More Colors For Builders, Please!

[vale path]

starting to think about recipe ingredients for Rammed Earth

[wispy nymph]

They look too similar. Should desaturate the rammed earth more

The plaster could be more saturated and darker.

Right now it feels like there isnt much difference other than texture which doesnt lend to creative building as much like using daub in and among plaster to look like worn out spots.

[vale path]

that's deliberate, they have to be blendable together for texturing work

the differences are very apparent when you start placing them together

try placing plaster next to rammed earth and you will see a massive difference. the point of this mod is to introduce a palette of color that can be used together, like paint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHRCJM3hiZI

you can see the principle here for example

at around 15:10 he starts talking about the need for "transitional" colors, having colors close enough that they can be blended together nicely for subtle shade and hue shifts. that's the point of this mod

[wispy nymph]

Im aware. But just from that screenshot it feels like they are too close. You can afford to shift them and they will still blend together well

The steps arent steep enough imho

Im thinking like 5 or 10 points either direction nothing massive

[vale path]

here you can see quite an abrupt leap in color between Rammed Earth and Plaster

these colors can't be blended together

which is why wattle & daub hues are there. to enable texturing work

they'll all be tweaked more by little to get them just right, but this is the first incarnation of it

[wispy nymph]

Yeah like 5-10 points more saturated for the plaster and 5-10 points less for rammed earth would be fine. They could still be used together

Im thinking more like the plaster can be used to create a wet look in a dry build and the rammed earth could give a weathered look to a clean build

You cant do that very well if they are too close together

Daub is fine as is

[vale path]

then use a different color if you want a bigger color shift

minecraft had i think 16 colors, this is more than double that

having colors so close together is very much the point. that's why it's such a large number of colors

some more examples of how the colors are meant to be used, mixed together

hopefully combined with other blocks available in the game already, the point is that they're subtle hue shifts, like a painter's color palette. if they're too far apart, then it doesn't work.

will likely tweak them more in the future, but this is what i have currently. coordinating 100s of different shades takes time

you're also looking at it in the very linear way i laid them out

which is why they blend so much

mix them differently and you'll get much different stark differences in color and shade

especially among the browns

[vale path]

https://youtu.be/oAGx9HqGh3s?si=Nlnu5F-qmmU7-8PN

Watching this right now.

According to a guy in this video, cedar is the “Porsche” of wood types.

Which makes me think VS needs a cedar.

[subtle lintel]

We do have Ebony and Purpleheart filling that role at the moment in the south, but I would love cedar as a northern expensive wood.

[vale path]

according to the way i've distributed the resources, these are the easiest colors to get a hold of

and these are the hardest

barrel dyeing only

getting that building itch again 😄

experimenting with some daub mixed with dirt, trying to get a nice dirt aesthetic

Lime currently has the best Shade / Saturation ratio between the materials. will be aiming to land around here for most of the materials

[ocean sable]

Isnt cedar mediterranean or am I wrong there?

Ok looked it up, two out of the three species are mediterranean and one is in the himalayas

[subtle lintel]

Yeah, I think it is.

[wispy nymph]

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/34139

ok here me out this as our wool equivalent

even more saturated than plaster

[vale path]

Interesting, I didn’t realize there was a leather block.

I will probably make it craftable.

[wispy nymph]

I think you can dye leather

I dont remember cause i never use shields

[vale path]

Considering adding a couple new variants to some of my favorite textures.

These would come in more limited colors, but still be based on real world varieties.

[exotic wind]

Yes, you can.

[wispy nymph]

back of a bookshelf is kino

a full block like this would be cool

[warm flare]

Idk if it's already been said, but I'd like this as long as the colors don't feel too artificial. I'm not looking to have neon colors or anything. But more varied stone and wood colors would be great, as would more interesting building block options like gems/crystals, metals, marbles, etc

As well as the ability to mix materials for things like metal reinforced woods and stained glass (if that isn't already implemented, i can't recall)

[vale path]

I won’t be adding any artificial looking colors. The saturation of plaster is about as far as I’m willing to go.

Also I’m almost done re tweaking all the color blocks to coordinate their saturation and brightness together.

So they will be a little more distinct and each material will be more uniform in their saturation level and shade.

[vale path]

softened the brick outline contrast so it isn't such a sharp black line

feel like this is the right level of contrast

[wispy nymph]

is yellow rammed earth and daub supposed to be brighter than the sun

seems very bright

[vale path]

yep

[wispy nymph]

seems a little bright even for that

[vale path]

then use a different color

[wispy nymph]

are they glowing

there wasn't really a good color that fit with strewn straw unfortunately

[vale path]

well you have about 100 other hues and shades to pick from

you might need a Paint mod if you want to get more specific

the brightness and saturation of Yellow is dictated by the vanilla Yellow Wattle & Daub block. since Rammed Earth is placed brighter and less saturated than Wattle & Daub, the color you're looking at is the shade you get

[ocean sable]

I think some textures have this problem of being so bright that they reflect in certain conditions, gold blocks, limestone, chalk for example
Its a vanilla problem

[wispy nymph]

Yeah that sounds about right

It happens to GA stone blocks too

[vale path]

It’s a matter of color context really. Colors look completely different when they’re surrounded by other colors.

A gray can suddenly look blue if put in the right context. Light colors will look brighter when surrounded by darker colors, or neutral when surrounded by light colors.

Picking the right accompanying colors for the block palette is always going to be part of the process. Not every color is going to work with other colors in the game. Some will inevitably clash, others will inevitably work together.

[wispy nymph]

Im pretty sure its the vanilla thing because the preview color seems to be a lot darker than when its placed in the world and it does happen with other modded blocks too

[vale path]

I’ll have to look at it but I imagine it’s rendering the blocks pretty uniformly in preview mode, I doubt the modded blocks are rendering differently than vanilla ones.

The Handbook having an all brown background will make it look different than the item inventory having a different background or the real world placement being all grass vs sand vs another color. Color plays a lot of tricks on the eye when given different context.

For example. All of these spheres are the same color.

[subtle lintel]

My eyes hurt

I've spent multiple minutes just staring at these

[vale path]

lol. Colors mess with your brain

Speaking of colors.

[ocean sable]

Ah yes, the ultimate form of this mod

[subtle lintel]

Vanilla color insanity vs a chiseled room of random colors is going to ||make me|| go crazy!

