Having a foregroung wall would not be enough, because you could still see through the middle layer where the player is. So you need to have a full room with a door blocking sight for the foregroung wall to be visible. Or something.
Foreground walls are confirmed to not be in the game's development, check Blue's info wall post. Also, please don't resurrect threads this long dead unless there is new information on the topic.
YES PLEEEEEEEASE! the one thing i hated bought terraria was the fact you couldn't build foreground walls. if the devs ever needed any ideas on how to do them just look at the terraria forum suggestions there has to be like 50 of them by now
Guys I'm sad to say it, but I don't think Foreground will be implemented. Here is a direct quote from Tiy on IRC. "[08:21] <@Tiy> but aside from that. If you build a house, who says players want the foreground to be the same as the background? How do they remove blocks that are in the middle of the foreground if the foreground disappears when the player walks beneath it? [08:22] <@Tiy> What do you use to destroy the foreground? How do you place blocks in the foreground if blocks close to you are dissapearing so you can see underneath them? Any block you place would vanish"
Oh yeah, this was like, your favorite thread back when we were all over the suggestion section Jermex.
I was going to suggest a Foreground layer myself and then I found this. Hm... I don't see that much of a problem with it, excepting for having people hiding behind walls in PvP (foregrounds could be disabled while PvPing) and having to store additional info per tile. And it would allow more and better buildings, and hiding stuff, which comes really in handy when you make maps for others to play. Without a foreground, making secret rooms and stuff like that is almost impossible, and a lot potential fun with exploration and adventuring is lost because of it. I hope they reconsider and find a way to implement it sooner or later. Or that someone makes a mod for it. * Yeah. That's a given. The foreground placed by players would really need the possibility of being different. There's no point on limiting that to beign the same, because then you can't do things like hiding your building so it blends with the terrain. * But there could be naturally occurring foregrounds that are merely a boolean toggle in the title, that allows things like 'stalagmites' and 'stalactites', or vines that appear in the front, or a vein of rock that appears in the front, crossing a tunnel diagonally. You just create some bindable key command(s), command or equippable tool to change the opacity of the visibility of the foreground layer, or to toggle between transparent (0% opacity), translucent(somewhere between 10-90% opacity) and opaque (100% opacity), when used. At higher opacities, you character would still visible by staying translucent or having a translucent outline with high opacity. Ground blocks could also be outlined that way so you know where you can walk. The same toggle would make you interact with blocks in the foreground instead in the background with right click, when opacity for background is greater than 0, or maybe by allowing a new key binding: middle click, or command-binding like shift+right click or alt+right click. Maybe there could also be one that makes you interact with all layers, for faster clearing like ctrl+click. While inside rooms or buildings, the foreground would disappear only while you are inside the building or room with that foreground, and all o the foreground of that building or room would disappear, not just blocks around you. For foregrounds in the open, it'll be blocks around you in a circle, and depend on how dark the area is. The brighter the area, the further you can see.
Sorry if this or part of it has been said already. I figured they'd do something like when your sprite touches the foreground, that block and everything touching that foreground block (meaning part of the same structure) lowers its opacity to like 5%. Maybe they could use distance from the foreground to dynamically change the opacity -- i.e. The closer you are to the foreground, the less opacity it has. Placing blocks could be toggled with scroll wheel (or tab key or whatever is easy) 1-3 states. 1-background; 2- mid; 3-foreground. The layer you are able to place blocks show up in the upper-right corner when you have the block placing tool selected.
This is what I was also thinking; The foreground layer would feature the fourth wall, just opaque as long as you're not behind it. Mayhaps to counteract hiding mobs you could put in some manner of radar. But yeah, I imagined building on the foreground layer and even walking past it and using doors on that axis to go to the background layer. A bonus, would be if the backmost layer could do the same thing with doors and you could do a sort of Subcon Door trick from Super Mario Bros 2 where you flip the scenery horizontally and observe it from another angle. It'd be like a whole 'nother world and stuff could be hiding there. If it's any help, this is really something that would make Starbound stand out a lot from other platformers and Terraria.
You could always have some manner of UI with a scroll or somesuch for modifying the opacity of the foreground, or just a checkbox for making it completely visible and immediate so that your player's actions are aimed towards it.
Glass foreground blocks should be completely opaque, so that when you look at a home somebody built or something you can still see their characters moving past the windows.
