possible crafting system

[lavish cradle]

The crafting could progressively get more complex, upgrading the workbench and unlocking more with a larger grid

[weary kraken]

I imagine each work bench not only requires rarer materials, but also more power to run... Maybe

Depends on if it's an electric thing or not. I could see one crafting station being electronic and needing a battery, but maybe not this one

[sand rivet]

Maybe

But Ken has already said that he doesn't want the game to be too much like Minecraft, so who knows what the crafting will be like 🤔

[weary kraken]

Yeah

[lavish cradle]

Good point
There could be different versions though, where there could be a more technological version of the table, and a simpler one for tools like picks and shovels
Or have a type of crafting like subnautica, where you put some stuff into a fabricator and it spits out exactly what you want

[sand rivet]

yeah

[median grotto]

I've always really disliked games that have that sort of instant crafting where you just click an icon and it takes the materials and makes the thing

I personally enjoy games with a bit more physical type of crafting. Minecraft style is kind of what I like but there are similar things I think could work for this game.

I do kind of enjoy instant crafting systems when they have some sort of automation, something like in Autonauts or Scrap Mechanic

[lavish cradle]

It’s either copy Minecraft again or chose instant crafting

There aren’t many other options unless we can invent a new method

[robust garnet]

Craft a new way to craft

[grave stump]

2 other ways (though a limited or harder to implement) is UI-less (world-based, like vintage story or stardew valley s, furnaces and such) or "drag and drop", like many older point and click games. Select two items and they add up together

[median grotto]

UI less, like just dropping stuff on top of the crafting bench and hammering then together would be neat

I think of something like the Minecraft create mod, where you just drop stuff into or onto contraptions and they get crafted into something new

[echo crater]

You would love vintage story

[weary kraken]

Oh yeah, stuff like that for making ingots and weapons would be great

[median grotto]

Drop an ingot into a smithing table

[little tide]

From @limpid stream

Imagine a procedural crafting system like seen in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-HchXqwHc) but with a hex grid. Would distinguish it enough from Minecraft without being Terraria/Subnautica-like instant crafting (which I also personally hate).

Would also mean instead of set specific tools like Minecraft has, you could craft hundreds of variations of tools, more similar to the Tinker's Construct mod. 2 stick + 3 stone would be a different tool from 2 sticks + 1 iron + 2 stone.

The biggest issue is, that kind of system is easiest-implemented with pixel art tools. Like Minecraft has. However, those would inherently be more fit for a cubic voxel game as pixels are squares, and I personally feel they would be a bit out of place. If instead, Ken wants 3D modelled tools, so he could make hexagonal shafts and such, it's a bit more complicated. Procedural modelling is possible, and has been done in games before, it's just a lot more complicated than procedural pixel art.

This is just an idea to help feed the idea machine, I do not expect this to ever actually be implemented (though it would be cool asf)

[limpid stream]

Absolute legend

[sturdy canyon]

Why not have hex pixelart?

[median grotto]

I would love this

[severe knot]

It must be here. It's much better than Minecraft. But it must find difference between tools, blocks or some custom items. Will be nice to have proceduraly generated blocks too

[limpid stream]

Just letting you guys know that the message IcedYoshi posted was a message I wrote that got deleted by HAL and I asked him to recover. Please don't bother him about it, ping me about it.

[limpid stream]

Honestly, I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I thought all pixels were square. In png and jpeg and such they are. Is there some weird obscure format where hex pixels exist?

[median grotto]

nope I dont think so

but I assume they mean why not invent a hex pixel format 💀

[limpid stream]

imagine inventing an entirely new image format for a silly minecraft-like video game

[median grotto]

I dont imagine it being super hard

honestly you could just use png and like, not actually do singular pixels

like just put hexagons on the image, they dont need to be an individual pixel

[limpid stream]

Like make it look like hex pixel art but it's actually high def hexagons? You'd have to have a pretty large image for the jagged pixels to not be obvious

[median grotto]

yeah

[limpid stream]

It would also slow down the procedural algorithm a lot because instead of working with individual pixels, you're basically stitching images together

But idk if the slowdown would be human-noticable or not

[median grotto]

Oh yeah I forgot that this is also considering the Procedural Crafting 💀

[dusty loom]

GG @median grotto, you just advanced to level 5!

