For the record I’m fine with 255 colors we have right now 
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I assume hypothetically they could change it to 512 and run everything thru a converter
Also if they hypothetically used 9 bits (I presume they use 16 bits anyway, since there’s other data in there, but hypothetically)
9 bits instead of 8 is 112.5%
Cubed that’s 142%
So it’s +42% more data not +700%
Totally depends on how they would want to implement it.
Like right now we have 255 colours, those will stay, they could add 1 bit somewhere else to designate that there’s more colour data or not and then only add an extra byte of colour info into the data when needed.
This does mean they should have 1 bit free in the rest of the block data somewhere, if not, well…
Changing to 512 is 1 bit extra, they don’t even need to run thru a converter, if that bit is 0 it’s the old 8 bit colour…
But to add 1 bit extra info they will need to have room to represent that. If colour data is exactly 1 byte which it is then they would need to add a whole byte. Unless they still have some unused bits in the rest of the block data but seeing they are severely limited in many ways (like the limit on fluids) doesn’t look like they have much space to work with.
Honestly tho, I’ve always kinda hoped they would add colour modifier info, same base 255 colours but something can change that colour, brighter, etc. essentially thus creating more actual colours. And if they do it how I described above then the data is not necessarily becoming much more.
Especially if the way to get the extra colours is rather ‘expensive’ so there won’t be ginormous buildings be made out of it the total data size might be doable.
Besides, with the new console gen coming around, internet speeds getting faster it should be feasible in a few years to have our little game take twice as much data to move about…
Just add a byte per block to it, where each bit can represent “hey, there’s more xx type of data following this byte!”
Or as I mentioned, if they have a single bit left right now to tell that there is an extra byte of info for this block alone then they can use 8 bits again to represent all kinds of things, like 1 bit is “yep, new fluid type, next byte is the colour of the gleam fluid!”, another bit “yep, extra colour info incoming!”, etc.
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I want more shades of silk yellow to meme harder!
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I want gleam fluids!!!
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Shameless plug
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Since you can’t achieve this with primitive data types but have to build your out of a struct or a bitfield or whatever, is it actually smaller then a 16 bit native type?
I know! I loved that idea! Hence why I’m voting for more data per block!
Block data size matters! We need more of it!
Got 1 bit spare at the moment? Use it to indicate there’s another byte of lovely info about the block!
Go get cracking team!
They do use bitfields, yes, and one can do that with a byte too if needed…
Then we are back to the op question: Why 256?
Because for now that is the max number they settled both for memory size, internet data size and speed of the code…
Just saying there are nice ways to extend the number of colours without exponentially growing the size of the data…
Yep could be 512 with only a 42% increase in size after cubing
If they have 1 bit left somewhere to indicate extra colour info AND they decide to never ever wanna add even more they can simply use that bit with 0% increase in size…
And what the heck do you mean with cubing??
Because 256 is exactly the size of a byte and they thought it to be enough.
One can keep asking why, but that’s just it, lol
If they already have the space left for that bit, as you say you think they use 16 bits, not sure why you think that, one can perfectly fine use a byte for size, then they do not have any extra data.
If they don’t have that extra bit spare they will need to add an extra byte which will mean 1 byte per block/item which is much more than you are describing.
And still have no clue why you are cubing that percentage…
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Because there are three dimensions so there is exponential growth in size. Right?
Actually since it’s a closed system it’s not cubed. Ur right
A block is a block is 1, isn’t it tho? We are talking about block/item data, not plots/chunks tho…
They already use that byte, 0 is default for the planet’s color as Odeon said above.