Dasho
Terrarian
I've put over three thousand hours into Terraria since it was first released, and I've always enjoyed how new decorating options keep getting released. Especially the furniture sets, and the many different possible variations they have. There is an eventual end to the adventuring and fighting, but there is no end to the creating, building, and decorating.
However, among the things that has frustrated me about decorating and designing nice looking buildings is that, for the most part, we have little choice but to use the sets as they exist. It is not aesthetically pleasing, for instance, to mix Mahogany furniture with Shadewood, and you can't really use Boreal pieces with Palm pieces. The colors just don't match. Paint exists for this purpose, but you're forced to use the existing paint colors, most of which do not look natural. If you want a natural wooden finish, you're mostly out of luck.
Since we are now rapidly approaching the last few updates for Terraria before a pin is officially put in it as "done," I would like to suggest the addition of wood-colored paints into the game. We should be able to use the Dye Vat to render woods down into a paint of that color of wood, which we can then use to paint objects with, i.e. Wood Paint, Shadewood Paint, Palm Wood Paint, ect.
This way, I could, for instance, mix Ebonwood furniture into a Pearlwood based house by painting the Ebonwood with Pearlwood paint, or combine Boreal and Palm pieces together and make them match by painting them all with with Pure Wood paint.
I created a small example to showcase what it would look like, using Boreal and Pure workbenches. Forgive me for the crude conversion: I have no sprite creation experience and no real program to work with, so I actually pallet swapped them pixel by pixel in Paint at 800x magnification.
And here is a larger version, so you can better see what they look like up close.
This particular feature would be especially useful for things like racks, boss trophies, and Item Frames, as well as a number of other furniture pieces like Trap Doors, barrels, kegs, looms, and Fireplaces. All of these decorations have wood in them, but that wood is default Pure wood. You cannot make Shadewood Barrels or Mahogany Looms to decorate with, and these decorative objects look out of place when mixed into other wood sets.
Instead of vastly over-complicating the game by wanting dozens, if not hundreds, more items added just to create variations of existing pieces, it would be much simpler and easier to just create wood colored paints. This way, we can make everything match the way we want, and give the sprite makers a break.
There is only one additional issue I would like to raise in regards to this, but it is related, which is that I feel wood paints should behave differently from deep wood paints. The reason this matters is because, in many of those pieces I mentioned, wood is only part of the sprite, not all of it. Examples of which being all beds, the normal boss trophies, fireplaces, bookcases, ect. I would love to be able to paint a Fireplace with Boreal Paint to make the wooden part of it match my Boreal cabin out in the snow, but not if it also paints the bricks and the fire as well. So the ideal way to do it would be if the normal wooden paints only stained/painted the wooden parts of an object, while the whole object would only be changed by Deep Wood paints.
I will admit, I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how possible or difficult it would be, but this would be the most ideal way, because it would not only give us the ability to 'simply' change the color of wood on things, but we could also have the option of using Deep Wood paints to change the entire sprite to that color if we wanted to.
Again, I would be perfectly happy with just wooden paints, and not this additional layer of complexity to the furniture, which I admit may be somewhat unreasonable to request. Even without that feature, I think wooden paint would make a great addition to the game because of the flexibility it would give us in decorating with solid wooden pieces, such as the workbenches, tables, and chairs.
However, among the things that has frustrated me about decorating and designing nice looking buildings is that, for the most part, we have little choice but to use the sets as they exist. It is not aesthetically pleasing, for instance, to mix Mahogany furniture with Shadewood, and you can't really use Boreal pieces with Palm pieces. The colors just don't match. Paint exists for this purpose, but you're forced to use the existing paint colors, most of which do not look natural. If you want a natural wooden finish, you're mostly out of luck.
Since we are now rapidly approaching the last few updates for Terraria before a pin is officially put in it as "done," I would like to suggest the addition of wood-colored paints into the game. We should be able to use the Dye Vat to render woods down into a paint of that color of wood, which we can then use to paint objects with, i.e. Wood Paint, Shadewood Paint, Palm Wood Paint, ect.
This way, I could, for instance, mix Ebonwood furniture into a Pearlwood based house by painting the Ebonwood with Pearlwood paint, or combine Boreal and Palm pieces together and make them match by painting them all with with Pure Wood paint.
I created a small example to showcase what it would look like, using Boreal and Pure workbenches. Forgive me for the crude conversion: I have no sprite creation experience and no real program to work with, so I actually pallet swapped them pixel by pixel in Paint at 800x magnification.
And here is a larger version, so you can better see what they look like up close.
This particular feature would be especially useful for things like racks, boss trophies, and Item Frames, as well as a number of other furniture pieces like Trap Doors, barrels, kegs, looms, and Fireplaces. All of these decorations have wood in them, but that wood is default Pure wood. You cannot make Shadewood Barrels or Mahogany Looms to decorate with, and these decorative objects look out of place when mixed into other wood sets.
Instead of vastly over-complicating the game by wanting dozens, if not hundreds, more items added just to create variations of existing pieces, it would be much simpler and easier to just create wood colored paints. This way, we can make everything match the way we want, and give the sprite makers a break.
There is only one additional issue I would like to raise in regards to this, but it is related, which is that I feel wood paints should behave differently from deep wood paints. The reason this matters is because, in many of those pieces I mentioned, wood is only part of the sprite, not all of it. Examples of which being all beds, the normal boss trophies, fireplaces, bookcases, ect. I would love to be able to paint a Fireplace with Boreal Paint to make the wooden part of it match my Boreal cabin out in the snow, but not if it also paints the bricks and the fire as well. So the ideal way to do it would be if the normal wooden paints only stained/painted the wooden parts of an object, while the whole object would only be changed by Deep Wood paints.
I will admit, I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how possible or difficult it would be, but this would be the most ideal way, because it would not only give us the ability to 'simply' change the color of wood on things, but we could also have the option of using Deep Wood paints to change the entire sprite to that color if we wanted to.
Again, I would be perfectly happy with just wooden paints, and not this additional layer of complexity to the furniture, which I admit may be somewhat unreasonable to request. Even without that feature, I think wooden paint would make a great addition to the game because of the flexibility it would give us in decorating with solid wooden pieces, such as the workbenches, tables, and chairs.
