Coloured Blocks

Weeeeell, I like the idea of having the ability to have tons of different coloured dirts. It would be brilliant for pixel art and such, but I could see that it would make inventories horrible. Plus it may be hard to tell the difference between the ones that are just slightly different, making stacking them harder. So a comprise would be good. Maybe the ability to select what colour dirt you want at whatever time? I have no idea how hard that would be though.

So from those options, I'd have to say 3. Purely for people sanity.

 

Added poll.

EDIT: oops, and put the brit spelling of color back.

 

Adding a poll late just motivates wrong people to vote more.

 

What have you doooone. They're just gonna vote for every option now. ;_;

On topic: I voted for every option. I'm okay with color.

 

Well, option 3 would be the best for inventory management and such but i would really like option 1...

 

If it is just dirt that is mostly the different coloration... whats the question don't we all delete that stuff anyways?

 

option 1

 

Well it would actually be cool to have different colored blocks of dirt, at least for the sake of authenticity. However, considering how unpractical that would be I vote for option 3. I mean you have a paint tool anyways. And it's not like you'll be building too many rainbow dirt houses So, yeah, that's my opinion.

 

Options 2 and 3 just "dumb down" the game too much. Option 1 is the best for the game because it doesn't alter the things we find without our wanting to do so. People are so concerned with inventory space. I understand that. Lets say we're digging a huge mine and we've built up a large quantity of local dirt. It goes into a stack in our inventory. Why not make dirt stack to 1000 so we can carry tons of it without requiring another inventory space? Also, lets say we're collecting all this dirt as we mine and it's now using 4 spaces in our inventory. We also have 4 spaces used up by some different dirt we mined on another planet previously. Why are we still carrying the dirt from our previous expedition? This dirt should have either been disposed of prior to leaving the previous planet, stored on said planet, or placed in our ship's storage prior to beaming down to the new planet. It's our own fault that we're still carrying it and thus our inventory dilemma is our fault. Not a fault of the game mechanics. If the game caused all gathered resources to become generic once gathered, it's going to diminish the sense of discovery and exploration.

An option 4 was suggested above. This being that all dirt stacks in one stack, however, when we access this stack, we get a pop-up menu showing each color dirt we have previously discovered. Therefor we can place any color material we have found before, but are limited to just these colors (and generic too). This would eliminate both problems, while introducing a new (less significant) problem. No longer would the "it fills up my inventory too much" crowd have reason to lament. And the "I want everything to stay as it was when I found it" crowd (me included) also can have it their way. The new problem would only be considered a problem by those who are true believers in getting rewards from your efforts. By this I mean that if I want to build a structure out of the pretty slate-blue stone I found on a particular planet, I would have to mine every bit of material necessary to construct it. Option 1 already includes this dynamic. This proposed Option 4 would alter it such that you could find that nice stone, take one piece of it and now be able to place any stone found anywhere with this coloration. You wouldn't need to gather the stone from it's actual source. Any source of stone would do. I dislike this as I would prefer to have to work to get my reward, ie enough to build my structure.

So my solution would simply be to go with Option 1, but make the stack sizes of common materials large enough to slow down inventory flooding. Especially dirt. 1000 per stack should do fine.

I SO want the materials to remain unique (and stack separately) that I had previously proposed that every material gathered also include a bit of information holding the planet name on which it was found when the material is examined. This way we could always know where to return to find more. This would require more effort if we want to use large quantities of a material on a planet other than the one it originated from, but this is part of the joy gleaned from sandbox games such as this. Gathering the materials we need. Anything else would be simplification, and eliminate anything special about gathering materials on different planets.

The paint gun is not a solution as it apparently only colors a material with one of 10 different colors so we cannot truly maintain the uniqueness of the original material by simply painting generic material with the paint gun.

Most of what I have said I stated earlier in this post. I simply wanted to reiterate these things as they play heavily in the game's overall sense of variety and procedural splendor. True explorers should not be satisfied with Options 1 or 2.

EDIT: And remember everyone, this is not just about DIRT. It will take effect for ALL materials gathered on a planet. Dirt, stone, sand, clay, etc.

 

Ah, I don't know why I thought this was only regarding dirt (which would have been easier to overlook considering the given options). In this case we really need an option 4. I'm all for that type of authenticity as well.

edit: I guess it helps immersion as well

 

The only way I could see keeping each color of dirt as a different type of block would be if there was some difference in what could be grown in various colors. You could use the Munsell color system that is used as the official color system for soil research as designated by the USDA. There's really no need for any of that though, to me you can use option 3, then use star type and temperatures to determine what will be able to grow where.

 

I voted 1 because I very much want the "red" dirt I found before to still be red if I try to place it on a planet with "green" dirt. There's plenty of storage in this game that it shouldn't be a problem especially since we'll be on our ship between planets to store excess dirt.

 

Option #2
With a paint tool that covers the coloration, (already demoed a while back), I'd prefer the one-stack method.

Though seeing how I'm already in the deep minority, further elaboration is futile.

 

#1, because it seems weird that dirt would change colour after I dig it.

Maybe make a "Block homogenizer" device where blocks go in and come out as a selected type of the kinds you put in?

 

This vote is a lot closer than I thought it was going to be.

 

Why isn't it possible to group similar block "types" into one category, which one may change via right-clicking? For instance, if I have 20 reddish dirt blocks, and 10 blue dirt blocks, the icon shows me I have 30, but maybe shows multiple materials in that slot. So I can right-click, and choose if I'd like to select the 20 reds, or 10 blues. Best of both worlds, right? ..pun intended

EDIT: Whoops, missed that Pentarctagon and XRiZUX had already mentioned this!

 

A lot of you seem to like your various versions of "option #4". Might I remind you, that doesn't exist. Pretend if you will that these are your 3 options and there's nothing else!

#1 being the option where you have an ungodly amount of stacks of dirt taking up room after room of storage, impossible to effectively navigate and terrible to manage.

#2 being the option nobody really cares about.

#3 being the realistic option that isn't "dumbed down" as the alternative isn't hardcore, it's just insane (take it from a hardcore gamer ;p). Also all the cool kids pick 3. We used to have it work like #1 but as a guy who BUILDS in this game it was a nightmare. Too many stacks! Too many dirts that often look identical but aren't which leads to confusion! Then it's not only dirt but most natural tiles! THE HUMANITY!!!

Vote 3!

 

The poll should have had only had one option: #3

That way everyone who votes gets to be right, and nobody loses! Yay!

 

But how about a simple modification of 3 where one can have all dirt types consolidated into one pile, and any dirt/stone/clay/sand type (color) that we have discovered (such as auto-scanned by the matter manipulator to discover its "ingredients") can be placed again with some simple color menu? That way we still have to discover the colors, too. It honestly makes the best of both worlds for 1, 2, and 3. Especially 1 and 3.