[median grotto]

yeah mabybe not

[sturdy canyon]

Not pixels per se, but you can use square pixels to make larger pixels or do vector art

It is def a thing that exists

Unpopular but it exists

You could do hexagonal pixel art for the game I guess

[median grotto]

what on earth is that

[sturdy canyon]

hex pixelart

[median grotto]

I can tell I meant what is the second image?

[limpid stream]

Yeah if you scrolled down a couple of more messages we already discussed that LOL

[limpid stream]

a bird i guess?

[median grotto]

looks like a Submarine with chameleon legs holding onto a branch, carrying a roll of toothpaste on its back with a ruby cap

[limpid stream]

Thing about that is, that it isn't pixel art. It's more like tileset art. So you'd be doing procedural crafting out of images of hexagons rather than individual pixels, like I talked about before.

[sturdy canyon]

bird

[median grotto]

OHHH

THE RUBY HAS A BLACK PIXEL THATS THE EYE!!!!!

makes sense now

[limpid stream]

lmao

[sturdy canyon]

procedural crafting?

[limpid stream]

did... did you literally not even read the message or watch the video you responded to when first mentioning hex pixel art???

[sturdy canyon]

No 😃

I saved it to watch later then forgot 😔

[limpid stream]

Homie goes "Why don't I just mention something without even understanding the conversation I'm inserting it into." like throwing a grenade into a room, uncaring of the chaos left behind

[sturdy canyon]

That does sound like my last baldurs playthrough yeah

I mean still you could just make a hex grid and have each hex be a color and stuff i dont see what changes from square to hex grid let me watch the vid

[limpid stream]

Because pixels are a fundamental smallest part of an image. We're not working with any old arbritrarily large squares, we're talking about PIXELS lmao

[sturdy canyon]

You could make that a hexagon

[limpid stream]

No. You cannot.

[sturdy canyon]

Really you are just used of seeing pixels being squares, there's no reason why they couldn't, Im watching the vid and so far I think it works in a hex grid

[limpid stream]

As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as hexagonal pixels.

[sturdy canyon]

?

[limpid stream]

Unless there's some really obscure image format that uses them.

[sturdy canyon]

Because

Images work with cartesian coordinates

And hexagons are messy when it comes to that

You either need three coordinates for each direction

Or it wont work

Its more complicated

But not impossible

[limpid stream]

Uh-huh. Now go find me an image format that supports hexagonal pixels, or write one yourself, but png and jpeg do not lmao. Now once you've done that, make it compatible with Unity Engine.

Also don't send ten messages at once, write your sentences out like an adult.

[sturdy canyon]

...

[limpid stream]

You asked "why not hex pixels?" and I've explained why not like three different times, I'm not going to keep repeating myself. It's like you didn't even read the conversationa at all.

[sturdy canyon]

You know you could be making the same argument here for a voxel like game, how using hexagons is a mess and you would be better off using cubes, I suggest you look at what server you are in. Also no need to talk to me like that. Lol.

[limpid stream]

That's not the same at all lmfao.

[sturdy canyon]

Ah right

Hey look it's a hexagon, on an image? How is that possible!!

It should be impossible to have hexagons on images! Man what crazy technology must I have found to have a jpeg with a hexagon

[limpid stream]

Are you genuinely serious? I did not say it was impossible to make hexagons on an image lmfao

Wtf are you on about?

[sturdy canyon]

Right, so then what is the problem with using vectors to generate a hexagonal grid and use it as manmade pixels

[limpid stream]

I explained that already, go reread the conversation, I am genuinely not going to keep repeating myself over and over for a child who just sends messages and doesn't read replies.

[sturdy canyon]

The game does hexagonal voxels in unity, unity is built with cartesian coordinates in mind

You are not a good person. Let's leave it at that cause I don't wanna break the rules of the server

I am your age. Stop being condescending. You are acting like a not good person.

[limpid stream]

Here ^ literally right before you started sending images of hex pixel art

[limpid stream]

Also here ^

[sturdy canyon]

Yes, I still don't see the problem. You can afford that.

[limpid stream]

Do I need to repeat myself for you again, or are you good?

