Minecraft Forums

Quote from TheMinecraftianGamer

512x granite, normal and polished.

I just wanted to say that I'm really liking your textures; recently they've been quite well done. I can't help but think, however, whenever I see one, that it would be SO much better as a CTM repeat tile spread over 16 128x repeat tiles. I feel like so much of that wonderful detail is lost when the textures are shrunk down, and they don't really look very realistic. You already have tiling textures, the work is done for repeating, texture-wise. You just have to cut them up, and I think it would be a very high-quality result.

UPDATE 01/16/2014
Snapshot 14w3b introduces the ability to texture both arms and legs! It also gives every other body part an extra 3D layer similar to the hat layer in the original skin! Awesome! These new extra layers are covered up by Armor, just like the hat area. The new skin file uses a 64x64 layout with the old skin at the top and the optional overlays in the bottom half. Old 64x32 skins are still supported without modification.

However... this addition will not apply to similarly shaped mobs (zombies, zombie pigmen, etc) and it doesn't work on armor. Whether these things will change in the future is anyone's guess.

As happy as I am for the player improvements, I can't help but wonder if my suggested layout could still benefit the mobs and armors. If nothing else, it would still allow for asymmetrical mob skins and armor while staying within the small 64x32 file size. But then they would have a major discrepancy between formats...

I still like the idea of applying my format to the new skin layout - the bottom half of the 64x64 texture could contain the overlay regions. The only difference then is that the head and hat area on the bottom half would not be used. Perhaps those areas could then be left empty for modders and any other small additions that Mojang made add in the future....

What follows is the original post, while I decide if I should further modify it to try and push for the other mobs/armors to have asymmetrical textures. Either way, this is a huge victory!
Acknowledgement from Dinnerbone himself!

Quote from Dinnerbone

We've no plans to touch skins right now (except to fix them... the skin server is really unstable) but we're rewriting the whole rendering stuffs and maybe we can consider looking at this then, when it all becomes much easier.

Basically saying "maybe" in the future. The important part is that Mojang is aware of the suggestion and was moved enough to respond to the topic!

I am forever amazed with how much detail minecrafters have been able to squeeze out of the extremely limited space provided by the game's textures. Skins especially are quite a challenge due to being confined to a 64x32 pixel size. And yet there are many, many examples of beautiful and amazing skins out there that make the most of this limited space. And yet, it could be possible to grant everyone a little more... to be blunt, the current skin texture for the player character has a lot of unused and wasted space. For those counting, there are 480 unused pixels in the texture (out of a total of 2048).

With a little juggling, we could free up enough space to have independently textured left and right arms and legs! This is without changing the image size, it's still all contained within the same 64x32 png file. Of course, the player model would need to be updated to use this new mapping. Here is an enlarged view:
Pros:
+ independently textured arms and legs+ maintains the original 64x32 size = no additional skin server load/stress
+ keeps all sections grouped together in a fairly intuitive way.
+ sub sections follow a mapping very similar to the original (with only some parts slightly shifted)+ can also be applied to all armors
+ can also be applied to other humanoid mobs: zombie, pigmen, zombie_pigmen
+ can also be applied to skeletons - with slight modifications for the thinner arms/legs

Cons:
- one-time conversion needed for all texture packs for affected mobs and armors
- mods that make use of current skin's blank area may not be able to use the new format
- skin creation tools/viewers would need to update for the new format (difficult for discontinued tools)
- makes all current skins and skin repositories outdated (this is a big problem - see below)

Problem: Compatibility with Legacy Skins
There are hundreds of thousands of skins floating out there on the net. It is not reasonable to expect all of them to be updated or converted. Remember when they flipped the direction of the bottom-head/hat texture areas on the skins? There are still countless skins out there that haven't been fixed. This is a major change so it can't simply be done and let all the current content out there suddenly break. There will be backlash. On top of that, more recently the Minecraft Launcher has been augmented to allow easy access to older versions of the game - versions which absolutely expect the player skin to be using the old format. Finally, there is no reliable way to program the game to detect the different kind of skin formats based only on areas of the skin file that appear to be used. This is because the skins often have extra content in the "unused" areas. This content could be in the form of an author's name/logo, bleed off from the main image, or pixels used by specific mods on the skin.

Bottom line, we need to have a simple way for the game to know how to differentiate between the old and new player skin formats so both may be used at the same time by different players. Note that this problem only affects player skins. Mobs and armors are always controlled by the local texture pack, so there is no need to support the old format for those assets.

