and efficient. Since I cannot have both, a lot of times I build ships like this:

I personally like the look of this ship, but as many people tell me, "it would look better with hull". I agree, but it would also make this ship pretty much useless in any battle, because 50% of the weight would be hull (due to the large surface area). So that would mean 50%
of the mass would do nothing at all, so I would have 50% less ship.

You get the picture.

I want pretty ships, but I also want my ships to be worth using. In Starmade, we cannot really have both. How do we fix this problem?
PAINT!!!!!!!
If I could paint any block any color on whatever sides, then we could have WAYYYYYY better ships that also look good, we could make the outside blocks system components (like thrusters and shields) and such, and then just paint them so the ship still looks good.

Being able to paint logos and stuff on single blocks would be great too, but I think at the very least we should add the ability to paint any (solid/physical) blocks 1 solid color on either a whole-block or per-face basis.

I don't think it would really affect performance too much, because there would just be 10 or so new textures in the game for each of the paint colors, and that would be rendered instead of the usual block textures on painted blocks. So it would kind of be like just adding 10 (or so) new blocks to the game.
At the very least I think painting blocks on a whole-block basis would be very easy. Then each block could just have the ability to show 1 of 10 new textures if painted.

And also (Very Important) paint should DEFINITELY NOT add weight to your ship. Because that would ruin its purpose of being a non-consequential aesthetic option.
(It would be like if in Need For Speed games, adding layers of decals to your car made it weigh more, and therefore accelerate slower).

So yes, I think this would make it way less dangerous to be creative in Starmade. & Therefore make Starmade MUCH more enjoyable.

Agree? yes? no? (yes would be best)

 

[ToyotaSupra]

I want throw cushions and a nice shabby chic sofa, is that too hard to ask?

 

[El_Poulpy]

i don't think your suggestion can be implemented, it would be great, but it needs to change how block textures are stored and there may be performance issues

a solution to your faction symbol problem could be to give the display block the ability to display a custom texture

 

[Ithirahad]

YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YES YES YES!

I've been thinking they should add paint into the game for a quite a while now. Just never really felt the energy to post/create a thread about it. :/

(I know its long, but hear me out: )

I think adding paint, would SUPER increase the amount of creativity in the game (especially in ships). Because the 2 MAJOR sides/philosiphies of shipbuilding in the game are Prettyness, and Efficiency. Many players favor one over the other, many try to combine them, but you can never truly have both completely. Sacrifices must always be made to one to achieve the other.

And this kinda ruins the creative possibilities of Starmade. I would even say it's the game's biggest problem/struggle.

The main problem: HULLS. They look good, but that's it, and they seriously decrease the efficiency of your ship if used for exteriors (and/or interiors).

I like to build cool looking things, but I also like my ships to be effective and efficient. Since I cannot have both, a lot of times I build ships like this:
View attachment 6330 View attachment 6331 View attachment 6332
I personally like the look of this ship, but as many people tell me, "it would look better with hull". I agree, but it would also make this ship pretty much useless in any battle, because 50% of the weight would be hull (due to the large surface area). So that would mean 50%
of the mass would do nothing at all, so I would have 50% less ship.

You get the picture.

I want pretty ships, but I also want my ships to be worth using. In Starmade, we cannot really have both. How do we fix this problem?
PAINT!!!!!!!
If I could paint any block any color on whatever sides, then we could have WAYYYYYY better ships that also look good, we could make the outside blocks system components (like thrusters and shields) and such, and then just paint them so the ship still looks good.

Being able to paint logos and stuff on single blocks would be great too, but I think at the very least we should add the ability to paint any (solid/physical) blocks 1 solid color on either a whole-block or per-face basis.

I don't think it would really affect performance too much, because there would just be 10 or so new textures in the game for each of the paint colors, and that would be rendered instead of the usual block textures on painted blocks. So it would kind of be like just adding 10 (or so) new blocks to the game.
At the very least I think painting blocks on a whole-block basis would be very easy. Then each block could just have the ability to show 1 of 10 new textures if painted.

And also (Very Important) paint should DEFINITELY NOT add weight to your ship. Because that would ruin its purpose of being a non-consequential aesthetic option.
(It would be like if in Need For Speed games, adding layers of decals to your car made it weigh more, and therefore accelerate slower).

So yes, I think this would make it way less dangerous to be creative in Starmade. & Therefore make Starmade MUCH more enjoyable.

Agree? yes? no? (yes would be best)

Or, hull could become non-shitty. I think that increasing armor based on grouping might do it.

...As for paint, I like it a lot. +1.

 

[kiddan]

i don't think your suggestion can be implemented, it would be great, but it needs to change how block textures are stored and there may be performance issues

a solution to your faction symbol problem could be to give the display block the ability to display a custom texture

The paint would be an overlay (like display blocks), they don't render unless you look at them.

 

[PreparationsA-G]

Yes Ithirahad , de-sh*ting hull would also help.