[sturdy canyon]

The game is loading 500 million voxels. You really think a slightly heavier algorithm for a one time event is going to affect performance

[limpid stream]

Yeah, it is, and the dev optimized it by being stingy with bites. PNGs are extremely slow, so let's go with jpeg. Or even better maybe bitmap. There's still a difference between building a small 32x32 image out of individual pixels than there is building something-thousand-by-something-thousand image out of something-hundred-by-something-hundred-wide images of hexagons.

Somewhere else you missed, because you don't actually read messages before replying, is when I said (let me bold it for you so your eyes won't glaze over it);
"But idk if the slowdown would be human-noticable or not"

I was just pointing out that that way is genuinely wayyyyy slower which you cannot possibly argue is incorrect. Because. It. Is.

[dusty loom]

GG @limpid stream, you just advanced to level 8!

[sturdy canyon]

I was going to suggest having the art be hexagonal squares anyway, with no procedural crafting. Just normal crafting with hexagonal pixelart so as to be distinct from Minecraft which has been a concern, Iced literally said that having the art be pixelart would be too much like Minecraft. So you could do hexagons. It's harder and its more taxing, but you can.

Plus, again, vector art

[limpid stream]

I'm frustrated with you because you were going "here's what hex pixel art is because you obviously don't know" when we already discussed it. You were going "you can just make hexagons out of square pixels" when we had already discussed that, and said it probably wouldn't be optimal. You didn't even know the conversation was about procedural crafting. "You're just used to seeing pixels as squares" Like I don't know what hex pixel art is. And then that stupid freaking "NOOO WAYYY A HEXAGON IN AN IMAGE?!?!?!" message.

You were treating me like an idiot for no reason and straight up selectively ignoring the conversation and when I finally get fed up with it, I'm a bad person?

Get blocked.

[sturdy canyon]

You were treating me like an idiot way before that

[limpid stream]

Where? Because the very first message you ever responded to me with was that first example. You explaining hex pixel art after we already discussed it lmao

[sturdy canyon]

.

[limpid stream]

Oh, like, twenty messages later? Yeah that's what "before" means lol

[limpid stream]

That's fine, but that's an entirely different thing. We were discussing procedural crafting. There's a huge difference between using large hexagons as the base pixel of even larger images for static tools and for procedural tools.

[sturdy canyon]

Also, Iced was suggesting procedurally generated 3D models

[limpid stream]

I'm sorry I blew up on you but you were being genuinely frustrating.

[sturdy canyon]

I was, sorry

In my defense, it's 5am and it has been a rough week at uni

[limpid stream]

Some people are suggesting some things, some people are suggesting others. That's how suggestion forums work lol. Just because Iced suggested something doesn't mean we can't talk about something else.

[sturdy canyon]

I'm studying programing, Im not just talking out of my ass, I was talking earlier about how you could force-improve performance by literally half, since currently the game processes stuff 1km away, which in small worlds is way past the horizon

[limpid stream]

Also I haven't adressed it yet because I didn't want to fork the conversation; but idk how vector images work in depth, so idk how much they would speed up a procedural crafting system.

[sturdy canyon]

yeah what I mean is that in a post where procedural 3d modelling is suggested, me sugesting a hex pixelart version isnt really a crazy thing performance-wise, it's def less heavy than the 3d models, i dont know the extent at which is possible

[sturdy canyon]

Me neither

Like

[limpid stream]

Same here, I've been programming for ~10 years now. Took 4 years of programming classes. I'm not an idiot.

[sturdy canyon]

You could build a sort of three coordinate processor, then have it process everything in raw numbers and only build the image once with vectors (?) Idk, its a suggestion i havent dedicated a lot of thought it just came to mind

Hexagonal pixelart (in general as a concept) is not widespread but its unique, it would make the game more original

[limpid stream]

Yeah I could see it basically "drawing" the tool with math, rather than stitching together pixelated hexagons, and then once it's done rasterizing it into a pixel image.

