Blockland Forums > Suggestions & Requests
32bit color paints?
Chrono:
Note: This is about the spraycan, and brick colors, and more directed towards Badspot. This would be impossible as an add-on.
We are currently living with 6-bit (64 possible colors) due to datablock limitations.
Wouldn't 32-bit colors allow for better looking builds?
It's not like we need all those datablocks for different colors.
Look at the way particles work on bricks. They can change to the color of the brick. Wouldn't an emitter be able to do the same from a player's spraycan color?
But what about all those different color spray cans? Screw them. We don't need them. I'm not making love to the spray can as I spray my builds. It's fine in one color. Perhaps a rainbow or some gray?
It would only be adding 6 chars to a brick's colorID value. (FFFFFF90 [trans white] as opposed to something like 23 [depends on colorset])
A player could use a color selector to fill up their own personal colorset and save as favorites.
Space Guy:
Transferring over five times as many bits for color data has some implications on load times for larger builds...
BobAndRob:
Removing spray can dataBlocks is no problem.
Spockticus:
Great idea, I just don't know what I'd do with so many colors :o
I'd manage, though :D
Trader:
--- Quote from: Chrono on October 07, 2009, 01:36:49 AM ---We are currently living with 6-bit (64 possible colors) due to datablock limitations.
Wouldn't 32-bit colors allow for better looking builds?
--- End quote ---
1. The 32-bit "color" to which you're referring is a lie. What you're actually talking about is 24-bit "color" (8 bits each for red, green, and blue) and then an 8-bit transparency value. This 24-bit color space most frequently in use is known as the sRGB (standard RGB) color space.
2. Blockland already supports 24-bit colors with transparency. When you connect to a server, the RGBA values of the server's color set are transfered to your client. Currently, you can select 64 colors from the available 16.7 million colors. Each color is assigned an ID (0...n).
3. The 6 bits you're talking about actually refers to the network traffic required to tell a client what color a brick is (decimal-based ID to binary). For example:
60 = 111100, 61 = 111101, 62 = 111110, 63 = 111111
"Bit" stands for "binary digit", and can have the value of 0 or 1. Each of the binary values above contains 6 "bits", so the server must transmit anywhere from 1 to 6 bits per brick to each client. Allowing 7 bits would provide us up to 128 distinct colors from the available 16.7 million. As for transmitting the hex values as you suggested, look at the number of bits required to transmit just the letter "A":
A = 01000001
The real solution here is to convert the paint can to use raycasts instead of projectiles, which will eliminate one datablock per color. Then, just allow us 128 or 256 colors (7 or 8 bits, respectively). I believe Badspot has had some ideas on how to really revamp the paint system since before v9. Maybe he'll finally get around to implementing them.
Allowing the full 16.7 million colors is not only a terrible idea, it's completely unnecessary.