[dry estuary]

Spilled gasoline palette:

[hidden plaza]

oil slick core

[autumn otter]

I think this is what I need for my paint mod, I've been trying to mess with colormaps to tint blocks but for now, the color is intrinsically linked to temperature/humidity, and that part of the code is not accessible. With this devlog, it looks like Tyron has added a layer for tinting with any color, in which case I could escape from my hell of hundreds of individual paint colors.

[vale path]

Considering adding more flower color varieties.

Gonna do a little research of the real world color varieties of the existing vanilla flowers to see where I can add some.

[vale path]

these are the flowers i'm looking at adding variants for

this is basically the color spectrum of all the current flower colors

it's mostly in this region

could definitely use more color variety here

[hidden plaza]

I'd love more pinks and reds that aren't rotting corpse lillies

[exotic wind]

And blue. The cornflower looks more purple.

[winter sage]

glazing terracotta and stuff would be really nice to add in combination with more decorative clay products for sure.
dyed planks, brighter colours, more brick variations, (perhaps a smaller version of stone bricks?) would all be neat to see. more uses for dye would certainly be nice, since atm i pretty much only use dye for when something needs a specific colour in a recipe

and more flower variation would definitely be nice. i feel like dye shouldn't be too difficult to get early game, being able to make some dyes out of berry juice would also be nice

more colour variants would ALWAYS be appreciated

dyenamics in minecraft made me realise that colours are pretty restricted and it doesnt seem like it would be too difficult to implement more dye colours through mixing them

the only issue would be it'd be time consuming for all the textures and clog up the creative inventory or whatever

[strange obsidian]

I think paint is the real solution

[winter sage]

dyenamics for reference

[winter sage]

yeah, but not everything can be painted and you need a source for that kind of stuff. i think "plaster" probably serves as a good enough paint adjacent thing if you want to chisel something

painting ontop of blocks feels unnecessary with the chiselling system atm. just a more robust dying system would be nice

the gold standard would be how minecraft does it's leather dying. having literal RGB values would be fucking insane but i doubt we'll reach that

[strange obsidian]

ooh that's a good point

[winter sage]

especially with how clay can already be made into a lot of different base colours, i think perhaps a neat way to do it would be a dye is crafted into a "glaze", which can then be dipped on most cookery related ceramic items, and then it'd have a random "overlay" glaze that is selected from that

rather than having a selection menu for a bunch of different variations

I.E, you have a black ceramic vessel, you put it in a barrel with yellow glaze, and it makes a random black and yellow patterned vessel out of a few different set possibilities

examples from already existing vessels ingame

that, or literally just having a way to craft these and expanding upon the ceramic system would be nice

since needing to get them from traders or ruins is pretty lame IMO

since they look really nice

though i'm also of the opinion that very few things should be locked behind traders

[normal elm]

I personally view trader locking as the lesser of two evils - ruin locking, or far worse, just having it unobtainable in survival.

There's so many cool decor items in the game that are simply unobtainable in survival mode.

Trader locking and ruin locking can help create a unique sense of identity for traders as well as ruins, and I think it can be actually quite fun if handled like that.
But something like "here is this 2-block wide table, you can't obtain it" stings considering we don't have a craftable alternative. 😅

[winter sage]

i think it's okay for art and trinkets and things of that variety but i do believe that glazed pots and stuff are something that should be craftable by the player (even if there are a few trader-locked variants)

like having a door with a window on it being trader locked is 😿

it'd be really cool to see a manual way to glaze pots and stuff

in a similar way to chiselling works

and use that to introduce like... actually painting and scribing stuff

that'd be a sick system

though it may result in more lag, perhaps

i imagine it'd be a voxel kind of deal while glazing and then it gets converted into a texture or whatever after the fact

[exotic wind]

I made a similar suggestion in the past #1424037465886556261 message
It was for metal vessels and being able to make custom decorations on it with chiselling, though it was a sort of a side suggestion. I imagine it would be difficult to implement though.

[winter sage]

made an offshoot for this idea

[winter sage]

and this i guess

https://discord.com/channels/302152934249070593/1435626200398692523

[vale path]

added recipes for rope beams

[wispy nymph]

Rope

🪢 🪢

[vale path]

first new flower, pink catmint

[high sorrel]

That so good ! Will this be in the same mod or a separate mod for flowers ? Also will all the flowers variants have their own spawns or they will replace others spawns ?

[vale path]

Same mod. I still have to see how the flower spawning works but my general approach to this mod is to leave vanilla stuff untouched and add new stuff in, and I think the game could definitely use more flowers, so I’m gonna try to let the new flowers increase the sum total of flower spawns.

Still figuring out how flowers work but it seems pretty straightforward. Already have a Persian Blue Catmint variety ready as well.

I’m gonna try to introduce 3 or 4 new varieties for each flower pictured above.

Depending on how many colors are realistic.

[high sorrel]

That cool ! And yes I love this game but what I am the most excited for the future is more flowers / trees / natural environments / biomes and insects / animals lol

[high sorrel]

Nice !

[vale path]

Yeah I love variety especially for building and designing so this mod is a really good excuse for me to expand a lot of the existing vanilla content.

[high sorrel]

Exactly, I run like 100 mods to this game (and same for others games) but it's never "wtf / crazy mods" always Vanilla Friendly mods that add more variety / content or QoL ! All of these mods especially Vanilla Variants should become Vanilla imo...

[high sorrel]

OH ALSO how did I forgot the NUMBER ONE thing I want the most in the game : crops lol

I need way more things to grow in the garden ! And sadly there isn't a lot of mods that do that... some of them are dead or there isn't a lot or the 3D models doesn't look good imo :/ Sad there isn't a BIG mod that add a ton of new crops with good models and that fit the game

[vale path]

Would love to see that as well.

