My Opinion About Custom Textures Update
Rolim
Member
So the new update is here, we are able to make up to 16 different customizable blocks per realm. That's great! Now on paper it sounds like an amazing idea, if done correctly it really might work! Just think, all the custom blocks you could make.
Or not.
After seeing how bare bones it was, I felt like I did not want to use it.
The canvas is terrible. The tool to make textures is worse than when I first used Microsoft Paint.
I'm sorry, but let's talk about the UI tools:
When I first heard about this idea, my first concern was the inappropriate things players would make. Turns out that's not even an issue at all, easily handled, that's great!
I'm aware that this is only a small feature for the game, but creating custom textures is not worth the effort with the tools provided. If you didn't want your player base to do anything copyrighted or inappropriate, then why not just have pre-made textures that you could color and mash other ones together for different results? Instead, we have very cheap tools that can barely be used and still have to deal with the copyrights and inappropriate stuff.
If you are good creating tiles / textures with pixels, then you can probably get away with it, but it will still be painful to do it. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just speaking my opinion from my head and my heart.
I appreciate the gesture and the effort put in it, but for me this isn't good enough... It has potential, but it is not finished, at least not to me.
Please feel free to tell me your own opinions on this update, I would like to read them.
Thanks, Have a good day. (Apologies if some stuff is not well written, it's almost 5am)
Or not.
After seeing how bare bones it was, I felt like I did not want to use it.
The canvas is terrible. The tool to make textures is worse than when I first used Microsoft Paint.
I'm sorry, but let's talk about the UI tools:
- You have a color slider to mix the RGB colors, but no way to get the #color number? Why? Color palette is an important tool when it comes to texture / sprite / tile set design.
- You have a bucket Icon to fill your canvas with the color selected. Why? We all learned that a bucket tool fills closed areas or fills the same color for another one.
- You have no eraser, which honestly fine, most of the time I don't even I use it because an UNDO button exists. But not here. Why? I don't need to say how much this feature has made so many mistakes forgetful, but in the canvas you have to re-do whatever you messed up.
- You have 1 single size brush, that looks like the graffiti tool from MC paint. In my opinion, it's too big for the canvas size. It's like when you had no brush at school, and they just give u bad brush to make a decent work.
- You have the pencil tool or pen or what I like to call my favorite Pixel maker tool, puts 1 single pixel of the color selected. My problem with pixel art in this case is that there's no grid. The pencil does not even show where it's going to land, combine this without undo, and you get annoyed very easily.
- There's no way to copy and paste anything. You cannot copy your Custom1 designed texture to the Custom2, you have to do that exact same texture again on your own, even if all you wanted to do was a color change.
- Cryptic to find information on how the feature works, some of it is written on the question mark in the items shop, however I did not see how I could even craft the blocks. I even thought I had to submit my canvas just to see how they looked. A link is shown for more info, and you can't even click on it. It's not even in your website... I had to manually type the URL. If it was there, my bad, but I did not see anything.
- While using it, It kept showing me that auto click test pop up. I'm only using your feature has intended.
- This isn't exactly a bad thing, just a nitpick of mine that you can have 16 custom blocks but only 15 chest slots.
When I first heard about this idea, my first concern was the inappropriate things players would make. Turns out that's not even an issue at all, easily handled, that's great!
I'm aware that this is only a small feature for the game, but creating custom textures is not worth the effort with the tools provided. If you didn't want your player base to do anything copyrighted or inappropriate, then why not just have pre-made textures that you could color and mash other ones together for different results? Instead, we have very cheap tools that can barely be used and still have to deal with the copyrights and inappropriate stuff.
If you are good creating tiles / textures with pixels, then you can probably get away with it, but it will still be painful to do it. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just speaking my opinion from my head and my heart.
I appreciate the gesture and the effort put in it, but for me this isn't good enough... It has potential, but it is not finished, at least not to me.
Please feel free to tell me your own opinions on this update, I would like to read them.
Thanks, Have a good day. (Apologies if some stuff is not well written, it's almost 5am)
Comments
But, they can be improved going forward! A lot depends on how much people want to actually use this stuff. We don't even know with a new feature like this before we release it how much people will want to use it. Writing a fancier paint interface is a big job and this is only one small part of a larger game. So if it's a really popular feature that's still being used when it's not brand new we'll certainly look to improve the tools and maybe even look to provide an easy way to bring textures in from other paint programs like photoshop etc... if you're on the steam version. Not sure on that last one but it was a thought.
- The canvas doesn't reset after you leave. You can easily just stop and continue later when you have patience again. And I wanna renforce this one again because it's honestly surprising to me that it can keep your progress saved without submiting so props on that!
- All the tools worked and did not crash the game.
- Very basic and simple to use.
- This feature could / possibly will help with the "lack of blocks" in game, since players can just create their own. Even if they only wanted a certain colored block they can make it now.
And sadly I cannot think of more besides of the stuff I already said on top...I thought this was a finished product since it's been delayed a couple of times. Well, It is a finished "basic product" then? Early Access?
I don't see why going through all the trouble of coding all of this to make it basic to see if players will stick with it and see if it is worth improving or not...
In my perspective, if you gave me a basic / barebones product after announcing it, I would be disapointed that I have to work with it. So why would I even use it? Doesn't that mean that players will not bother with it because it lacks some features? And if it's not being used leads to being forgotten and meaning that doesn't need to be improved since players don't use it? And if the players did struggle using it and eventually gets updated for the best, did they need to do all that just to get the product they expected in the first place?
And what about copyrighted material? How's that being handled then? Are we allowed to make other game's blocks or not? I'm aware you can make something similar to it but not exactly the same, does that go for the color as well?
Here's a little test I made last night I took some pictures that I forgot to upload yesterday, it's not perfect but making that was a bit more annoying than what I wanted...
I looked up a sprite sheet of Mario Bros 3 to try make one of their blocks. I just eyeballed it instead.
But besides those, I'm loving it so far! Thank you SirKewberth! I would say that once you finish any scheduled events and projects, you should come back to textures and improve it a little. I would love to see improvements.