CRAZY IDEA : upgrading the Oortmas snow effect

Hey there!
So, what is this about?

The problem with Snow during Oortmas :

Sure, it makes sense to have that white shader covering our stuff when it snows, but it’s SUPER annoying in many ways too, and that’s unlikely to be what it’s intended for.
Plus, it covers items on shop-stands, making them harder to read, and it currently seems to ignore glass panes.
Since it snows every few minutes, Oortmas can become a period of the year you don’t enjoy a lot on Boundless.
Of course, it’s too late to modify 2019’s Oortmas’ snow effect, but there will be ample time in 2020 to modify the snow effect in preparation for Oortmas 2020, or even for planets that have a daily snowy weather.

What’s the idea?

My suggestion would be :

  1. Remove the recipe for snowballs (bear with me for a second).
  2. Remove the whole white-shader texture effect that covers everything when it snows.
  3. INSTEAD, have a number of snow poffs spawn on the top of blocks (not interactive items like shop stands).
    These would despawn a few minutes after snow stops falling.
  4. Possibly increase the rate of snow poffs spawns in the wild compared to beaconed areas?
  5. Make the snow poffs drop snowballs (the weapons used during Oortmas). 9 snow poffs and you have a stack. That seems decent enough and seems to make way more sense than making snowballs out of ice.
  6. During Oortmas, make these snow poffs have a change to spawn a snow spitter.

What would that do?

Typically, during a snowball meteor hunt, players would be able to find tons of snow poffs on their way to meteors and would get snowballs quite easily during a fights. No need to handcraft anything.

The players who stay home would be able to enjoy their build with less inconvenience from the snow effect, aside from a few snow poffs here and there. Just like current snow, these would disappear almost as soon as the snow stops falling, and if they want to remove the snow poffs while it’s snowing, they could easily do so with a totem, and get something out of it. Maybe a snow spitter would spawn during Oortmas and they’d get a candy cane by killing the spitter.

What do you think about that?

  • I like this idea!
  • I want the snow effect to be changed, but not like this!
  • The snow effect is great as it is, don’t change it!
  • I have a better idea (comment…)
  • Ftaghn! :space_invader:

0 voters

1 Like

I like the idea :sunglasses:

The full snow cover is nice too, I think though.
Wouldn’t be able to decide which one I want more.
Maybe both? Full cover and puffs on top of it?

Honestly, I really REALLY dislike the current full-cover snow effect.
It covers items on shop stands, it passes through glass panes (the tower where my workshop is located has 3 layers of glass panes on the floors and roof, the snow passes through all of them as if they weren’t there), it seems to squeeze under the doors, and it’s not really a great effect, as it seems to just turn the diffuse textures of blocks to un-textured white through which you can only see the normal map of blocks.

IF it was to not cover items on shop stands and passe through glass panes, I’d be a bit more ok with it.
But still, my other option would be to ask for the weather machine I suggested before. Even if it’s Oortmas, I would love to have a way to opt-out of the snow effect altogether.