[winter sage]

more flowers, herbs, and things of that variety to really diversify the map is definitely something that would be nice

though i think they should spawn in seperate 'patches' to almost like differentiate regions

if that makes sense

[vale path]

Persian Blue Catmint and Scarlet Heather

[vale path]

these are real world varieties of these flowers btw, matched as close as i can to their real world hues and saturation

[vale path]

Some new flowers:

Pink Catmint
Persian Blue Catmint
Pink Cornflower
Burgundy Cornflower
Scarlet Heather
Indigo Heather
Red Mallow
Yellow Mallow

[normal elm]

I was making restored versions of the ruined beds for a project, but it got me thinking about how customisable beds would be nice. I mean it's already on the roadmap, but still. Excited to see it whenever it does make it into the game! 😄

[vale path]

those look great

[sudden canopy]

👀 very nice

(beds make me sad cause the best bed is ruin only, can't even make a cleaned up version lol)

[normal elm]

Thanks! 😄
The green one already existed in the game files, but the brown and patchwork one are custom. The patchwork one was pretty painstaking to restore, drawing over all the patches individually.

[vale path]

love the patchwork one

[normal elm]

It kinda bugs me that the ruined bed we can sleep in is the one with the oldest model
No headboard, no matress, no pillow. That's just a blanket over a wooden frame lol

[vale path]

Might also add some limewashed wood varieties.

I think after the flowers, the last two main things I’m gonna want in terms of material variety is wood and stone.

Stone I may not get into, because I don’t want to add entirely new stone types. But I may want to expand some of the existing stone into another existing texture set.

Similarly with wood, I don’t want to add any new tree types, but I may want to branch some of the wood textures into new hues or shades with stuff like Limewash.

After that I think I will have touched all the primary bases I wanted to expand.

[hidden plaza]

can we get the missing textures for all the stone types

[vale path]

Which missing textures?

[hidden plaza]

like there's no suevite ashlar, or anything of tuff other than raw rock

[vale path]

Ah gotcha. Yeah I can look into that.

[ocean sable]

Tuff doesnt even generate right?

[hidden plaza]

that could be something to change too

[autumn otter]

I don't want to saturate this topic, but since the discussion often revolves around subjects I'm working on, I'd like to share my thoughts with you.

I'm working on this issue right now because I'm creating a "realistic" paint mod that would not let you do just anything.

For now, I have a base that works well: I can paint with a container of paint in my offhand and a paint brush in my right hand on a limited number of surface types that can be configured (by default [“Stone,” “Wood,” “Brick,” “Ceramic,” “Metal,” “Meta”]). So it's impossible to paint on dirt or sand for example, which makes sense to me. I've also introduced a paint drying mechanic, and I'm starting to work on the fact that paint can be washed away by rain if it's exposed to the outdoors before it's completely dry.

Initially, I used a set of textures per color, but this quickly became unworkable with the number of colors I plan to add. Even though I use a script to generate the variants, a player couldn't do the same, and I would like users to be able to add colors themselves.

So I have two options that appeal to me: either I use an approach similar to corals (e.g., “reefblock”) where variants are created by overlaying a colored monochrome texture on a relief texture shared by all blocks (in which case I would only need to create one monochrome texture per paint color), or I could try to modify the color of the block directly in the engine using a dedicated shader or by exploiting the block tint system to my advantage.

Ideally, what I'd like to have is a JSON file containing an arbitrary list of authorized color variants in the form of RGB or hexadecimal values, and for the game to be able to display each of them. I think going beyond the colors of certain 8-bit palettes is unnecessary, but in any case, I would eventually like to reach a color count in the hundreds.

I already have a solution for generating these hundreds of colors: I plan to implement an additive color mixing system similar to MixBox. This tool realistically simulates the color resulting from mixing two RGB colors (with their proportions).

My idea would be that only a limited number of basic paint colors can be obtained with the pigments in the game, and then the player can create new colors by mixing these paints in various proportions.

For example, the player creates two basic paint colors: an ultramarine paint (#015189) and a chrome yellow paint (#e2b51d), which can be crafted with pigments. Then the player can mix those two colors in whatever proportion they want in a container (for example 50%-50%), the mixing model calculate the theoretical resulting color (#398e40) and automatically snaps to the nearest color in the available variants (say, #318a44). Thus you can only craft colors available in the JSON variants file

You can play with MixBox to see how you can obtain a very large amount of colors by mixing a limited number of base colors (each color is a slider you can move to mix in various proportions) https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/examples/mixer

In short, I don't want to draw attention to my mod (I haven't even created a dedicated thread yet because I'm far from having implemented all of this and I don't have much time at the moment). but I wanted to explain everything in case it could provide some food for thought for Material Needs, and also because the subject of painting is regularly discussed here and the issues of texture colors, dyes, and the clutter of the handbook are topics that concern both of our mods, I think.

[mighty umbra]

Geology Additions is a good mod for that.

Also loving all the new art blocks

[mighty umbra]

It sounds like a really cool mod. I think a lot of people would like a customizable paint mod. Particularly for interiors etc

[vale path]

sounds excellent. i would love to incorporate a brush into my own mod

himalayan blue poppy

[exotic wind]

That's cool. Reminds me a bit of the blue orchid from Minecraft. Really nice colour.

[vale path]

Based on Himalayan Blue Poppy.

Will adjust it some more, every reference photo seems to have a slightly different hue.

[wispy nymph]

Add more lupines

[hidden plaza]

its because most photocells can't capture this blue

irl they're almost mesmerizingly blue

[hidden plaza]

but i think you want to up the sat and down the lux a bit

[vale path]

the hue needed to change mainly

the above was too turquoise

[vale path]

alright here is a preliminary set of 20 new flowers

these will be tweaked a bit soon

they are all based on real world color variations of these flowers

will probably add a couple variants of 2 more flowers, but not a full set of 4 like these

so in total will probably be 24 new flower variants

[vale path]

testing spawning

[hidden plaza]

flower

[ocean sable]

I love this!

[autumn otter]

It looks soooo cool. I love having wild flowers near my base and the more colors/varieties I can get, the better. Do you plan to make it compatible with the Biomes mod ?

I'd love to have to travel to go into a quest to find a specific color, also it would be incredible on large multiplayer servers where (for example) Himalayan Blue Poppy dye would be a super rare and expensive resource

When balanced correctly, a mod like yours can add a lot of emergent gameplay. The idea that some hue are very difficult to obtain and that acquiring large amount of this hue is prohibitively expensive really creates a market and sensation of awe when you see it

Currently, mountain gameplay in VS is disappointing because pickaxe is too slow/too fragile to move through tunnels (which is perfectly OK since VS is more "realistic" than games like MC) and there are not enough reasons to motivate us to endure difficult weather and impassable terrain.

[high sorrel]

They look SO GOOD !