Below are several possible solutions to supporting the legacy skins. These are only suggestions, as I do not have intimate knowledge of how Minecraft and the skin system works under the covers. What I propose here may be incorrect or not applicable to the system, but I hope it might at least give Mojang ideas on how to implement this request.

Solution A: Increase new skin file to be 64x64
Increase the "new" player skin size to be 64x64 pixels. Place my new format in the top half and leave the rest blank. Let the old skins stay as using the 64x32 size. There are several reasons for this approach.

When the game client downloads the player skins, it can easily tell the difference in size. A 64x32 skin would use the traditional mapping we see today. Nothing changes and all the current skins out there are still ok to use. A 64x64 texture would signal the game to switch over to using the new format for that player. Since the game knows which player is using which skin, it can easily keep track of which format to use for who, and allow both types to co-exist at the same time.

The extra space in the bottom half of the "new" skin can be used for future player character enhancements by Mojang, in case they decide to add more. As an example... if we ever get custom capes, perhaps the texture could be saved to the player skin and use the extra space here.

The extra space in the bottom half of the "new" skin can also be used by mods! Any mods that had additions to the player model could use these areas. And there would be a lot more space now!

One major drawback to this approach is that the larger image file size could adversely affect the skin servers that Mojang use.

Solution B: stay 64x32 but use embedded metadata
If it proves undesirable to alter the skin file dimensions, another possible solution could be to have all new skins require metadata content added to them. Then, similar to solution A, the game would examine each skin file it downloads and search for the appropriate metadata flag. If it finds none, use the old formatting style on that skin's owning player. If it finds the appropriate metadata flag, use the new format for that player.

One problem with this approach is that png files don't have a standard way of encoding metadata. So I imagine Mojang would need to create a small utility to "stamp" skins with the metadata flag they would expect to use. This would require some extra care for making new skins on the part of the community. But on the up side, this could pave the way for an easy versioning system for additional future skin formats.

Another drawback would be the reduction in free space that some mods may have come to depend on. In this case, I believe the only solution would simply to have those mods not use the new style. They would have to require their users to say using the old skin format. So they wouldn't get the extra arm and leg, but the mods wouldn't break either. A fair trade off I think.

tldr Summary:
I propose a new skin layout for the humanoid mobs, player, and armor which would grant space for both arms and legs to be textured independently. It would be ideal to support both this new format and the old one at the same time for player skins - so as to not break all the current skins out there. There are two (possibly more) ways I can think of doing this:

Support banner get!

[url=http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/677984-r][img]http://i.imgur.com/Iuxwe.png[/img][/url]

Changelog

Please don't tell me I'm the only one whose first response to a new village is to bury them alive in a closed off 2x1 hole with a torch until the village is satisfactorily secured. Anyone? Come on, it works wonders!

*Ahem*. I have to respectfully disagree with ANY kind of zombie nerf for the sake of tetificates. That chicken jockey egg problem is a completely different situation unrelated to this. On a personal level, Minecraft zombies being so smart makes them unique. They are clearly the dominant non-player race of the world, and it shows. They have learned to get past doors. They can use weapons and armor. They can find that one miniscule path you overlooked (that alone has shown me cool new paths I wouldn't have noticed otherwise). Minecraft zombies are awesome. That they AREN'T completely brain-dead idiots is pretty darn cool.

The problem is that the testificates are. And now just to hammer that in, they ARE becoming mere livestock. Rare livestock requiring a special door-filled, zombie proof pen.

There has been an argument that all the other mobs breed with an item. Well, answer me this: how many other mobs will go extinct if you just live nearby and don't bother them? Perhaps chickens in a jungle, and sheep in forests and taigas. That's two mobs, and only in very specific biomes. Not only do zombies pop up everywhere, but villagers also don't naturally spawn anywhere but in specific biomes. Once per village. Even the sheep and chickens living with predators will eventually just respawn new ones. Villagers will not.

Also as others have mentioned golems do not do their job. Some anecdotes:

I have a village that had, at the time, three golems. Just for kicks (they were new and I wanted ti see how well they would protect the place), I let a few zombies in. Well, spawned them in, but whatever. Point is, the golems did not care. It took way to long for them to notice the zombies. I had to drag one over with a lead to get him to even notice. To add insult to injury, they had previously camped my nether portal to kill a completely docile pigman. Through a wall. Something here is messed up.

