I’m trying to make various blocks for my mining game, however people have been saying that the blocks appear to be smooth plastic, although they use textures such as foil, metal, or ice. These textures often don’t look like anything when on low to middle graphics. Any suggestions on things I should do to make my blocks look like they have actual textures?
I mean, you could a part with a special mesh in it, set the material to smooth plastic, increase the reflectiveness of the part, and possibly just use a decal for the texture on it. Not sure if that’s exactly what you are going for but it’s something.
I suppose I could try that. I’m not going for anything specific, I’m just simply trying to make it have more detail, but still on the basic side.
I mean you could try making textures that don’t look too too complex or detailed, I don’t think it would be very difficult to do so. You could also script a quality level thing to that decides the quality of how the ores look.
Three things to consider:
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If your players are seeing Material types so simplified that they appear Smooth Plastic, it’s worth noting that their hardware is likely a limiting factor right from the start. Adding any texture is only going to further hinder them through performance hits. Textures are heavy.
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Whenever a player complains about visuals in this manner; ie, “the textures are ugly!”, they’re also the same people who complain that a game takes 30 seconds to join due to load times (and not understanding that better visuals can add to load times). Sometimes it’s best to prioritize player accessibility over visuals, and that’s me saying that, someone whose whole job is purely about visuals
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If you really still want to pursue better textures - say, for players with better graphics card - then making custom textures would give you a lot more freedom to make your assets read better to players and establish a dedicated art style. There’s plenty of art direction you can take if you really want your game to have a polished look for those players.