[wispy nymph]

Lupines pls they are the best flower

[vale path]

definitely something i'd like to do, this is how i imagine the resources also. though it would take some deeper research and time to rework it this way which i'm not currently prepared to do. but if the creator of that mod has an accessible way i can make them work together i'd be happy to try to make them play nice together

[vale path]

i think lupine already has like 5 variants so i'd probably continue expanding other flowers before i started adding lupine variants

come to think of it lupine having 5 variants i think means that me introducing 4 new variants for each was the right number

yep, five of them. and i'm expanding existing flowers to 5 as well

[wispy nymph]

my yellow lupine dreams... shattered beyond repair..,.

edelweiss are nice maybe they have some other colors

[vale path]

i looked into edelweiss but they apparently dont have many color varieties in the real world. the flowers above are the ones that had real world color varieties, so i focused on them.

the only others that have legit color varieties are Lily of the Valleys, Forget Me Nots and Daisies.

however Lily of the Valleys and Forget Me Nots only have a small range of varieties, light blue and pink. but i am adding those.

and Daisies have a lot of varieties, but the existing vanilla texture looks a little awkward when the colors are shifted so i put them on the back burner for now

currently i'm deciding if i want to replace the new white flower variants i introduced with actual colors, since it feels like it might be a slight missed opportunity to just introduce more white

or maybe i can just adjust the white catmint a bit to have moer of a minty green tinge

[winter sage]

honestly it's perfectly fine to have nonexistant flowers in this

as long as they look pretty

i don't think anyone will be geeking out because their forget me nots come in a different colour than they can IRL

[vale path]

i personally wouldn't mind either for a bit of fantasy, but i'm trying to stay true to the down to earth real world ethos of the game

the goal is for all of this to make total sense in VS

[winter sage]

have you added poppies ?

as in like

poppy poppies

[vale path]

the five on the right are all poppies

[winter sage]

oki oki

some additional greens would be nice as well honestly

[vale path]

i'm considering adding in the Dwarf Furze texture in different colors but giving it a different species name, as there is a species called Erica which is understood to be similar to Gorse, though not closely related

[winter sage]

fern variety and allat

though there is the wild grass mod that does smth similar, doesn't hurt to include that

[vale path]

ferns would be cool but not sure what existing textures can be reworked currently

[winter sage]

a lot of these flowers could have the actual flower parts removed and faintly edited to make the tips of it look proper and it'd be a fern

since it's not like there's a lot of flowers that are just

a singular flower

most of them are in bunches

[vale path]

originally i wanted to expand 8 flower varieties by adding 4 variants each, but the number of flowers that have real world color varieties was only this small handful. so i may need to push it a little to really fill out the variety

[winter sage]

are these flowers going to be able to be turned into dyes?

[vale path]

a lot of them probably yeah. i will probably double check what is consistent with real world dye making

[winter sage]

bc if i'll be real red dye is kind of cooked to be able to get in the game rn

[vale path]

yeah my first instinct is to make the dyes more accessible

but i'm going to keep the blues and purples fairly rare

reds should probs be moer accessible tho

[winter sage]

woad blue dye:

[vale path]

funny enough woad blue dye is a distinct item outside of normal blue dye

i havent used woad blue for any dye recipes

[winter sage]

it just bypasses the need for mordant for the most part

i think that's the only major distinction

[vale path]

tho i think by the time you get to dye making it should all be fairly accessible

[winter sage]

honestly having more variety in dye in general just makes sense imo

lapis should give a much more rich/royal blue

than flowers do

having flowers give muted colours and then mineral pigments be brighter makes sense

[vale path]

woad is everywhere so i wouldnt want that to be the deep royal blue

[winter sage]

yuh

[vale path]

but the dyes arent currently split into saturated and muted, they're all the same level of saturation

and i'm not sure how deep i want to dive into expanding them yet

i'm also approaching the point where i want to get this update out

so i want to wrap up a version of it all soon

[winter sage]

definitely push it out soon then and then you can always seperate the dyes into two different tiers later on

[exotic wind]

No, please don't get rid of the white catmint. It looks really good.

[vale path]

there could be another even better color in its place tho

but white is pretty nice

added "Broom" flower variety, which is the Dwarf Furze texture. Broom is a flower closely related to Gorse, aka Furze

also reorganized them a bit based on rarity of the color. the colors closest to the camera here are the most rare

or will be when i implement it

might balance it so that each flower is twice as rare as the one preceding it

[normal elm]

A couple of the dyed leathers are super vibrant, dyed leather blocks could be interesting.

[vale path]

interesting colors, though i would probably favor doing another material as a standard "super saturated" block, since it would be a little odd to have a house made of leather

these are the final new flowers

28 of them

[vale path]

Wickwar Flame Heather

Gold Haze Heather

[vale path]

this is gonna drive people absolutely nuts, but the color dye you get from flowers in real life is rarely the same as the flower itself

and that's exactly how i'm coding these recipes 😄

[hidden plaza]

love it, get realistic

[exotic wind]

White catmint preserved! Thank you.

[vale path]

you saved it's life 😄

[exotic wind]

That blue furze looks amazing as well.

Or is it Heather.

4th from the bottom left. That's a really nice colour. Do you remember the name?

[vale path]

bottom row is from left to right

Blue Forget Me Not
Persian Blue Catmint
Black Gem Cornflower
Blue Lagoon Heather
Blue Wild Indigo Mallow
Himalayan Blue Poppy
Boskop Ruby Broom

And then the last one is a Blue Lily of the Valley but apparently those don't exist so it's becoming purple

[exotic wind]

That Blue Lagoon Heather has an incredible colour.

[vale path]

yeah it's a cool one. it will be very rare

that whole bottom row is very rare

the second to bottom row is rare

and the ones above are fairly common

[exotic wind]

Nice, I look forward to catching them in the wild. Awesome work with the mod!

[vale path]

ty!