In another instance, a couple of zombies somehow managed to spawn in my village. I do not know how, but I rolled with it. One was in my house, which I only noticed because he started to bang on my door to get out. I let him, then followed with my sword to see what would happen.

He burned to death. After walking straight under a golems' nose. The other zombies, for those curious, spawned in a mooshroom pen. Neither the golems nor I bothered to do anything about them.

Useless hunks of metal. No wonder I feel nothing for having a farm that smelts the things into ingots. That's all they're good for. And I can't say they never attack zombies, since they found a way to kill two out of four zombies I keep/kept in their own special house in the village (Poor, poor Jack. He never saw it coming).


Tl;dr
Zombies are smart and numerous (please don't change!). Testificates are stupid and few. Iron Golems are bad at their job; even the naturally spawned ones. And now the villagers are becoming nothing more than expensive livestock.

I agree that villagers and their golems need an AI buff. I agree that breeding villagers with emeralds is stupid.

And frankly, I'm surprised that I've not seen one person here defending this change. If that is actually happening on these forums, that is a REALLY bad sign. The new mechanic has to suck pretty bad for that to happen.

Quote from SVGK

no, i'm fine with them breaking the farms and crazy stuff and auto breeders, what i'm NOT okay with is them breaking normal breeding as well, villager trades aren't that useful even now, if they find a way to break automatic breeders and the like, great, but NOT if that comes at the cost of destroying the normal method as well.

Here lies the essence of the problem. Power-players vs normal players. Power players building farms, mega projects, and automated systems in survival verse normal players playing a simpler exploration based survival game.

Mojang wants us to play the game as a simpler survival game, but here's the thing: Mojang are balacing the game around the power-users.

Right now, enchanting, trading, repairing and potions are all ridiculously expensive for ordinary players. To even have access to many items requires hours of grinding. And why? Because Mojang don't want to make it too easy to gain better gear through farming. The response: Bigger more ingenious farms. The counter-response: Items become even more expensive. The end result: Ordinary players get locked out of late game content.

Let's be honest, this latest change in villager breeding mechanics came about as a direct result fo Docm's recent "perfect villager trades" setup and tutorials. So now players can build an enormous breeder/station setup, spend 40+ hours grinding trades, and eventually unlock lots of gear. So what. I see no reason to hoist yet more punishment on normal players just because some power users can grind in in this way.

The end result of all these changes is that regular players are just going to have to work even harder for basically nothing. Our villages will die unless we carefully secure them, our tools require hours of grinding to upgrade or make more durable, even more hours to make futile attempts to repair them, our potions ingredients need far more risk to obtain than the effects even pay off, and we're required to turn over weeks worth of of produce to rip-off villagers for the most misery items in return.

It's not going to be possible to play minecraft in a casual way if Mojang keep make balance changes around power-playering, end-game players. Mojang seem to want to turn single player survival into a endless grind of chores or else something like Don't Starve or a diluted Vecs map. I just want to have fun, explore, build things. It's not goign to be possible to do this if Mojang's idea of playing Minecraft centers around an 80%/20% grind/build ratio.

Quote from TheMinecraftianGamer

512x polished diorite.

That diorite looks amazing, but the added lighting and shading could use some work.
I might suggest that the shading could get darker as it gets closer to the edge instead of it being a flat shade. Then adding highlights to lighting along the inner edge.

I tried replicating your shading and lighting with my own texture.

Then I added the gradient shadows and highlights. Also some sheen on the flat part.


Hope this helps.

Quote from Cozzmy13

I did it once and even now members of TAU don't give any critique to my posts...

Pfft, I can have a topic for a pack and not get any criticism.
@Murphy, Maffhew(Matthew)
It's on the page before this one.

---

I guess I should throw my two-cents into this stock image debate.
It was brought up that people making photo-realistic packs should use pictures they took themselves. This would prove largely improbable. How many people have gravel, dirt, sand, stone bricks, all the flowers, tall grass, hardened clay, regular clay, bricks, et cetera all within a reasonable distance of their house?
You can't possibly get all the resources for what minecraft contains by yourself, not anymore. Stock photos are going to be a requirement for photo-manipulation, just to get all the items minecraft has. So long as you have proper permission to use the photo, and credit has been given, it's as much their pack as any texture I've made is mine.

So let's all stop with the accusations, or whatever they may be, and start being the Texture Artists' Union again.

