My water features now look Bad!

Well with release of new patch placed water looks crappy.
I make a lot of water features in my city cause I used to love it. But with new release the glows and rainbows are gone. All you see is gleam blocks behind it. My own opinion of course prefers old water with nice glows. Gonna have to redo and get rid of water features as I cant stand it now.





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Yeah I also think itā€™s too transparent now. But still it does look ā€œbetterā€ even though it breaks some builds. Price of progress. Lol

Have u tried removing some of the gleam (just enough to keep the full glow radius) and lattice chiseling them to the smallest size

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I didnā€™t even realize this was coming :sob:

I havenā€™t really explored the new rendering and engine changes to find out if I can travel properly again. Had to fill portals first thing this morning and this, this broke my heart.

Not angry or anything just a sort of an ā€œend of an eraā€ sort of feeling.

The screenshots probably donā€™t make a lot of sense to people that havenā€™t been in this area.

@Spitcup I feel you i was just about to add some fountains using that glowing water effect on my new area too.

Except out where itā€™s derendered itā€™s hard to even tell these are water pools now.

I sort if wish they had just been able to fix the water/block interface instead. I liked the old, dark water but had really grown to love the bright, lively colors weā€™ve had for some time now.

At least the new stream isnā€™t faring too poorly. Just sort of ā€˜staleā€™ looking now, like an afterthought rather than the unifying central feature

IDK. Logging out for a while. Iā€™ll try traveling around later.

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Uh oh my water feature may be looking different too. Luckily i dont have many. Didnā€™t realize it was this transparent now though. Fish tanks here i come!

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Iā€™m looking forward to the water being more transparent. Have one specific spot Iā€™m hoping looks better now.

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lol yea im psyched to see what mine looks like, prob only requires a minor change to hide the lighting moreā€¦ but I expect more awesome results game-wide than unfortunate situations like OPā€™s

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Yeah I took a swing by @the-moebiusā€™s sunken city, his flow controls in the fountains look nice as a sort of freestanding sculpture but the water is a dim accent to the blocks now instead of the other way around.

Good luck. Nothing is hidden.

We have full + global control over the water transparency / opacity - so it can be set to whatever we collectively like.

Ultimately how transparent do we want water to be? But it needs to be global. All water.

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Perfect. I wanted to see what I put in the water. Could barely see it before. It was only visible at night.

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I like the transparent water

  • make water opaque again
  • make water less transparent (more opaque)
  • make water more transparent (less opaque)
  • the current transparency is good

0 voters

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Does that mean whether water is running or not water it will have the same transparency? There is no way to adjust based on how is being set?

Running water = opaque
Still water = transparent

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I think without the added transparency, the pure water features on most planets looked bad without the gleam

Edit: Nightstar and spitcup both your builds still look fine!

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I need to check what it looks like when i get home before I answer that

The sides of water look so, so much better than it did before. Actually feeling like water and not just a false wall-like block that you can swim through. Sure, it was nice to have hidden entryways behind waterfalls ā€¦ but I love being able to see into the water now when I build a feature into water and have an open window looking out into the water.

As for the surface of water, I was hoping THAT too would get the same treatment. Unfortunately the surface of water seemed to remain the same as it always had been, being super-reflective and opaque as ever, like a mirror reflecting the geometry around it.

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As far as speaking for ā€˜the communityā€™ I donā€™t know. I was happy. As mentioned Iā€™m not really angry or anything, just a bit sad. Iā€™m not sure if I will still try and route/focus traffic through that section of my build any more. I was building with what we had so if we donā€™t have that any more Iā€™ll just build another way.

In the end I guess it comes down to how many people were building or designing around the moving water effects, and how many saw it as an obstacle to something they were trying to see or do.

Iā€™m not sure with how many people are concerned with the actual transparency of the water as theyā€™re swimming around vs. the surface effects of the sea level and moving water surfaces. Iā€™m not sure how closely the two are related. I think that most of the people asking for more transparency were more concerned with the water/block interface on underwater windows and the like but, honestly could be wrong.

Iā€™m assuming that the reflectivity of sea-level water hasnā€™t changed but i didnā€™t really take time to check that out yet as I was much more interested in the moving water effects.

Simoyd added a poll while Iā€™ve been typing and Iā€™ll throw in a vote for making water more opaque again at the surface interfaces. With my earlier posts it should be clear that I donā€™t mean that I want it to be cloudier while Iā€™m swimming.

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Yes I understand this as most of what people have been asking for, working windows and an ability to see through the reflective plane.

The windows are sort of affected by this but you still see the moving water pattern through the submerged glass, and afaik surface reflectivity on still water isnā€™t affected much either.

I am mixed on the new look. I notice that reflections during the day looking down on water starts to look like Glass is over it. Plus Iā€™m seeing pits and various blocks through it which looks ok but then does also look weird sometimesā€¦ especially when Snow lands and you see snow under the water because the land turns white.

At this point I think I still love the water best when it was that major change a few updates agoā€¦ that still felt nice and pretty enough.

I logged back in and turned up my graphics.

The water surface is still very reflective but you can see through it a lot more. Itā€™s a mixed effect.

When I went to bed the spark links were not visible under this water at the sea-level plane. Though how things look in this basement is really a minor concern lol.

Thanks but as we criticize our own stuff most harshly, all I see is the exposed infrastructure and the odd water/block interface in areas that werenā€™t visible before.

I donā€™t have before and after shots of this as Iā€™m still actively building on this but yesterday this was a glowing pool of shiny blue water:

Now itā€™s just a bunch of wet gleam. There are other things I can do here but the idea of turning this area into another water feature with glowing fountains is pretty much obsolete.

LOL thereā€™s not much snow on raxxa so I havenā€™t seen this yet but yeah that sounds a little jarring.

Agreed - there was a lot of talk about the water at that time and I was worried but wound up extremely happy. I had my focus on other things so I was completely surprised by this one.

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On Off switch cause I love the transparency