Better Spray Menu

[Vitawrap]

So I had this idea for a add-on to a better working spray menu.
Basically the current spray menu works as

• Press E to open the spray menu
• Press E again to switch color columns
• Scroll in the column to find the color
• (you currently need to switch to brick cart or toolbar to get out of the spray paint menu)

And my idea is:

• Press E to toggle the spray menu open/closed
• Switch columns by scrolling till the end of a column to reach the top of the next one.

for me it would be a real improvement

[Ad Bot]

[EcstaticEggplant]

that would be terrible. if you wanted to get to the colour at the end it would take a long time especially with a large colourset.

[Advanced Bot]

I'm already so used to the current spray menu, if it gets changed in any way I will not be happy.

[Seath45]

So I had this idea for a add-on to a better working spray menu.
Basically the current spray menu works as

• Press E to open the spray menu
• Press E again to switch color columns
• Scroll in the column to find the color
• (you currently need to switch to brick cart or toolbar to get out of the spray paint menu)

And my idea is:

• Press E to toggle the spray menu open/closed
• Switch columns by scrolling till the end of a column to reach the top of the next one.

for me it would be a real improvement

How about a paint blotch where you can combine the colors to make a new one!

[otto-san]

How about a paint blotch where you can combine the colors to make a new one!

the way brick colouring works makes this difficult/tricky to do in a not-dumb way

in single player it's not so much a prob though, and we have a p well-made mod to handle that (and make colour sets in general) somewhere around here

[}]Crazy[{]

i know some mouses have scroll tilting
you can tilt the scroll left or right
that would be a good way to do it too

[Cypthon]

Jesus, now that i think about it, Blockland does have a bad spray menu mechanic, it should be improved like that.
But if badspot never does that, then a add on for it would be decent.

[gr8dayseth]

really it's fine as it is
like the only problem is the one the op mentioned, but it's not even that big a deal, all ya gotta do is switch to an item or a brick creator

[Trogtor]

i never understood why he have colorsets instead of being able to use any color freely.

[Mr.Noßody]

So instead of having complete control over color columns and colors in that column, you'd rather have to scroll through all your colors just to get to one near the end?

Sounds like you took a major feature away and called it an improvement.

[the_stitch]

add CTRL+E to that list of what's already here
that scrolls columns to the LEFT of the current one.

as it is, it seems pretty functional to me.

[TristanLuigi]

i never understood why he have colorsets instead of being able to use any color freely.

me neither
i'm fine with it as a sort of client-sided favorites menu, but not as a restriction
especially with a 64-color maximum

[otto-san]

i never understood why he have colorsets instead of being able to use any color freely.

it's a networking problem. it's more efficient to send the client the colour set once and then send them one number 0-63 for every brick

as opposed to sending four bytes for every brick (RGBA), which can add up when you have nigh on a quarter million bricks in the simulation (or even nigh on a million now huh)

something along those lines and some more i'm sure. someone else can do a much better job explaining the details of this

[Vitawrap]

So instead of having complete control over color columns and colors in that column, you'd rather have to scroll through all your colors just to get to one near the end?

Sounds like you took a major feature away and called it an improvement.

no, you could just scroll up from the first column to get on the end of the last column and vice versa.

[Xalos]

it's a networking problem. it's more efficient to send the client the colour set once and then send them one number 0-63 for every brick

A well-designed system could do both - have short identifiers for common colors, and only use full RGBA for rare colors.  As the proportions of colors change, change the colorset to represent the new most-common 64 colors.  Since this would happen fairly rarely, and you would only need to replace one color, you don't have to change the entire colorset.

The real reason is probably code inertia - it's been this way for a decade, and changing it will definitely break other parts of the game's code, so why bother messing with it when the current way is good enough for most people?  It's a serious problem in code design that old code eventually solidifies, even after you've realized a better alternative, because of the high cost for changing intricately-linked code.