[vale path]

updated shot with some slight adjustments, about to release this

fun fact, the bottom row is all about 1/100th as common as the top row. except the one on the bottom very far right, the Purple Lily of the Valley. that one is 1/1000th as common

just to keep you completionists crazy 😄

[vale path]

full list of new flowers:

Pink Catmint
Blue Catmint
Montrose White Catmint
Persian Blue Catmint
Red Boy Cornflower
White Dwarf Cornflower
Pink Ball Cornflower
Black Gem Cornflower
Gold Haze Heather
Wickwar Flame Heather
Scarlet Heather
Blue Lagoon Heather
Yellow Mallow
Scarlet Rosemallow
Pink Mallow
Blue Wild Indigo Mallow
Wood Poppy
Field Poppy
Shirley Poppy
Himalayan Blue Poppy
Red Scotch Broom
Lena Scotch Broom
Moyclare Pink Broom
Boskoop Ruby Broom
Pink Forget Me Not
Blue Forget Me Not
Pink Lily of the Valley
Purple Lily of the Valley

[vale path]

https://mods.vintagestory.at/materialneeds

new update is out!

[vale path]

I’m really pleased with how I balanced the new flower variety spawning, this is something I’ve wanted to see with items in game for a long time. I’ve divided them up into tiers of rarity, relative to their vanilla counterparts:

Common - Standard vanilla frequency.
Uncommon - 1/4th as common.
Rare - 1/40th as common.
Ultra Rare - 1/400th as common.
Holy Grail - 1/4000th as common.

The top two rows of new flowers are treated as Common, so they spawn 1/4th as often as their vanilla counterparts. The second to last row is treated as Uncommon so they spawn 1/40th as often. The bottom row is Rare so they spawns 1/400th as frequently. And the very bottom right flower, Purple Lily of the Valley, is treated as Holy Grail in rarity, so it spawns 1/4000th as common as a normal Lily of the Valley.

Any new sets of flowers or other resources I introduce, I really want to stick to this rarity tier system. I want there to always be something out there you haven’t seen yet.

[winter sage]

is there a way to duplicate flowers so that if you discover a super rare varient

you can actually use it

[vale path]

Not currently. If I were to introduce that I’d try to balance it to keep those resources super rare. I imagine Tyron is eventually going to implement a proper way to grow flowers.

[winter sage]

probably use compost or smth for an easy crafting recipe

combine a flower + x compost (maybe increases by 1 for rarity) in the crafting table

duplicates

[vale path]

Like growing a super rare flower should take a long time and be a bit tricky and difficult.

And the ability to multiply production of them should be really slow.

So you can’t turn one flower into 10,000 new flowers in a week. You can maybe double it over the course of a year or two.

Or even three years. It should take a long time to multiply.

IMO

[vale path]

I think the proper way would be to study real world flower farming and base it around those processes.

[winter sage]

is that something you feel is in the scope of the mod ?

[vale path]

About which I currently don’t know anything.

[vale path]

I’d have to look into it to know. Certainly not something I would say no to at the moment. But it would definitely take a lot of time investment I think, so I’d have to really dive in on something like that.

I would want it to be super consistent with how Vintage Story approaches tech and resources and stuff.

So it would be a whole new resource process like leather making. Which would take a lot to design and implement.

[wispy nymph]

Would be a different but complimentary mod imho

[vale path]

It could be in the purview of a new mod, though I am not against putting it in this one as well. Should be able to disable it by deleting a folder if people want to.

But we’ll see. I have other stuff I want to implement first.

After which I could look into it.

[autumn otter]

OMG I'm going to explore everything until I get every variant to add to my collection 🤩

[vale path]

That’s what I’m talking about. 😂

So I may rework the rarity tiers. But multiplying by 10 seems to be a really solid way of approaching it. And easy to code, just adding 0.

So maybe:

Common - Standard common frequency.
Uncommon - 1/10th frequency.
Rare - 1/100th frequency.
Ultra Rare - 1/1,000th frequency.
Holy Grail - 1/10,000th frequency.

I’m sort of obsessed with the idea of there being Holy Grail items implemented into the game. Things you will likely never see, but eventually could run into a couple if enough different aspects of the game have them.

So if we add a Holy Grail item to Stone, Trees, Soil, then we’ve effectively quadrupled how likely you are to run into a Holy Grail item for some aspect of the game. But you won’t be able to expect to run into anything specific you’re looking for. So it will ideally help maintain that yearning to discover.

If like 20 different aspects of the game have Holy Grail items implemented, you will probably eventually run into one of them somewhere after some time playing.

But no guarantees which it will be.

When I see a Holy Grail item, I want it to blow my mind how unlikely it is.

Even if it’s just Ultra Rare, like the Himalayan Blue Poppy, I want to be like WOAH when I see it.

[vale path]

adding flowerpot flower textures

[little pike]

I've noticed the lack of "soft" colored blocks like linen and wool that could be used for furniture that arent just white or grey

[vale path]

is there a linen block?

answered my own question

no block but definitely a texture

also you can apparently put it on the side of blocks

this is probably how i'd do it

instead of as a block

[vale path]

here you go. all flower pottable

alrighty, new update out, allowing all flowers to be placeable in flower pots!

[vale path]

this is now the rarest flower in the game: Lily of the Valley (Purple)

1/4,000th the chance to spawn of the vanilla variant.

happy hunting! 😄

[autumn otter]

I use the 'decor' behavior for my paint, linen and vanilla paint (yes there's one but only white and scratched) are decor blocks. They can be oriented in any direction (NESWUD).
It's a holiday in my country today, so I'll try to make a short video of my mod to show how it works if I have time, but it looks like you've been down the same path : decor blocks are the (obvious) way to add color over existing blocks.
I wanted to wait until I had added at least some recipes for making the basic shades before officially presenting the mod, but I think it will be more constructive if we work in parallel.
You can take a look at Tailor's Delight mod that add many "panel cloth" decors using dyes. They are created by adding dye to mordansed cloth/twine in barrel.

I discovered this cool website to share color palettes https://lospec.com/palette-list/

I think we could use it to create a unified color palette to share between mods, e.g starting by defining the most saturated colors (pure pigment) and then HSV/RVB values that can be obtained by combining/diluting the pigments

for example this palette (256 colors) seems to match the vibe of VS while adding more saturated colors that are nonexistent right now

I also like this one https://lospec.com/palette-list/duel

[vale path]

Hmm, interesting. 256 colors would become a ton of blocks, not sure how that would affect performance. I’m currently at 34, will probably end between 36 and 42. It’s a largely subjective range of color, partly because I’ve been working around the vanilla Wattle & Daub textures.

