Glass without visible edges

Hi @james,

I have a request for whenever you are able to get to it. But could we have glass blocks without visible edges?

I would like to be able to see the boundless views clearly without being cuttletrunked. The edges of the current glass block are kind of distracting and break the view with a bunch of little lines.

Thanks ahead of time for considering the addition.

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Yes, I’m in agreement here. Connected textures for glass to remove the border trim. While they’re at it I want to ability to chisel my glass. Or give me the ability to craft window panes.

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Yeah it would be amazing to have clear and tinted glass of different biomes/colors

The devs definitely want to improve it, but unfortunately, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon due to technical limitations :frowning:

The short version is that it’s pretty expensive to have semi-transparent glass (especially with how often glass is used). And to do that, it would require an engine overhaul to be able to correctly render it.

Similarly, making the glass 100% transparent looks very weird (aka it’s invisible, except for borders)

Some past threads on this:

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I recall a post from devs where the technical limitations of the engine prevents them from doing it in a way that is cost effective.

Accidentally just posted this in the previous glass topic, but here are main reasons behind common questions about glass:

When asked about why doors have transparency and not windows:

When asked why there isn’t a border around the entire glass panel, instead of each block:

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I can deal with borders what would really be nice would be the ability to Chisel the glass blocks or at least make window panes out of them

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It would be amazing to have borderless glass. I agree. I would be very very happy with no borders at all (not even around the outside edge). Also, having some opacity would be ok too, it would not have to be 100% transparent… It is the inner borders on a large window (many blocks) that bother me. It kind of makes the window look like a jungle gym…

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Is it possible to have the boarder expand or divide 4 to 6 blocks with frames instead of each block, so someone can actually see out them with any significance?

Though it would be quite comical to build an invisible wall and grab a cup of coffee.

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The reason for this is that it isn’t possible with voxel blocks (which glass is) to change blocks based on adjacent blocks (at least not to that extent) - I asked why this was possible with doors, and the answer was that doors are meshes, and there is much more they can do with meshes.

There are memory issues with meshes though, which is why there’s a limit on them per chunk - the limit would quickly be used up if glass were to be made into meshes.

It’s basically a technical issue. There’s nothing more the art team want than to give us glass we’re all satisfied with, and they’ve been addressing our concerns since the beginning - it’s just a lot harder than it seems from an outside perspective.

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Thank you!!!

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I just wish glass worked underwater lol

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May i suggest that we also need tinted glass :smiley:

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If you play on PC, you can achieve fun results by modding the game.

Here is a file with the change already made:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XWTOQbvQkN8z9ShB7c3GYd8Aj060rTRu

Please backup original first!
The block will be full transparent (only the stack number showing in your inventory).

The texture go inside:
Steam\steamapps\common\Boundless\assets\textures\alphablockatlas

Now you can enjoy the epic view through your new… Boundless window! ( •_•) —>(⌐■-■) yeaaaah!

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Are mods like this allowed? I know it doesn’t really give any unfair advantage to a player, just curious.

Yes. They are.

However, I worry about players learning how to make any textures transparent client-side, because that will cause a whole “X-Ray texture pack” issue within Boundless, allowing players to see past Rock to resources and simply mine right to them… @jesshyland is this possible within the constraints of Boundless, and a future concern?

Edit: Is there anything in place to alert the developers of someone playing the game with edited textures (which is not against the rules), so you could know if somebody is doing it for a one-up against the rest (which is against the rules).

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Yes currently you could be able to change most of the game transparency, and create potential advantage.
In my case I don’t want to waste time on this.

I guess such behavior could be monitored easily if player abuse them (like gathering ressources with minimal blocks broken and direct path). Still a good question from @PendragonTheNinja

By the way I build my personal primitive mod manager too, with backup and all. But I guess we should wait for an official support before breaking everything and get banned. :laughing:

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It works from the outside at least I think so, saw a base at the bottom of the sea and could look inside. Not from the inside viewing out?

Wait, what? I haven’t experimented with the underwater build I want, but what do you mean that it doesn’t work under water?

All you see is the falling water effect. They haven’t been able to change that water works in that sense so all you see is that waterfall look out your window you can’t see anything