Friday Facts #214 - Concrete rendering

[whitecold]

The tiles look really nice... they just don't have the 'industrial' feel. The main reason I prefer concrete over stone tiles is that the concrete looks much flatter, much more like a factory floor than a hand assembled path. For me I'd much prefer even completely untiled, flat, poured concrete.
Both floors in the picture pretty much like brick floors to me. If the bricks are made of concrete or stone matters much less than if the floor is poured or assembled from individual bricks.

[TheTom]

Ok, here is an idea.

GET RID OF THE GRASS ETC.

Not in general - but when I lay down concrete. I really hate that I have a large area of poured concrete (or set stone) and there are bushes around. Concrete and Stone should form a flat area without any decals from the original terrain.

[Xeorm]

Will echo that the art looks well done, but doesn't look how I want it to look for an industrial concrete feel. It looks like the badly laid concrete I'd see on sidewalks. Not the flat overlay I'd expect for a factory or something to drive on.

[galibert]

I suspect concrete has so much success *because* it has the grid pattern. It's very useful when you want to analyse what's going on. And being under the entities rather than over them it doesn't feel in the way like a superposed grid does.

OG.

[Omarflyjoemacky]

I cannot understand the others - I LOVE THE NEW CONCRETE. Truly. It's a masterpiece.

All I want for Christmas is .16!

[Armentia]

And being under the entities rather than over them it doesn't feel in the way like a superposed grid does.

Oooh, can we do that to the grid? I'd leave it on if it was under the entities.

And, I'll agree similar with others, that the art is *gorgeous*, but it's not very concrete like. New tile-types gogogo!

[bman212121]

I agree with galibert that one of the useful features of the concrete is making the grid more visible so placement is easier. IMO concrete is not meant to be pretty but utilitarian in nature. It exists to provide a solid foundation to whatever sits on top of it, and is bland and smooth so it is not distracting as a backdrop. I'll reserve my judgement a bit as the picture you have is quite small and doesn't really show enough of the tile to see what it would look like at scale. My biggest concern is that the pattern is far too busy and will distract from what you're trying to do versus serving it's purpose in the background and being helpful.

EDIT: I'd love to see a picture of a straight 100 x 100 grid of that texture zoomed out. I can hazard a guess that there will be so much detail you'll go cross eyed trying to look at it.

[Meppi]

Changes like these always take a little time to get used to, after looking at the old textures for so long. I like it though.

I think the completely black parts of the texture make it look a bit too harsh and bumpy.
That could maybe be toned down a bit.

[Xterminator]

Sorry to hear about the illness going around the office. Hope everyone gets better soon!

As for the concrete, I think the graphic itself looks amazing and I would love to have it in the game! However, I am really not a fan of it being the graphic for concrete. That is more of a stone path or wall texture, not concrete. Near the beginning of the FFF, it is said that two of the issues with the current concrete are:

It has a visible grid that doesn’t match the tilted projection of the game.
It doesn’t seem to have any height.

I think the complete opposite. As others have mentioned, having a visible grid on the concrete is why a lot of people like it as it is, and having it be flat is also why it's used on so many megabases because it provides a nice clean tile to show off all the rest of the factory. With this new graphic, I would pretty much never use it as more than a small walking path because it is just way too busy and distracting to be used behind a factory.

Concrete is flat, and even old cracked concrete just looks like... Old cracked concrete, not some cobblestone road in an old European village.

[Rue99]

The first Friday facts that have made me wince. I don't like the new texture. I'm super happy with the existing texture - partly because layout is important to me (nerd!) and it helps. Perhaps we can keep the old texture as an option? Please?

[Escadin]

You know ow, since we cannot "rotate" bricks and concrete how about you guys bind "rotate through available textutes" to "R" and add all the options that have come up to it?
That way we can have the old concrete texture, this new one as an alternative to bricks and then replacement for this one as second option for concrete. Everyone wins.

Probably too much work.

[ili]

so let us know what you think on our forum.

I think I have a new wallpaper for my phone.

[briezee]

As much as I love the graphic, I agree with others, that feels like stone brick.

It also looks like a tripping hazard, where as concrete in the game is used to speed up movement significantly.

[POPISowyNumer]

The first thing I thought when I saw new concrete graphic was 'that's not concrete, that's pavement in front of my flat'.

It looks gorgeous.
It's richly detailed and really has that 3d feel.
But for love of god, this is not concrete.

Why not make something like this?

[Andrzejef]

hey, this last pic in the article looks amazing, like a shrine to the world-engine

[Lav]

I shall join the chorus I guess.

I love the new texture.

I totally don't want this texture to be concrete though. It doesn't look like one, and more importantly, it doesn't feel like one.

[InstantMix]

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really not a fan of the textures used for the stone paths nor the concrete, nor the horrendous bordering material either.

Half of the game is it's aesthetic, a throwback to prerendered games like Fallout and Sim City; a key part of that is making sure all of the images work together. Some sort of coherence. The new textures decohere with the rest of the game, it's really blatantly obvious in this image; it looks like the game graphics were overlaid on top of a mod's content.

First off, concrete-

• Logic - Concrete is poured. Why on earth, if it was poured, would it be jutting out at random angles? Wouldn't people trip over this, wouldn't it make it an issue to maneuver anything on it?
  Aesthetic - Looks like cobblestone. Doesn't scream "concrete" to me at all, if anything it should be smooth - like this or this.

Secondly, what's going on with the border images? Why is there a drop shadow? The borders aren't floating a metre above the ground, it's part OF the ground, so why would there be a dropshadow? It adds an unnecessary contrast between the ground and the concrete, and stands out more than it should. There's a complete dissonance between the stone path and concrete as well, the stone has a fairly defined perspective to it given the shadows on each individual tile. This isn't present at all on the concrete, so there's an immediate perspective issue.
The colours and brightness levels differ completely with the rendered images. They should be similar if you want it to look well.

On top of this, blending of the hazard stripes : whilst texture blending in and of itself is a good thing to be able to do, it makes no sense whatsoever. Surely you want an area that has the hazard stripe to be well defined? Blurring / blending the texture over what seems like 8 or so pixels just seems bizzare - has it been painted that way or has it chipped down like that due to wear and tear? If anything, reduce the blending to a really noisy 3 or 4 pixel blend ( as it'd look like it's been chipped away) or keep it quite strictly to that one grid space. Hazard stripes are blatantly obvious for a reason - they well define an area. I've never, ever seen blended hazard stripes IRL.

I'm sorry if I've just sounded like I'm ranting, but this really isn't up to scratch with the usual quality of your work.

[Lemlin]

Awesome stone path, but not really a concrete looking design. Would love to have it ingame as a third option though.

[Escadin]

Secondly, what's going on with the border images? Why is there a drop shadow?

They are my favorite feature.

[Rhamphoryncus]

The new art is beautiful in its own way (as concrete pavers, not poured concrete). Perhaps a bit too much contrast (and looks like a tripping hazard), as others have said.

I'll point out, however, that a big reason to use it is for the speed tiering. If you already had concrete flooring you'd never want to downgrade to slower stone floors, even if you liked the aesthetic. I can't think of any solution except to remove the tiering entirely, making all flooring the same speed boost.