"Better Grass" Discussion

[Emoticone11]

Before scrolling down: please see the poll above and leave your answer ASAP. "Better Grass" is an option added by Optifine that makes grass blocks connect to other grass blocks rather than having dirt on the sides, as shown in the picture directly below. I want to get a representative view of who uses this feature, so the more people who answer the poll, the better.



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I want to open up this thread for discussion about this feature, since there are multiple interrelated issues that have come up with respect to it.

First, Thamus_Knoward created a patch that makes the color of the dirt on the sides of grass blocks lighter in Mushroom (savanna/desert) biomes, shown below. However, this patch also breaks the Better Grass feature within these same biomes. Hence why I want to gather preferences on who uses Better Grass before pushing this patch to a texture update.



Second, since Better Grass is an Optifine-enabled feature, it will no longer work upon the migration to 1.16.5, since Optifine will no longer be part of our custom client. While it will still likely be an optional install, if we want Better Grass to be a default option in the future, we'll likely have to find some alternative way to provide this feature without depending on Optifine.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on any of this, but the poll is most important! Having a sense of how many people actually use this feature will be useful going forward.

 

[Azulejo]

First, @Thamus_Knoward created a patch that makes the color of the dirt on the sides of grass blocks lighter in Mushroom (savanna/desert) biomes, shown below. However, this patch also breaks the Better Grass feature within these same biomes. Hence why I want to gather preferences on who uses Better Grass before pushing this patch to a texture update.

Is there any way to combine both features or they're mutually exclusive.

 

[Emoticone11]

Is there any way to combine both features or they're mutually exclusive.

Not that I'm aware of. Unfortunately Optifine is closed-source, so there's really no way to check how and when the Better Grass patch is loaded in.

 

[Agonizes]

I tend to play with better grass, but I don't mind it breaking in the selected biomes, since the lighter dirt texture fixes the same ugly dirt proablem, just in a different way than the full side grass does.
I don't know how difficult a texture pack version of the full side grass would be, but I am interested.

 

[otty]

If most people use better grass and updates in the future might impact our use of it. Should we update our grass texture to mimic that of better grass? Is that possiblity? Of course I assume there are people against this idea, I myself don't mind either way and am just putting it out there.

 

[Emoticone11]

If most people use better grass and updates in the future might impact our use of it. Should we update our grass texture to mimic that of better grass? Is that possiblity? Of course I assume there are people against this idea, I myself don't mind either way and am just putting it out there.

This should be possible in principle, but would require effort trying to reverse-engineer how Better Grass works (difficult, again, because Optifine is closed-source). An easier option would be to just make the grass block 6-sided, or to add a 6-sided custom grass block in the 1.16.5 migration and mapping all the vanilla grass block to the custom block.

This brings me to another question: of the people who play without Better Grass enabled, is this just because this is the default option, or do you actually like the aesthetics of having dirt sides more? Would there be any strong objections to making grass have the Better Grass functionality as part of our own texture pack?

 

[CashBanks]

Better Grass looks better for screenshots, plus having dirt exposed on sides just doesn't make sense logically imo

 

[AerioOndos]

Having the exposed dirt sides I find is nice when walking on paths that are a slab below the height of said dirt, or even just with the new path block. It gives a feeling of there having been enough foot traffic to cut a path into the landscape and have exposed dirt walls on the side from that.
That being said, that kind of effect is still entirely possible with a 6 sided dirt texture.

 

[Jakethesnake8_8]

I have a similar preference when doing parts of riverbanks or lakeshores where the bank is very steep. Also for shallow caves where the grass blends into dirt.