Ability to shape glass is necessary

To put it bluntly: this is the technical debt.
Developers started programming game without thinking enough sides in the early days.
Now they can only use the “hard to achieve” to respond to the troubles caused by technical debt.

I know it would probably cause problems on some builds, but they could take away chiseled blocks that don’t make any sense at all, like sand, ash, gravel and mud. I get that those blocks may be natural in a sloped or bevelled form, but seriously, square chisled sand is skill nobody has

chiseling is super helpful for sand/ash/gravel/etc in order to force the block to have perfectly straight edges (for example; using sand as “carpet”)

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Wow that sounds nice, it also sounds like one reason we can’t have chiseled glass.

I don’t follow the logic on that; how does being able to chisel natural blocks with a bevel or square chisel, in order to force square edges, hold back being able to chisel glass?

It’s just one solution. From what I understand, there is a trade-off atm with the amount of blocks currently supported by the game. It could be possible to remove a few variations from a few different blocks types in order to make something of higher demand, like chiseled glass, possible

I don’t believe the problem is a matter of there not being space allocated toward chiseled glass textures. The problem is how the textures interact when chiseling. For example, look at chiseled refined stone. Specifically, look at the “bevel” that goes around the texture when whole. This bevel is analogous to the frame on glass. When you hit refined stone with various chisels, that bevel texture does not map to the new edges of the block. This is fine with refined stone though, because the faces of the block are not transparent. On glass though, this would cause entire faces of the block to simply vanish, and have no definable edges. This is the technical problem with chiseling glass. It’s how the texture maps on to the glass block, not a data allocation limit.

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Yep, the entire texturing system for chiselled blocks would need to be changed just to get glass to work, which is a big ask.

Although…

They do want it to happen…

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There are currently 46 chisel shapes, and that doesn’t include different orientations, which would potentially put that number over a hundred, then times that by the 80 or so blocks available, and you’re looking at over 3,000 textures (at the very least) to map for poor little @jesshyland, so if you’re ever wondering why textures aren’t aligned perfectly for each chisel shape, that’s why.

@nevir already mentioned why it hasn’t been done for glass - because there is a single texture for any one block, and chiselling doesn’t so much change the texture, but simply takes a slice out of it. The result with glass would be invisible edges.

It can be done, but it’s a lot of work, and;

  • There are more important things right now.

  • Glass could potentially change again (as it’s long been a point of contention)

Signs do work though. They make a nice alternative 0 just gotta try to avoid the “To many complex blocks” error.

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I understand the edges would disappear in some cases, but that really isn’t a good reason not to let this be possible. If visibility is such a big problem for people, then take away the edges entirely and use a plain texture which is translucent. There is a way to do this without messing with everything going on.

At the moment glass is a voxel based block, not a mesh. Making it a mesh will add it to the 500 limit (complex block) pool, which I personally don’t see as a problem. There’s a glimmer of hope here though;

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Here is where I see it as possibly a problem. If I have a wall of glass in a chink that is only 1 plot high then I am using 8x8x2 = 128 meshes just for the glass. So I have burned through one quarter of the mesh limit for a wall of glass. In the builds I have seen this is more common than you might think. Players separate areas of their workshop[ with glass or build skylights or a wall of glass looking out over a lake or towards a view. In EA I had a wall of glass that was 5 plots tall and a couple wide. I would not have been able to build that if glass was a mesh and not a block. I would prefer some caution before we assume that we are not creating a limit in being able to use glass that will ultimately create more issues for builders than it solves.

I assume they will keep the glass block, but also add window props for people who want to use them.

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Anything that offer options I am good with.

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If we cant chisel glass, maybe just give us the option to make half a glass block in refinery or something. . . I dunno if that would be any easier but just an idea.

Seems an easy option. Like Minecraft where you could build slabs for example [not sure you could build slabs of glass in that game either] - maybe slabs has a technical problem with regards to glass as well but seems like a good option :slight_smile:

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in minecraft you could make both glass panes and blocks

If the issue is the edges would dissapear on a chiseled glass block then add a refined glass option which is coloured and make that type of block chiselable. Who doesnt want stained glass anyway.

The issue being that stained glass isn’t currently possible with this game engine’s system