Should the overlay pack (or parts of it) become official?

[Thamus_Knoward]

Hey People,

I'd like to start a conversation on which individual features of the overlay pack I developed you think should become part of the main pack, or whether the overlay pack as a whole should become standard. I guess, in that sense, it's also important to understand that this really only changes natural blocks and (some) plasters. I have been experimenting with other usage such as adding a frame to glass blocks, but since this only works with full blocks, I don't intend to delevop that further. Instead, with this, I'd like to focus on blocks that can overgrow, mix, or otherwise be rendered onto to other blocks.

Download the latest pack here and warp to /warp overlaytest to see all its features in one place.

I'm tremendously biased towards implementing it so I'll refrain from partaking in this discussion.
I'll start you off, however, quoting Emote:

Other ones will need a bit more discussion since I've seen some cases which they detract from so we'll need to figure out how we want to resolve those.

I've also attached some with/without screenshots from places all around Westeros:
HG Before:
HG After:

Parren Before:
Parren After:
RingfortBefore:
RingfortAfter:
RousemontBefore:
RousemontAfter:

 

[Emoticone11]

One thing I noted earlier: there's an issue with slabbed paths with the dirt overlays due to some areas having sloppy terraforming, resulting in things like this:

If the overlay pack is made official, there will be issues with guests running into things like this while exploring. At the same time, we're probably not going to make much progress on fixing them if people are not using the overlay pack, and hence not noticing them. So the question is, do we want to bite the bullet and officially include the dirt overlay CTMs now, or try to heavily encourage people to use the pack and fix these things on sight for a while?

 

[Adorkabley]

I'm for it as long as I'm allowed to fix up any gradients I did that look odd from the change.

 

[DutchGuard]

I personally have no issue with making the overlay official. I struggle to see the differences in the images above, most likely because my brain is better at visualising form and not as good at seeing colour (which is why gradients are still largely a foreign country to me). Ultimately it makes little difference to me, though I am sure that subconsciously everyone will eventually and innately be able to identify the differences in game, leading to the reporting of issues mentioned above.

Is there any noticeable drop in framerate or rendering when using the overlay for anyone? I don't notice any performance issues myself.

 

[EStoop]

I dig it for the nature stuff but I'm not quite convinced with the plasters.
I think for materials used in buildings it should either be an all or nothing approach.

 

[SseriousBusiness]

I agree with Stoop, I really like the nature stuff, but the plasters if they were to be added they need some tweaking because I feel like for example with the light stone it covers too much the reach stone, and the visual amounts of each material change with the overlay making it look remarkably different then without the overlay. But besides that I'd love to see the overlay become the standard pack. And was also wondering if it would be possible to have the overlay effect for some "Block sets" like transitions such as Reach Cobble>Reach Brick>Reach Light Stone, but thats not urgent or anything just curious.

 

[Thamus_Knoward]

And was also wondering if it would be possible to have the overlay effect for some "Block sets" like transitions such as Reach Cobble>Reach Brick>Reach Light Stone, but thats not urgent or anything just curious.

Technically that's definitely possible!

 

[Margaery_Tyrell]

I dig it for the nature stuff but I'm not quite convinced with the plasters.
I think for materials used in buildings it should either be an all or nothing approach.

I agree with this approach as well

 

[Thamus_Knoward]

I dig it for the nature stuff but I'm not quite convinced with the plasters.
I think for materials used in buildings it should either be an all or nothing approach.

What do you mean by the "all or nothing approach"?

 

[EStoop]

I think, by allowing only plaster to merge with surrounding blocks on buildings, it will make the differences between various stone blocks within the same wall stand out much more, having the exact opposite result of what the overlays are trying to achieve.

It should not just be exclusively for plasters, but for all blocks within a certain "set", such as blocks that are part of the Reach stone set, dun stone set, grey stone set, Oldtown stone set, etc., excluding decorative blocks.
Similarily, you can think about doing the same with wood planks in it's varying colours, as well as vertical planks.

That said, I have no clue how these overlays work or if you can prevent, for example, reach stone merging into dun stone while allowing it to merge into reach cobble, while at the same time having dun stone that can merge into the various blocks we have within the dun set.

Edit | How I see it, we often use the mix of plaster and stone to portray a single buildup of wall, namely flaking plaster (the intended prevalence of which is debatable). Picking just one of these elements to "smooth" makes the other elements stand out more, as is the case in both examples with Reach stone. However, if we decide to apply the overlays only to stone, any wooden elements on a building will look less well defined since they do not have the same smoothness between them as stone (oak is often used in combination with jungle, or similar to plaster with painted wood). Hence the "all-or-nothing approach".

 

[Scubooty]

All I want is Coochie Moss, sorry cushion moss, to have overlay with the Terrainsets

 

[vikram]

I agree with this approach too.

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