I've heard the game makers talk of making it so hull on your ship counts as "health points" for your ship, and once shields go down all the "health points" must be depleted for your ship to explode/die (or a certain percentage or something). (like "structural integrity")

I like that plan, BUT I still think they should add in a "painting" system as I described in my previous post, so that smaller ships (like fighters and such) can also go a more "performance-"based route (i.e. no->few hulls, & more system blocks instead), and still have the ships look good. And I guess so bigger ships could do that too if they wanted (it is a sandbox game after all).

But yeah. Fixing hulls would be good too, but either way they should still definitely add in paint. (Cuz it would increase overall creativity.)

 

[Lecic]

YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YES YES YES!

I've been thinking they should add paint into the game for a quite a while now. Just never really felt the energy to post/create a thread about it. :/

(I know its long, but hear me out: )

I think adding paint, would SUPER increase the amount of creativity in the game (especially in ships). Because the 2 MAJOR sides/philosiphies of shipbuilding in the game are Prettyness, and Efficiency. Many players favor one over the other, many try to combine them, but you can never truly have both completely. Sacrifices must always be made to one to achieve the other.

And this kinda ruins the creative possibilities of Starmade. I would even say it's the game's biggest problem/struggle.

The main problem: HULLS. They look good, but that's it, and they seriously decrease the efficiency of your ship if used for exteriors (and/or interiors).

I like to build cool looking things, but I also like my ships to be effective and efficient. Since I cannot have both, a lot of times I build ships like this:
View attachment 6330 View attachment 6331 View attachment 6332
I personally like the look of this ship, but as many people tell me, "it would look better with hull". I agree, but it would also make this ship pretty much useless in any battle, because 50% of the weight would be hull (due to the large surface area). So that would mean 50%
of the mass would do nothing at all, so I would have 50% less ship.

You get the picture.

I want pretty ships, but I also want my ships to be worth using. In Starmade, we cannot really have both. How do we fix this problem?
PAINT!!!!!!!
If I could paint any block any color on whatever sides, then we could have WAYYYYYY better ships that also look good, we could make the outside blocks system components (like thrusters and shields) and such, and then just paint them so the ship still looks good.

Being able to paint logos and stuff on single blocks would be great too, but I think at the very least we should add the ability to paint any (solid/physical) blocks 1 solid color on either a whole-block or per-face basis.

I don't think it would really affect performance too much, because there would just be 10 or so new textures in the game for each of the paint colors, and that would be rendered instead of the usual block textures on painted blocks. So it would kind of be like just adding 10 (or so) new blocks to the game.
At the very least I think painting blocks on a whole-block basis would be very easy. Then each block could just have the ability to show 1 of 10 new textures if painted.

And also (Very Important) paint should DEFINITELY NOT add weight to your ship. Because that would ruin its purpose of being a non-consequential aesthetic option.
(It would be like if in Need For Speed games, adding layers of decals to your car made it weigh more, and therefore accelerate slower).

So yes, I think this would make it way less dangerous to be creative in Starmade. & Therefore make Starmade MUCH more enjoyable.

Agree? yes? no? (yes would be best)

Hull is actually very useful, especially in small ship vs small ship. Hardened hull is especially effective in multiple layers, and when combined with the pierce and punch passive effects.

Also, I'm pretty sure a painting system would be quite laggy.

Just build physical faction logos on your ships. I understand this isn't really doable with small ships, but I think a better solution to that would be the ability to upload PNGs to display on display blocks.

 

[Commodore Decker]

This would take up a lot of bandwidth unless players were limited to something like 256 colors, and the blocks would divided up into quarters on each side. This would only add 24bytes (6 sides * 4 spots per side) per block for memory usage any other option like PNGs or Jpegs would add a lot more memory usage and really tax the texturing budget for rendering as changing the texture is a VERY expensive operation.

 

[PreparationsA-G]

Hull is actually very useful, especially in small ship vs small ship. Hardened hull is especially effective in multiple layers, and when combined with the pierce and punch passive effects.

Lecic : I very much disagree. Idk about the last bit (I've not tried that), but in my experience, I've found the opposite to be true of about 90% of that.

Commodore Decker : What about being only being able to paint blocks 1 of 10 colors (the 10 available in hulls now), and only being able to paint blocks 1 color per face? Would that use up much memory? Would it be "doable"?
-What about 1 whole color per block (all faces)?

 

[Commodore Decker]

Lecic : I very much disagree. Idk about the last bit (I've not tried that), but in my experience, I've found the opposite to be true of about 90% of that.

Commodore Decker : What about being only being able to paint blocks 1 of 10 colors (the 10 available in hulls now), and only being able to paint blocks 1 color per face? Would that use up much memory? Would it be "doable"?
-What about 1 whole color per block (all faces)?

Might as well just use 32 colors because 10 is right between 2^3 and 2^4. I just can't think of a simple encoding scheme for using 10 colors (I like to think in 1 byte increments, it's a lot easier than dealing with individual bits). Such a scheme might use 4 bits for each side yielding a 3 byte increase per block.
However if painting should be bothered with why just paint one side one color, might as well just use the hull color you're going for.
It definitely is doable data structure wise, but does the engine support it. Also, how much more lag would this add to the game's rendering loop (it would have to change textures a lot and that's expensive, unless schema came up with some brillant texture sorting algorthim).