When discussing the mechanic of only being able to see the inside of a house when you're inside it, but only the foreground when you're not, one of the problems Tiy mentioned is that players might want to make the foreground tiles different from the background tiles. Why is this a problem? If you're outside of the house, it seems perfectly fine to me for you to see what would appear as the foreground when you're inside. It makes sense. What you're placing as "walls" should in effect be what people see from the outside of your house. When you go into your house, you should not be able to see the outside appearance of the walls. There isn't really a reason for them to look different.
I'm not really for this idea. Not that it wouldn't look cool, but I just think it would over complicate building/destroying things. Also what happens when you have a chasm that you can't see covered with a generated foreground layer of rock, or a monster hiding behind a foreground mountain.
Not everything you buy is a house. Let's say you are making an "adventure planet" for friends. By allowing you to put different tiles in the foreground, you could hide a room as a hill on a mountain wall or a just part of the walls of a cave. You won't see there's something there until you actually enter it by stumbling upon it or seeing how the light of your flashlight goes through instead colliding with the wall. And once you are in, you could have walls that fit the theme of the room properly for the atmosphere of the adventure. It also allows for all sorts of traps to watch out for, like making a hole with spikes at the bottom, and covering it with a foreground wall. You could also make hidden destructible walls in a room with indestructible walls. And like when you hit with a sword in Zelda or use the X-ray scope in Metroid, you would find them and destroy them to go through. Imagine if it was possible to toggle a block to make it indestructible, and to rig a switch to destroy others switches. You could do something like making three rooms with three locked indestructible doors, three switches. Using one switch would open the door, and destroy the other two switches. If you had foreground walls, you could hide the what's behind the doors, and so you can't just open the doors and see what's behind. if you don't have them, how do you hide it? Some kind of block that does not let light pass at all so the inside is completely dark? And there's also privacy. With a foreground layer covering your room the chat bubbles could be hidden from the outside by it, or the stuff you are doing inside of there. You may also want to switch armors and surprise someone with the new getup after the change is fully done, or build something and keep it hidden or something. More layers will always complicate things more. But I don't think it'll be overcomplicating. You would not need a foreground for a room to be considered a room. You'll only add them when you want to. There could also be some quick setting or key command to place both foreground and background at the same time if you don't mind them to be the same, or even a way to 'fill' the entire room surface with a foreground, much like the paint bucket in MSPaint. You know what? That'll be neat for the background too. Monsters will probably move towards you. And areas that could have foregrounds and may have hiding enemies could actually be interesting for higher tier planets. It'll be a new form of danger: instead merely making monsters stronger, make them lurkers hiding in the shadow. Chasms could also be something useful, to make traps and such in adventure maps. And light sources could make them translucent or transparent. Grab your flashlight, move it around, and you see stuff behind the foreground walls like with the X-Ray in Metroid. As for PvP, foregrounds could be disabled when playing PvP, or by a setting server if people really don't want them. It's not like the world would end if it didn't have it, but a lot of stuff would be lost. I believe that what foregrounds add to the game outweights the problems they may have.
It's nice to see this idea still getting likes. Though it's been said that it's not going to make it into the game.
Yeah so essentially now you need to start looking into programming. I'm sure modding will be possible at some point
Well the foreground bricks could make all connecting ones invisible when entered, but when leaving they become non-transparent. Simple subject too. Ir would make houses look sexier when you aren't in them. Full support!
I think it is a very bad idea. I hate it when some monsters are attacking from the hideout. And I hate obstructing view objects too. Please, do not add bushes or something, don't overcomplicate fighting gameplay. The foreground blocks will also complicate the controls. Now one should choose from 3 layers of blocks to place/remove stuff. People should memorize contents of all buildings - now they can't just look at the building from distance to see what is in. The opacity for foreground blocks is a bad idea too - it will still obstruct the view. And, come on. It is a 2D game. Don't you think 4 layers are too much for it? Please, do not overcomplicate the gameplay. It will make the game less successful IMO. Also how will the "removing" foreground wall of a building work when player is inside? What if a foreground wall is not complete and consists from a non connected components of blocks? There are so many things about foreground layer which could be done bad and thus degrade the gameplay. But the benefits are very small - only more realistic buildings and sudden monsters attacks.