I've seen plenty of posts around the forums about how saddles should remain uncraftable.
The two main reasons I see are that it makes horses more balanced and it forces people to explore.
I have to disagree.


In regards to exploration, we already have to do that in numerous situations.
Exploring caves to get ores, exploring the overworld to find various resources and the right place to build, finding Nether fortresses so we can brew, filling up maps, finding villages, and finding strongholds and the End portal are all examples.
However, people argue this is not enough.

The argument I've seen is that the prospect of treasure will encourage exploration.
However, when I think "hidden ancient treasure in a ruins deep in a cave guarded by hordes of undead" I don't think of slabs of leather, I think more of gems, and ancient weapons and artifacts.
Saddles don't even produce the effect that people argue it supposedly creates.
From experience, I've found that a portion of nearly every chest is devoted to saddles.
A player only needs a few saddles.
When a player has a few saddles, or when a player has found a village that sells saddles, they no longer will need to explore and find chests, and if they do, they'll be receiving worse loot than if there was something other than saddles in the chests.
Saddles become useless loot, just like the string or gunpowder in those chests.
I'm certainly not going to go try to find chests when all it's going to be filled with is saddles and useless items.
I'd certainly rather just craft a saddle when I need it rather than waste storage space for those things.

Saddles do not make the chests more desirable.
If they want to make players want to find chests, they need to remove the useless stuff like bread, wheat, gunpowder, and string, and make getting valuable items like diamonds and high-level enchantment books from them more likely; that would surely make dungeon loot more desirable.
Unique weapons or equipment would definitely make them more desirable.

Even if saddles were a desirable item from chests, saddles already are obtainable through other means.
You can get it from a villager for a number of emeralds.
You can get it through fishing, which requires no exploration, just sticks and string, and a water source to fish in.
I would find it best to remove a few of these means of obtaining saddles(natural chests, fishing) and just make saddles craftable.


In regards to balance, people say that horses are a great transportation system, so saddles should stay uncraftable.
Alright, I can agree that they are a great transportation system.
They are fast, and they allow free movement, unlike railroads where you are stuck to the paths.
However, even with uncraftable saddles, it is easy to get them due to the frequency of generated chests and due to fishing(requiring absolutely nothing but sticks and string) and villager trades.
A lucky person can get a saddle before they even get iron or leather by spawning near a dungeon, a village, or other generated structures(or by fishing a lot).
Removing them all from chests and making them craftable would save storage space, allow for better dungeon loot(better fishing loot, too, by removing them from the fishing treasure list), and hardly change the difficulty of obtaining a horse.

Horses aren't the end-game transportation anyway, nor should they be treated like they are.
Railroads are far later-game than horses due to the resource and time costs for them.
Uncraftable saddles don't make it harder to get a horse than get a railroad.
You can pretty much accidentally get everything you need for a horse; randomly coming upon a dungeon, getting you a saddle, and managing to find a horse while exploring or even spawning near horses when starting a world.
Railroads require a fair amount of mining to make the rails, and they require construction for the actual roads.
What should be done is that railroads should get a large buff to make them superior to horses, to make them worth the time.
Even without the buff, as I mentioned just before, craftable saddles would hardly make it easier to obtain saddles, especially if they were removed from all chests and the fishing treasure list and replaced with good loot.


Other reasons I believe saddles should be craftable:

- Villagers can craft them, and villagers don't do anything but sit around their houses all day. You explore ancient ruins and different dimensions, build giant structures, and kill and craft all sorts of things, and yet you can't craft a saddle.

- They are just pieces of leather. You can create much more complex things such as cake, pistons, and dispensers, but a simple slab of leather can't be crafted for some reason.
Heck, you can create armor out of leather, making saddle uncraftability even less sensible.
(I've heard music disc craftability been mentioned in relation to this; we don't have the materials to make music discs, and we don't have music to record onto blank music disks.)

- The Mo' Creatures mod, which the horses were based on, had craftable saddles AND horse armor.(To be honest, I think it's kinda stupid that horse armor isn't craftable either. Infinite horses, infinite saddles, but no infinite armor. Just make it break like regular armor and then it would be perfectly acceptable to make it craftable.)

Quote from drfrozenfire

Then you haven't seen mine

Quote from 13thMurder

Can you make more realistic ones at native 64x though?

I hope this doesn't escalate into the 14thMurder.