TLDR Measurements
Is it possible? Might be, I don't know the engine.
Memory Measurements: in usage per block.
1 Color Per Side(32 colors 4 bits) = 3 bytes
4 Colors per side(32 colors 4 bits) = 12 bytes
1 Color per side(256 colors 8 bits) = 6 bytes
4 colors per side(256 colors 8 bits) = 24 bytes

 

[kiddan]

This would take up a lot of bandwidth unless players were limited to something like 256 colors, and the blocks would divided up into quarters on each side. This would only add 24bytes (6 sides * 4 spots per side) per block for memory usage any other option like PNGs or Jpegs would add a lot more memory usage and really tax the texturing budget for rendering as changing the texture is a VERY expensive operation.

Or maybe 15 colors or a few more like Minecraft?

Hull is actually very useful, especially in small ship vs small ship. Hardened hull is especially effective in multiple layers, and when combined with the pierce and punch passive effects.

Also, I'm pretty sure a painting system would be quite laggy.

Just build physical faction logos on your ships. I understand this isn't really doable with small ships, but I think a better solution to that would be the ability to upload PNGs to display on display blocks.

The idea would be that they spray or roll paint onto the blocks. Uploading PNGs... Who mentioned that?
Mojang did a good job with Minecraft's paintings though, you can place hundreds and not get any lag, the way they only render on client-side and only when looked at from within about 100 blocks keeps the game running smoothly. Display blocks already use this system, they are animated too.

Though I do understand the concerns of lag and so on but if they only render within like 150 blocks and have only a few colors they shouldn't effect any performance. [DOUBLEPOST=1417199195,1417199020][/DOUBLEPOST]

Lecic : I very much disagree. Idk about the last bit (I've not tried that), but in my experience, I've found the opposite to be true of about 90% of that.

Commodore Decker : What about being only being able to paint blocks 1 of 10 colors (the 10 available in hulls now), and only being able to paint blocks 1 color per face? Would that use up much memory? Would it be "doable"?
-What about 1 whole color per block (all faces)?

Or maybe 2 colours per face. This way you could draw 2-color faction symbols easier. One color per face would almost eliminate the use of different colored hulls, painting them would just be a little harder than buying some, leaving me at the point of why I started this topic.

 

[Commodore Decker]

Or maybe 15 colors or a few more like Minecraft?


The idea would be that they spray or roll paint onto the blocks. Uploading PNGs... Who mentioned that?
Mojang did a good job with Minecraft's paintings though, you can place hundreds and not get any lag, the way they only render on client-side and only when looked at from within about 100 blocks keeps the game running smoothly. Display blocks already use this system, they are animated too.

Though I do understand the concerns of lag and so on but if they only render within like 150 blocks and have only a few colors they shouldn't effect any performance. [DOUBLEPOST=1417199195,1417199020][/DOUBLEPOST]

Or maybe 2 colours per face. This way you could draw 2-color faction symbols easier. One color per face would almost eliminate the use of different colored hulls, painting them would just be a little harder than buying some, leaving me at the point of why I started this topic.

Might as well just keep the total number of colors available as a nice power of 2, so that memory is used efficiently.

 

[Lecic]

Or maybe 15 colors or a few more like Minecraft?


The idea would be that they spray or roll paint onto the blocks. Uploading PNGs... Who mentioned that?
Mojang did a good job with Minecraft's paintings though, you can place hundreds and not get any lag, the way they only render on client-side and only when looked at from within about 100 blocks keeps the game running smoothly. Display blocks already use this system, they are animated too.

Though I do understand the concerns of lag and so on but if they only render within like 150 blocks and have only a few colors they shouldn't effect any performance. [DOUBLEPOST=1417199195,1417199020][/DOUBLEPOST]

Or maybe 2 colours per face. This way you could draw 2-color faction symbols easier. One color per face would almost eliminate the use of different colored hulls, painting them would just be a little harder than buying some, leaving me at the point of why I started this topic.

This thread is mainly about being able to paint on ships so you don't have to physically build faction logos. I suggest that instead of what would be extremely laggy, we just allow players to upload PNG/JPG/whatevers to display blocks for small ship faction logos.

Yes, painting on blocks would be extremely laggy. It's hundreds to thousands of entities for anything larger than a small fighter, for example, the ship PreparationsA-G showed.

Minecraft's paintings are different, and also cause lots of lag when many are on the screen at once. Not sure what you're talking about here. Minecraft and Starmade are both Java games, and that's near where the similarity (code-wise) ends. I really wish people would stop using "BUT MINCERAFT CAN DO THIS!!!!" as an argument, because it doesn't work.

 

[kiddan]

It's hundreds to thousands of entities for anything larger than a small fighter, for example, the ship PreparationsA-G showed.

I also gave the idea of have a maximum of square meters on your overall of ships. Players would not be allowed to cover hundreds to thousands of blocks unless the server allowed it. Why not place about a hundred display-blocks and see if it lags? (The ultimate test! Display blocks are more sophisticated in texture then the paint idea.)