I just read a post written by @jesshyland about the technical difficulties that would show up when making semi-transparent glass and other stuff like that.
So I wondered…
If less transparent glass or glass with reflective properties is out of the question, how about stained glass?
I used to play on Creativerse, and there, we had that kind of diamond glass with emissive properties which made for some really cool ambiences :
Would that be doable in Boundless?
Just the thought of stained glass made from all gem colors, oh my…
The cathedrals you could make with that sort of thing would be insane.
I think the engine would already support this style of block. Basically visually solid blocks that are emissive and allow sun light to pass through. Assuming they were crafted from glass + gleam + whatever, the visual design question would simply be about what stained glass patterns we wanted.
Does the visual brightness of these blocks themselves change during day and night?
Does the light passing through these blocks onto the surrounding blocks change during day and night?
(In the screenshots they simply look like a visual variation to lamp blocks.)
All blocks in boundless can have light transparency. For example the leaf blocks are visually “solid” (you can’t see through them) but allow light to pass through them. As you stack leaf blocks up they gradually block more and more light.
I would totally love to see some sort of designs like hooded, robed citizens on them.
Would fit extremely well into a guild hall I am planning out right now.
Also some designs akin to The Rose Window would be cool as heck.
You quite right about the similarity of this blocks and variations of lamps. So I think visual brightness of this blocks and light passing through must change during day and night.
It will be awesome, if here would beautiful ornated pieces like Ornate Gleam Door
Also could engine support sunlight coloration when light pass through a block?
Oh right! I forgot about leaf blocks
Maybe I thought they had to be chiselled.
Sometimes the aesthetic doesn’t work with leaves, but I would probably use ice a lot more if a bit of light transperancy was enabled!
And of course would always welcome more new blocks too!
About the screenshots from CV, the bottom one is from one of my own builds. The red and yellow stained glass blocks have colored lamps behind them to generate ambient light. So these blocks let light pass through.
But these blocks are very old and don’t have an emissive texture. But the blue-diamond ones from the first picture have an emissive texture which makes them stick-out in the dark, but not enough to over-power the overall visual during the day. With a blue colored light behind, it could make for some tasty visuals, though. Anyway…
If blocks working like that could be done in a future patch, I’d be all up for it. But eh, even I’ll admit that there’s other more important things that need to happen first, like ladders (for which I saw official artworks dating from years ago), and I’m already not holding my breath on those… ^^’
those blocks from creativerse were semi transparent cause during the day light was passing through and during the night they were slightly brighter… Very good example btw @Goblinounours. Ive played creativerse for a long time as well nice game as well i miss couple blocks from creativerse in boundless like switches logic blocks etc those were awesome And definitly those u mentioned
Yeah, I also miss all the various blocks from CV, and the cool things like Phasers to make secret passages.
But I came back to it a few days ago to deal with an administration situation (as I’m still a well known and respected admin there) but the insanely long loading screens for well-populated worlds immediately made me yell “bye guys, I’m going back to Boundless”. ^^
Now I’m just hoping that Wonderstruck can provide us with more new blocks for us to build cooler things.
I mean, I’m really not looking forward to the Hunter creature which is coming soon, as the game is already hard enough as it is.
nice game as well 
like switches logic blocks etc