[autumn otter]

Yeah sorry it wasn't clear from my part, I wasn't thinking of adding a 256-color palette to Vintage Story, but rather generating or finding a palette of 256 colors “typical” of VS (or more or less) to make it easier to add new colors to the game. In this palette, pure pigments would probably be the most saturated values, and from this palette it would be easier to add colors while ensuring that they don't stray too far from the classic VS value ranges (which are generally not very saturated).
Or, conversely, by taking a pre-existing palette that matches the VS style, it is easier to find shades from that palette that are not present in VS but would blend in well. Finally, if we create a collaborative palette, we could ensure consistency between mods for the colors added.

[autumn otter]

I was pretty curious about what would be the palette of VS so I wrote a small python script to extract a palette from all texture files 🤓 . It counts occurrences of every color present in the textures and sorts them in clusters using the k-means method. If you are curious, here is the result
for 128 clusters !

[warped barn]

beige story is real

Is this blocks or items as well?

[autumn otter]

All png files in the assets/survival/textures directory

[autumn otter]

Lol I weighted the clustering based on the number of occurrences of each color meaning that more frequent colors have more tints in the palette

For reference this is the unweighted result

Note that it is not representative of what you see in game since a single texture can be used on thousands of visible blocks (e.g grass/dirt)

Also note that by definition using k-means centers excludes the extrema so this palette does not includes the most saturated colors

[sudden canopy]

the beige-ness is unsurprising considering how many blocks (and "biome" tints) are yellow toned

(even just look at all the greens - there are only a handful of cool greens, most are quite yellow)

[autumn otter]

Yes, note also that it doesn't take into account block tinting due to seasons/climate (even if the tinting texture is included in the sampled images) so autumn/winter colors are not even included

[sudden canopy]

Oof

[hidden turret]

very nice ❤️
would this flower update require a new world for those flowers?

[autumn otter]

Also, last note : I filtered out all the low saturation values because If I don't here are the 512 most common colors in the game 🤣

[ivory charm]

Ahh yes the sequel to the best-selling novel.

"350 shades of grey"

[sudden canopy]

Lmao

Im curious as to where specifically those 4 greens are

"Specifically"

I assume they are a part of most plant textures

[vale path]

Gotcha. With this mod I’m sort of building what I think of in my head as a standardized color palette, by looking at what colors are missing from VS that I would want and adding those in. So I have targeted some standard shades, like Blue, Red, Orange, Purple, Magenta, and then filling in the gaps between them to produce seamless color transitions, Viridian, Chartreuse, Lime, etc. This 34 palette hits on all the major colors that I thought were needed. I will likely expand it a bit in the future, probably by discounting the grey / black / white colors and the brown colors, which I think are their own unique sets because it’s necessary to have a big range of browns and black and white, and then counting the colorful ones together again, to maybe try to reach 32.

Black and white shades I think can easily be discounted from the full color total since those are clearly a unique range. Later I can count the specifically colorful ones together to see where we’re at.

I think it’s around the 28 range.

Which means I can comfortably add about 4 more colors to stop at a nice round 32.

Which is probably what I’m aiming for.

These color choices are much more subjective, but if you look at the current dyes, that seems to be a more sober objective range of colors, as they are a more rigidly straightforward spaced out range of colors.

All I had to do was add in a couple missing transitions here, like Chartreuse and Indigo.

And this I believe covers the whole natural color spectrum, and can cycle through continuously if you connect the left and right colors together, magenta with red, you can keep this rainbow going on and on with evenly spaced out colors.

So the dye range here is what I think of as the more straightforward objectively chosen color range.

And the colors I’m introducing for all the new Plaster and Daub and Rammed Earth blocks are what I think of as my standard subjective color palette.

The dyes above are 12 shades produced by Red, Blue and Yellow. So that’s about as objective and straightforward as I think we can get.

But for building blocks I was more subjective, since I was starting with the vanilla Wattle & Daub colors, which establish a more subjective range of choices.

[vale path]

Lol yeah this is why I started this mod. The vanilla color range leaves a lot to be desired.

[normal elm]

I like how you can tell that dd6017 is bauxite

[normal elm]

Rot, Dust, Rust, Rot, Rot, Rust, Rot, Dust, Temporal Gear, Rot

[vale path]

i'm gonna add some recipes to collect ashlar rubble blocks

any ideas on recipes? there needs to be a way to get all 4 of them

[wispy nymph]

Chisel a boulder

[vale path]

boulder wouldnt make sense because it's an ashlar texture

i'm thinking of a similar recipe to the boulder tho

the hammer on the ashlar block

[wispy nymph]

Hammer an ashlar block then

Yea

[vale path]

but the question is how to get each different one

just keep smashing it with a hammer i guess?

or is there a better idea?

[wispy nymph]

N S E W hammer position

Ez pz

[vale path]

hmmm

hammer on the underside feels a little weird tho

but maybe

[wispy nymph]

Just don think of it as below then lmao

4 sides rather than 2 sides and top/bottom

[normal elm]

I mean I could see it, like how rammed earth works where it just cycles between textures.

[wispy nymph]

Waste of durability

[normal elm]

Maybe just have it so the hammer is only needed to make the first rubble type, then they can be cycled without the hammer.

Like your Seraph is just rearranging the rubble pile.

[vale path]

got rubble recipes running

suddenly had the idea of using Rot to apply these texture overlays

[wispy nymph]

For moss you can use a knife to scape it off

[vale path]

can do that but would want an item form to use it somehow

i'm trying to avoid introducing my own items so something else in the game might be more appropriate

here's the full color palette and rammed earth set

[wispy nymph]

Yeah there has to be some vanilla lighting quirk cause these look normal

Some of the brighter ones get like, blown out in sunlight

Same for some of the lighter stone types in geosdditions

[vale path]

lighting conditions change a lot. these are only a slight shade lighter and less saturated than Daub so i imagined they were fine

i counted them up and there are 29 actual colors currently

the others are the greyscale blocks

i was thinking of adding 1 or 2 more browns to bridge the gap, and then possibly squeezing in one other color

which would be 32 colors total, and then a greyscale set of blocks which i consider separate

my current potential roadmap

    * Add Very Aged doors and gates.
    * Add Linen colors.
    * Add Red Mudbrick.
    * Add Grey Mudbrick.
    * Add Pale Aged Wood set.
    * Add Weathered Wood set.
    * Add Aged Ebony Wood set.
    * Add Suevite Aged Ashlar & Cracked Ashlar.
    * Add Kimberlite Ashlar, Aged Ashlar & Cracked Ashlar.
    * Add Lighter Dye set.
    * Add Darker Dye set.```

[autumn otter]

Using the Mixbox library I've generated 256 colors by mixing pairs of RGB tints used in your dyes + vanilla dyes (excluding B&W) at various proportions. I've obtained the following colors. You can ask for a tint and I can give you the recipe (pair of dyes + proportion) to obtain it.

