Allow Goo Tinting On Weapons, Tools, Furnaces

Doesn’t it seem kind of backwards that when we start out, our weapons and tools can be customized to whatever colour we can find wood/stone for, yet as we progress we’re stuck with specific metal or gem colours? Why not allow us to tint these items?

The other day i was spray painting random stuff, happened to hit a furnace… it turned a glorious shadow red. I jumped in the air and did a heel click, already planning what colours my workshop furnaces would be. Of course, it was a leftover stone furnace, and it wouldn’t work on titanium furnaces. So we can decorate with them, just not with the furnaces that people actually use. Is this restriction necessary?

Machines could be included too, the workbench (since it has wood) can be tinted, but not the metal machines.

What do people think? Are there technical reasons that prevent this from being implemented?

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This would certantly provide me with incentive to farm goo, good idea!

On Stone Furnaces? also Copper, Silver, Gold and Gem Furnaces would also be nice to have.

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Gooo’d suggestion!

:wink:

Swords, Lances, and Pantses!

I’d certainly love for a lot more stuff to be tintable. :slight_smile:


That said, I think that in the case of metal blocks/metal props and the like though, as far as I have seen the technical issue would be that they already use the tint system in a way, but there are basically only a tiny amount of tints, and they can’t be changed apart from how they were crafted, such as with metal signs. They basically have a range of 0-4 (copper, iron, silver, gold, titanium).

The normal tints for blocks range from 0-255 (an 8-bit Byte, I think, from black to luminous yellow, iirc), which I would think is the limit of the range of tints that can be reserved for a block, so I’m guessing that to allow things like metal props to be tintable with normal colours, the amount of data reserved to tints overall would have to be wider, so that metal props could benefit from the full range + have their own unique metal tints, and if they were only going to add 5 more tints to the system (effectively), it would leave a lot of spare reserved tint data that likely wouldn’t get used.

The technical solution I can think of, that may be no better in terms of efficiency, would be that when a metal object is sprayed, what could happen “under the hood”, is that it could become a special variant such as, let’s say: ORNATE_METAL_POLE_TINTABLE instead of an ORNATE_METAL_POLE, which would then have a metal specular map or whatever + a mask of some kind that tints that reflective/metallic layer. This solution would require no changes to the amount of data that gets reserved for tints for any block, but would effectively create a large amount of duplicate items…

The only reason I’d suggest this as a technical alternative, if it’s because of the limitation I assumed of a 1 Byte tint data, is because there’s already a number of _DUGUP variants of a few blocks/props, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me to simply have tintable duplicates, as a solution.

But I’m making a lot of assumptions on how things are working, and it’d be best if a dev (like @james) could clarify on what is and isn’t possible. :thinking:

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The only problem I see with this is item identity.

A diamond Hammer Tinted Red will look like a Ruby Hammer on the Shop Stand. I wouldn’t want to confuse people …

Maybe the tint only applied to one layer of the color? Like when we tint our pants there are many layers (highlight/lowlight/base). Maybe tint on these things only applies to the highlight so it gives it an effect, but doesn’t confuse people.

I really believe the only reason it hasn’t been done is just dev time. There is a lot they want to do, and this would be cool…but would just be another project for someone to take on.

I’m sure they want it too though :slight_smile:

It seems to me tinting tools and other non-placeable items would require a whole new system for interacting with these items (and/or the spray cans) to be implemented.

Regarding the machines that have their crate color based on the stones used tinting them would have not affect the machine once set up.

You can currently spray a workbench after it is set up and the machine is coloured (one block only, so you can have a pattern/rainbowish workbench if you want). I’ve not picked mine up to see if it loses the colours when it turns back into boxes, though.

I would have thought of it as the head and the butt/pommel of the tool keeping its characteristic look (be it gem, alloy, whatever) and some other part getting coloured, such as the glyph or the mid/top parts of the shaft/handle.

At least that way the items could be able to keep their identity and have custom flare.

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Of the 6 basic crafting machines workbench is the only machine affected by the color of the materials used to craft it.

I would expect the blocks to retain their colors after you break down the machine but they wont stack any more. The different colors will still smart stack together though.

Since the crate colors for all 6 machines are determined by wood and stone I would expect that you can spray any of them while they’re placed as crates, but once you complete the placement it won’t have any visible effect on any of the 5 other machine types.

Helix crates are metal colored so I’m not sure but wouldn’t expect that you can tint those at all. Chrysominteres are all one colored so it’s no matter, and I haven’t worked with any of the newer machines since the farming update.