Hello! Updates have been slowly, mostly owing to me having been very ill the past month (was bed ridden for two weeks). Work has now picked up properly again and I've finally gotten to a functional prototype of the "block painting"-feature I've been hinting. The way things work today, when placing a grass or plaza decoration on a block, a face is placed on top of the block. This was a simple, cheap and effective way to go about things way back when there were only cube blocks available. Over time, I've added in more and more types of blocks - slanted blocks, curved blocks, bigger decorative blocks etc. Initially, I kept up with some of these by adding corresponding faces to each type of block, so that grass could be placed on those as well. But over time, this becomes very ineffective and each placement also requires a collider be placed on top of an existing collider so that for example a grass place is removed before the block underneath (otherwise you have floating structures!). The prototype I've worked on now allows parts of a block to be mapped and then "painted" directly using no additional planes. This also means that there is no need for additional colliders. The latter has been an important aspect, as there are currently issues removing some objects because of how the game checks nearby colliders etc. Here is a picture of it in prototype form in an Atmocity spin-off project (since 2018 lol...).
I'm currently in the process of adding this into the game properly, but it will be another week or so until it is done. So what will happen to the grass decoration? Well, I've also been working on a structure for small, freely placable props among which trees will be one. My plan now is to have grass decorations automatically convert to painted block and freely placed tree props. Currently the prop type needs me to rework parts of how objects generally and props in particular are handled in the game, so this will take a while to finish. Once it is finished, however, players will be able to place trees more freely, create tree avenues, customize parks with certain props etc. That's where things are atm. I should have more on this in the week and an update around the end of next week or shortly after. / Nick