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This is a response to a discussion started on Discord that was introduced by a poll I posted a couple of days ago:
Original post by @ryttyr:
Connected Textures:
First I would like to explain the concept of connected textures so everyone reading this will understand what the discussion is about. Connected textures are a feature that comes with the Optifine Mod and allows for blocks of the same texture that are placed next to each other to have a connected texture that spreads over the entire surface of these blocks, making a wall that looks like this:
Pros and cons:
I think the pros are pretty obvious. A connected texture gives much more depth to a wall and helps to make it more interesting.
They have a big downside though. Only Optifine users can see them which also creates a lot of troubles like the obvious one from the wall example where the people that ruined the wall didn't use connected textures so it came to weird color contrasts between the blocks used.
That being said, I can now assure you that we do not intend to change any of our servers core policies like: "no mods required". The discussion over connected textures started again when @NicTheFifth started working on the Moria RP a couple of days ago and all these discrepancies were brought up again. I made the poll to get an idea of how many people don't use Optifine. Even tho the great majority does a good amount of people don't and I do agree with @ryttyr that we can't ignore that.
Solving this problem won't be easy. In my opinion, we can't just remove the connected textures and replace them with texture variations (a texture variation is the possibility to break repetitiveness in vanilla Minecraft by using multiple textures with slight variations for the same block) without thinking about the places that builders did build with connected textures in mind. At the same time though, I do agree that the brightness differences between normal and connected textures need to be fixed.
Solutions I could imagine:
Connected textures for other packs:
I have to admit, I quite like connected textures. And I believe if they are used right they could improve the look of certain surfaces for people that do use Optifine. I think as we keep the people that don't use Optifine in mind we should think about the ones that do too. I don't think people will ever want to build with connected textures and check if their builds look good without them too, so the way I could imagine connected textures being used in the future is with terrain blocks. I hope that once all resource packs have been updated to the Unified Ressource Pack Structure (URPS props to @Finrod_Amandil), which roughly implies that some textures will be on the same block across all packs, we could work towards making connected textures for the terrain blocks. This would, of course, be of low priority.
If you have an opinion on connected textures please take the time to write an answer to this thread and voice it! We want to hear your opinion as you are the ones that will have to work with these textures!
Original post by @ryttyr:
Connected Textures:
First I would like to explain the concept of connected textures so everyone reading this will understand what the discussion is about. Connected textures are a feature that comes with the Optifine Mod and allows for blocks of the same texture that are placed next to each other to have a connected texture that spreads over the entire surface of these blocks, making a wall that looks like this:
Pros and cons:
I think the pros are pretty obvious. A connected texture gives much more depth to a wall and helps to make it more interesting.
They have a big downside though. Only Optifine users can see them which also creates a lot of troubles like the obvious one from the wall example where the people that ruined the wall didn't use connected textures so it came to weird color contrasts between the blocks used.
That being said, I can now assure you that we do not intend to change any of our servers core policies like: "no mods required". The discussion over connected textures started again when @NicTheFifth started working on the Moria RP a couple of days ago and all these discrepancies were brought up again. I made the poll to get an idea of how many people don't use Optifine. Even tho the great majority does a good amount of people don't and I do agree with @ryttyr that we can't ignore that.
Solving this problem won't be easy. In my opinion, we can't just remove the connected textures and replace them with texture variations (a texture variation is the possibility to break repetitiveness in vanilla Minecraft by using multiple textures with slight variations for the same block) without thinking about the places that builders did build with connected textures in mind. At the same time though, I do agree that the brightness differences between normal and connected textures need to be fixed.
Solutions I could imagine:
- Replacing connected textures with texture variations with the risk of messing up some builds that make use of CTMs and disappointing people that like using them.
- Fixing connected textures and adding texture variations for the players that don't use CTM's risking to massively increase filesize of Moria RP (our biggest RP already). This would also create more problems with the way builders with CTMs perceive their builds and how others might perceive them.
- Making connected textures an option when downloading the pack and using variations for the vanilla version which would be a bit more complicated to implement and still cause some problems when deciding over how to build in Moria so that it looks good to everyone.
Connected textures for other packs:
I have to admit, I quite like connected textures. And I believe if they are used right they could improve the look of certain surfaces for people that do use Optifine. I think as we keep the people that don't use Optifine in mind we should think about the ones that do too. I don't think people will ever want to build with connected textures and check if their builds look good without them too, so the way I could imagine connected textures being used in the future is with terrain blocks. I hope that once all resource packs have been updated to the Unified Ressource Pack Structure (URPS props to @Finrod_Amandil), which roughly implies that some textures will be on the same block across all packs, we could work towards making connected textures for the terrain blocks. This would, of course, be of low priority.
If you have an opinion on connected textures please take the time to write an answer to this thread and voice it! We want to hear your opinion as you are the ones that will have to work with these textures!