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.
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).
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.
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
You can see through the glass if you’re underneath looking up but if you’re looking through the side like an aquarium then all you see is the flowing water effect.
Yes the game can manage semi opacity. But devs say it consume lot of ressources.
Here is an official very detailed answer about it.
I didn’t try (yet) to force semi transparency into opaque blocks.
my focus right now is to play with waterfall, because it’s a good half-working example.
I don’t know wich stance I should take about modding. The game right now is pretty open and push people like me to play a lot with the assets. Will try to make soft things first. Like gifts blocks for christmas with some candy cane gleam…rainbow garlands sparks conduits?
I’ve tried my best to make x-ray a thing, making the textures transparent, but the game doesn’t render blocks behind other blocks (unless those blocks are considered see-through like glass).
Since I couldn’t find a way to get the game to render stuff behind rocks, all i saw was the sky
It seems like a lot of hassle basically, but would in theory be possible if you could get the game to treat rocks like glass or something.
I tried making all rocks glass, which was really trippy looking, but it wouldn’t render as transparent, just solid white. I found a reference in a JSON file to a default white png as one of the textures they might load, maybe if another didn’t work right (just guessing though) but nulling that didn’t do anything and removing it gave me an error when loading the game.
Of course this is getting into dangerous territory, I was just curious what I could do and see how the textures work. I’m stuck between wanting to experiment more with the files and just play the game haha.
It /is/ a lot of hassle, but you KNOW someone will end up figuring it out if it’s possible. I just think there should be some safeguards in case that were to happen.
I just think there should be some safeguards in case that were to happen.