[sturdy canyon]

mhm

[limpid stream]

It'd be slower than something like minecraft's 16x16 tools but it'd still be playable

[sturdy canyon]

There are more alternatives

Like, if you allow procedural crafting for tools, you could have a timer

Think minecaft furnace

So you assemble the grid and have to wait for a few seconds to "build the tool"

That gives you ages of computing time to make the image

Sorry im spamming messages again

[limpid stream]

Yeah for sure. That solves the issue of time taken to generate the image. Doesn't help with the issue of having a 4k image for your tool lol

Or whatever, I'm throwing out numbers. I'd have to see how small you can make a hexagon still look good, then build a tool with it, to see what the final image size would be. But I definitely don't see anything under 1k looking good lol

[sturdy canyon]

I deleted it but I was making it on paint to show you

I made a convicing 16x16 hexagon grid with less than 200x200 pixels

It looks pixelated though

[limpid stream]

That would still be very very obviously made of square pixels though

[sturdy canyon]

Yeah

[limpid stream]

My thinking is, if you're going to fake hex pixel art, you want it on a scale where individual pixels aren't really noticable

[sturdy canyon]

Agreed

[limpid stream]

You do not want the player remembering that squares are the real pixels, you want them thinking the hexagons are

[sturdy canyon]

Also i did a single google search and vectors are not good apparently

[limpid stream]

F

[sturdy canyon]

They are like a 3D model but in 2D which kind of makes sense I guess, but yeah instead of storing pixels you would store coordinates and that makes it worse for many reasons or something like that

[limpid stream]

I mean, I knew that vector art was basically just math equations for the lines and such. We used adobe illustrator for a little bit in one of my graphic design classes, and that was mentioned, but it was a while ago lol

[sturdy canyon]

Idk, maybe for the purposes of a small hexagon image it would be good

Actually, the post i saw was probably a pixelart vs square vectors

If you HAD to do hexagons, it's probably a billion times better to do hexagonal vectors than pixels making hexagons, if that makes sense

[limpid stream]

But vectors are inversely proportional to pixels. Vector art gets vastly faster and saves more space the larger you make an image. A 100,000 by 100,000 pixel image is worse than a vector image scaled up to the same size. (Though technically vector images don't have a resolution since they can be perfectly scaled up and down infinitely) if I am remembering right

[sturdy canyon]

Yeah, and for a hexagonal grid it's probably way better, the thing is, is it fast enough to not affect performance? Hard to know without a test tbh

[limpid stream]

Agreed

Although I don't think it's possible to use a vector image in a game. I think you'd have to rasterize it. At least in Unity. So you could generate it as a vector image, but you'd have to rasterize (convert it to a pixel image) it at some set resolution. Larger would look better obv.

The vector image thing is only helpful for generating it, not for how it looks as a final tool, imo

[sturdy canyon]

I have had one unity subject at uni, 3 years ago, barely passed it and cant remember much, I wish I did, Im doing unity again (a lot) next year on many subjects, it's gonna be fun, I hope I can do things like this with more knowledge of the tool itself, it's always the thing blocking me

[limpid stream]

Lol nice man. I took my programming classes in highschool, and then didn't go to college right out of highschool (graduated 2018). I'm actually starting my first year of college this year, so it'll be general studies for a while, but I can't wait until I can get back into programming classes.

[sturdy canyon]

You're doing computer engineering?

[limpid stream]

Probably. Haven't chosen a master yet since I'm not sure if I'll transfer after getting my bachelor's. But computer engineering, computer science, something related to it probably

So they have me on general studies for my first year or two

[sturdy canyon]

Oooh gotcha

Im doing a double degree on computer engineering and database management + videogame production

[limpid stream]

Nice. I'm planning on transferring to Texas Tech or UTPB if I can, so I'm basically not going to choose until I'm finished with my bachelors and get accepted into one of those schools.

[sturdy canyon]

Been stuck on a few subjects for a few years since the pandemic, mental health on the floor, but ive kinda gotten myself together and this year I have passed most of them with extremely good grades, only one left and next year I can finally do some new cool stuff

[limpid stream]

I'm just excited I'm going to college. My family wasn't fortunate enough to be able to send me out of highschool, so I went straight into the workforce, but things have changed recently so now I get to go even though I thought I never would lol

America moment amirite?