The table also includes the pure dyes (I should have marked them differently)

[autumn otter]

This is the kind of color palette I wanted to create for my paint mod : since the Mixbox model generates realistic colors by additive mixing of pigments (e.g blue + yellow = green which is not the case for a classic RGB mixing model), I know that all possible paint tints of my mod should be contained in a subspace of RGB color space which is defined by the pure pigments. Since I can use the vanilla and Material Needs pigments as inputs it ensures the resulting color fits well in the color palette of VS

which can also give you new color variants for your blocks

[autumn otter]

Slightly different version with the pure pigments named. I think a new color like #cc6a55 (just above 'browndark') could be added as some kind of 'peach' color

[autumn otter]

And finally here is some colors you can obtain by mixing your dyes including black and white. It adds a lot of beautiful colors I think. Ask me if you want to know which mixing give a specific color. I'll try to stop flooding here.

[subtle lintel]

This is why I love vintage story. Half the player base drives themselves absolutely insane for even the slightest sake of realism. I swear, most of the people have an unreasonably high IQ.

[vale path]

these are beautiful but i have no idea where to begin with them 😄

[autumn otter]

Yeah sorry, I was mostly reacting to this sentence

i was thinking of adding 1 or 2 more browns to bridge the gap, and then possibly squeezing in one other color
all the colors shown on the last picture I posted could be theoretically obtained by mixing two different dyes already present in the game, either vanilla or in your mod. So if you like some colors in the palette I can give you the dyes and proportions (e.g. 40% pink + 60% brownlight) that could be useful for crafting recipes (like 0.4L pink dye + 0.6L brownlight dye) to produce the desired color

[steel oxide]

At the start of the post somebody showed all the wood types next to a more saturated version, I was thinking you could cook up some resin like with pitch glue but make varnish or lacquer instead and maybe varnish planks to get a more saturated version. Idk just an idea Could work well in vanilla tbh. Would I need a new world to get these flowers and beautiful colours of this mod?

[wispy nymph]

That was me

Varnishes and stains have been discussed before, im just hoping we get them tbh

Assuming you mean this

[subtle lintel]

There was a mod made in this thread that introduced Stained Pine and Oak. Give me a minute and I'll find it

Here we are https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/33622

[steel oxide]

Nice yeah that would be cool to have for some block varieties and transitional colours

[warped barn]

oh hey that's my mod

yeah it was pretty easy to make this mod so if people want me to do more in the future i can, i was thinking one for bleached wood (paler and bluer) and then coated wood (more saturated)

right now I'm busy with starting my own server

[vale path]

They’re all great, though I tend to create block color mostly by eye, and mixing different color block textures together to get a perfect middle blend. But they’re all kind of arbitrarily tweaked. For recipes I then just kind of eyeball the closest dye or ingredients to the color. It would be great to have a ton of more color blocks but I was aiming to keep it relatively restrained at 32 since I’m multiplying that every time I add a new set, and I’ve already gone over to 34. So with Rammed Earth, Wattle & Daub and Plaster 102 different colors at slightly different shades and saturations. Not including all the variants of each block, which I think brings the total up to about 400 currently. Which is already a lot for me to try to manage lol. 😂

[steel oxide]

Lmao ok yeah forget the planks that’s a lot of work already

[vale path]

Oh I definitely would like to do some new wood sets. I was just talking about by “standardized” set of 34 colors I did for Plaster, Daub, Rammed Earth, etc. I wouldn’t do the same colors for wood, I’d do a different range.

Not nearly as large.

At most probably what you see with the browns.

[warped barn]

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/35434 are you a builder? do you want to chisel with grass? you're welcome

[hidden turret]

is there also any way to obtain the grass blocks that have the dirt below? like in your image in the embed

[warped barn]

Right click grass with a chisel then break it :)

[hidden turret]

oh makes sense 😅 thanks

[ocean sable]

random thing, but that wood texture was exactly what I needed, thanks a lot!

[warped barn]

wow it looks fantastic! glad my mod came in useful

[vale path]

I’m suddenly considering adding new rock strata based on blending different stone types together.

So they would be different rock types blended together for more visual variety. Probably based on how real world rock makeup comes in different compositional blends.

But this would take a bit of research.

Basically this would provide more “in between” colors and textures.

[cold urchin]

I was about to make suggestion about that because I feel like chiseling and I learned that in survival it would be quite inconvenient to make custom walls, so I think a dyed plaster would be a great addition and also some blueprint item that allows you to store data and copy

in survival, in creative you can just copy with middle button

[exotic wind]

Look at TFC because there is already a ton of groundwork there on rock strata.

For instance, you could look at adding Diorite, Gabbro, Schist, Blue Schist, Gneiss, Quartzite, ect.

[wispy nymph]

Geology additions already adds all of that

[vale path]

Right but I’m more interested in providing particular textures and colors for aesthetic purposes, so I don’t think they’d wind up looking the same.

[wispy nymph]

Im more concerned with compatibility

[vale path]

Not likely to interfere I don’t think, depending on how it’s implemented. My guess is at worst it might have duplicate names to different rocks. But I will likely take a look at how they apply theirs first to get an idea how I want to do mine.

[wispy nymph]

It should be a separate module then cause i dont particularly want two kinds of gneiss it would get a little confusing

[vale path]

Will also likely introduce it in a way that is optional or easily deactivated.

I’d likely aim at introducing strata that doesn’t overlap much with GA.

But I’m primarily concerned with my own mod, as I’m pretty particular about aesthetics.

[hidden turret]

yeah mods that become too large of a scope can become a turn off for some

[vale path]

More material colors is within the scope of this mod. If I do add it I’ll figure out a way to implement it in a way that people can easily disable.

Of course some people will think they don’t want it until they see it.

