Going to try it out! I love surfaces and surface paint so opacity is always a neat option :D
Do you have any plans to extend the surface paint catalog separately? Would love to see more surfaces and surface paint too someday = )
Thanks! :D I’d definitely like to expand the surface paint options, but there’s a technical limitation with adding more colors.
The game stores the paint color in a 3-bit color key, so the vanilla system can only represent 8 colors. Adding more would require deeper changes to how the game stores and renders surface paint data.
I could potentially work around that, but one of my main goals with this mod is save safety: it can currently be added to or removed from an existing save without breaking anything. Once I start storing custom color information that vanilla doesn’t understand, removing the mod could leave incompatible data behind.
So for now I’d rather keep the 8-color limit and preserve full save compatibility.
Okay I totally understand I imagine you have already started exploring such a thing.
Adding more surface and paint shapes is something id want as a user and gladly install an extra mod for it. I may eventually mod for it as well.
It makes sense though, surfaces are new assets that need to be rendered but always keep in mind loading an export_recovery_save can allow users to target removal a mod...With some caveats.
The game stores the paint color in a 3-bit color key, so the vanilla system can only represent 8 colors.
It almost sounds like modders could use a true surface extension .api library mod we can use for adding complex surface paints etc! Perhaps that itself could be safe to uninstall?
Someday, We need some kind of game-save mod removal tool that can target individual mod assets without wiping all building settings, product, and logistic systems metadata, or just improvements to existing export_recovery command.