[sturdy canyon]

Damn yeah sounds like it

I'm Spanish

[limpid stream]

I figured european when you said it was 5am lol

[sturdy canyon]

I don't know much about the stuff there other than education is fkcd

[weary kraken]

A lot of things are

[sturdy canyon]

I suggest you ignore the first like 30 minutes

[limpid stream]

Education is just fully privatized so universities can charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to go. And the laws will never get changed because every university in the country likes making that money and they'll lobby tf outta the government to make sure it doesnt get changed lol

[sturdy canyon]

tldr i suggest hexagonal pixelarts but they are a bit messy to implement and might impact performance too much

[weary kraken]

And they'll come up with any reason to increase how much you owe them

[limpid stream]

Might be possible. Generation can be done, the true bottleneck is using very large images for tools (prob something like 1k-4k instead of 16x16-256x256)

[sturdy canyon]

I just realized we should move to #💬general

[weary kraken]

Anyway

[weary kraken]

It's hard to say

[sturdy canyon]

Not the craziest I have seen, after that one game with the 700k poligon controller nothing would surprise me

[limpid stream]

Yeah but this is a silly little voxel game that's taking pains to optimize itself, not some triple-A studio's bloated half-a-terrabite shtshow DX

Links get eaten

I saw that! lol

[sturdy canyon]

Yeah just realized 😔

The game is garten of banban

[limpid stream]

Never heard of it tbh

[sturdy canyon]

Yeah for a reason

You hold this controller the entire game

There are over 700k polygons just in the antenna

It looks like this

If that game works on a mobile phone anything is possible

[limpid stream]

Games these days smh

[sturdy canyon]

omg

[limpid stream]

but why? you can run a decimate modifier on that mesh like 30 times and it'll look the same. why such a high tri count?!? XD

[grave stump]

The sandwich in starfield...

[sturdy canyon]

I honestly would love to know what was going through their minds

[limpid stream]

Haven't played starfield so not familiar with that either lol

[sturdy canyon]

the toothbrush in yandere simulator that had every single hair modeled with polygons

[limpid stream]

tf

instead of billboards or even just a cube? xD

[limpid stream]

whyyyyy

I mean that's not actually that bad that's still a pretty low poly mesh

But they could have just done planes or a cube

[grave stump]

That's a stock model used for advertiser renders

[sturdy canyon]

Huge game, hundreds of assets like that. You are most likely to never even see this toothbrush but it is loaded at all times

[grave stump]

It's a free thingy and ys wasn't the only one; it's the laziest pick on the store

There are also the faces of humans in cities skylines 2

[sturdy canyon]

Oh wait sorry, yeah thats the toothbrush he changed into after peope complained

[limpid stream]

Why do they even have faces? I've played cities skylines 1 and you never even see the people 99% of the time xD

[grave stump]

They're hd and you barely see over 100 pixels of their faces at a time, at max zoom...

[limpid stream]

Gotta love triple A studios

[grave stump]

Even teeth are intricately rendered

[limpid stream]

I have no words.

[grave stump]

I don't think they even open mouths ever

[limpid stream]

That's like... Gotta be because some idiot executive said "MORE POLYGONS IS BETTER GRAPHICS, MAKE IT MORE"

[sturdy canyon]

I cant find an image in good quality, but the original toothbrush had 5000 polygons

[grave stump]

According to reddit there are no lods either

[limpid stream]

Oh my god

No wonder that game has such bad reviews for running terribly

[sturdy canyon]

jesus christ

[limpid stream]

You could replace those heads with cubes and never know the difference

[sturdy canyon]

I mean to be fair you can zoom in a LOT and it's really cool, but just... lod...?

[limpid stream]

Do they like disappear if you zoom out or is your city just always filled with thousands of those abominations always rendering?

[sturdy canyon]

Idk. The industry has kind of shifted towards making more games quicker, and since most people have a lot of storage and ram, developers just kind of stopped caring about things like performance or disk, thats why some games take up to like 120gigs, they really dont need that much they are just terribly optimized because what are you gonna do, not play it?

[limpid stream]

Yes

I haven't bought CS2 because of the reviews LOL

Even though I have hundreds of hours in the first game

[sturdy canyon]

You, as a sensible person, yeah, but you know how people are

They'll just free up space and play it, most just accept it

Terraria has a billion things and is 300mb

Among us is the game that it is and it is 600mb

Binding of isaac 1.2gb, it is PIXELART

wait among us is larger than half life thats crazy

[grave stump]

Minecraft is tiny also iirc

[dusty loom]

GG @grave stump, you just advanced to level 3!

[sturdy canyon]

the game itself is, but the worlds get a bit heavy the more you explore

[dusty loom]

GG @sturdy canyon, you just advanced to level 11!

[grave stump]

Yeye just talking about the base game

[sturdy canyon]

Yeah

Maybe it's a hot take but if your game is mostly code it shouldn't be heavy 😶