[vale path]

rough sketch of where i'm finding big gaps in the color palette

i'd probably add a couple in between these

mainly in the mediums and lights

bauxite is very much out alone by itself. and limestone could use a little bridge to a couple adjacent colors

[amber sapphire]

A good red is... Disappointingly absent

[vale path]

i'm looking around at real world red rock types to see where there might be room for one of these

i will very likely add a couple colors around bauxite to bridge the difference, since it's very much all out on its own

[amber sapphire]

Aye, bauxite works for orange, since it is a very clear, fiery orange

But, well, it's not a good red...

And before anyone says chert, no, chert is not a good red. Chert is more brownish-grey than it is a proper, true red.

[vale path]

i'm not sure there are any real world super bold red stone types

[amber sapphire]

Aye, but, other than specifically stone

This game seriously lacks red

Other than cloth blocks, but for those oncemore, if you don't have a tailor you're buggered if the server has class-specific crafting

[vale path]

that's true, i added some red blocks

red, cinnabar, oxblood, etc.

[amber sapphire]

Cinnabar block would go hard ngl

The specific reason for me being a bit miffed on this issue is that I struggled quite hard for a while to find a decent red for a CoA for a settlement in a server I'm in

Black, too, kind of

[vale path]

have you looked at the red and black blocks in Material Needs?

[amber sapphire]

I managed to, eventially, get some red cloth blocks, but black is still a bit too grey for my liking

Unfortunately I'm not the owner of this server, but I could see what they'd think of it

Seems nifty

[mighty umbra]

Red porphyry

More of a dark red but definitely red

[exotic wind]

Jasper as well.

[mighty umbra]

Yep. Or red nephrite jade

[vale path]

nephrite you say 😄

[mighty umbra]

I mean adding nephrite its various colors would be cool. Spawning like Marble does

But also Marble comes in all sorts of colors

[vale path]

currently leaning toward adding in full stone sets like the others that would spawn in large regions

currently there are 14 standard vanilla sets

so that's room for 2-6 new ones imo

[mighty umbra]

I like the idea of that in principle but in effect it can be a little funky. Since the stones etc affect what ores spawn and since stone that can be used for lime are so important to the game

The advantage to more marble type spawning stones is it doesn’t really affect the actual balance of the game. Also it kinda gives a ‘royal’ color stones akin to how some of the plaster and daub is harder to make

[wispy nymph]

Just keep in mind that people (me) will be playing with geology additions and that mod takes special care to keep the balance of important rock types like calcium carbonate rocks

So if you are adding new stone types you will need to make sure you arent making it too hard to find important stone types!

Heres an example of a kind of rock with CaCO3

Travertine is a other good one

[vale path]

yeah i'm aware, i'm already marking overlaps. the stones that will be added will have properties akin to those they are compositionally adjacent to

will likely include new limestone varieties, which will be able to produce lime and other ores associated with limestone

Travertine looks like a good candidate so far

[exotic wind]

Ooh, red and pink travertine have a nice colour that does look like it would fit VS really well.

[vale path]

finishing the black and white set

[amber sapphire]

Forgive me being petty, but the black is still more of a dark grey

Though I suppose obsidian exists, even if it has smidges of purple

[vale path]

Yeah that’s deliberate. Colors tend to be very relative, these materials in direct sunlight aren’t going to feel jet black and aren’t intended to. Plaster is the darkest, any further on that will begin to feel weird in the context of the rest of the colors in the game. Rammed Earth is intentionally a lighter rendering than Daub and Plaster, as it’s the cheapest material, and in real life tends to be rather light. Daub is in the middle.

The most costly and advanced material is Plaster, so that one gets the deepest rendering.

In direct mid day sunlight, right next to other adjacent shades, it’s not going to look jet black. Without the juxtaposition of adjacent dark shades, in a less harsh mid day light, it will look very dark.

Especially if you start placing it next to lighter colors.

Context changes appearances dramatically.

[raw goblet]

I’d recommend you use the wool mod, because the wool is very good for chiseling with if you need vibrant colors

[vale path]

also this is what comes up if you google black rammed earth. this is about as dark as it gets.

the way the lighting and contrast in the game works, going any darker starts to feel artificial and too modern imo. i'm trying to keep the colors feeling appropriate within the context of the rest of the game.

[wispy nymph]

I dont know about wool since it's not vanilla (yet) but leather blocks exist and dyed leather exists

[vale path]

i'm guessing wool blocks aren't going to be added to the game, since that would diverge a bit from the game's focus on real world building materials

[subtle lintel]

Yeah, you need to make Chert cobblestone to even bring out the hints of real crimson red

[amber sapphire]

Aye, and cobblestone is really not all that great when trying to create a consistent palette

[vale path]

https://mods.vintagestory.at/materialneeds

new update, adds compatibility with Better Ruins

[high sorrel]

Amazing ! ❤️

[high sorrel]

I want to live in the first house lol 🖤

[lilac hornet]

there might not be but you can paint stone or wood irl, while in-game you don't have painting

[vale path]

alright i finally finally got this mock up rock strata build running without crashing on me every time

in order to get it to not crash, i apparently needed to add 16 wavy sand texture PNG files for every new stone type i introduced

which is the most obnoxious cause of a mod crash i've encountered so far 😄

since all other textures just seem to render as broken ? texture, this one apparently completely crashes the game if it doesnt exist

[exotic wind]

Yeah that's crazy.

Are you looking into the stone path colours as well?

[vale path]

not yet but it looks like that shouldn't be too hard

color wise the default one seems to be closest to Conglomerate

so that's probably what the default texture would turn into

[wispy nymph]

Yeah that happened with geology additions too

Game checks for wavy sand textures and if it doesn't find them it gets angry

[exotic wind]

Is it worth changing the title to something like:

'Expanded Colours + Material Needs Mod' ?

[vale path]

no i just need to stop posting in here because i keep forgetting i have a mod thread

[graceful hawk]

pardon me going back to last october to ping you, but what was your fix for this? was it misdirected lang file?

[fathom niche]

I wish there were more types of granite. Granite comes in many colours, including pink

[vale path]

you're in luck, MNG adds Syenite, a rock similar to granite, in pink

https://mods.vintagestory.at/materialneedsgeology

[vale path]

i'll have to check

[bleak flame]

we still lack the way to color blocks, we have way to dye now so why not go further?