MTGame dye, wool mods: base/ex/unicolor groups removed

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paramat
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MTGame dye, wool mods: base/ex/unicolor groups removed

by paramat » Post

These changes have just been made to MTGame 5.0.0-dev, for details see the pull request threads:
https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game/pull/2186
https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game/pull/2202

The groups have been replaced by simple 'color_<color>' groups as the old groups were causing several issues.
You may need to update some of your mods to work with MTGame 5.0.0-dev and the eventual 5.0.0 release.

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Re: MTGame dye, wool mods: base/ex/unicolor groups removed

by Wuzzy » Post

These news are terrifying!

Since people fail to see the horrible, horrible implications of this, let me explain:

Pretty much all mods and games have been using these groups for years, they worked pretty well without any issues and everything was compatible with everything. Think of color machine, paint roller, color cubes, unified dyes, all that stuff.

Just use the base_, excolor_, unicolor_ scheme and bam! You're compatible with basically every game, every mod ever made.

But now MTG removes these groups and uses a slightly different naming scheme (which isn't even properly documented!) because reasons.

A TON of games is using base_, excolor and unicolor_ groups. They will all become incompatible. Especially Minetest Game derivates will be hit hard by this.

So, in practice, as a modder, you are now forced to use BOTH color schemes for maximum compability:
- 1st the base/excolor/unicolor to be compatible with the community standard
- 2nd the MTG scheme which is different for … reasons

This sucks. We can be certain that most games won't be updated. So any form of standard we might have had for colors gets watered down by this crap.

The only tangible reason for the change was for a supposed “cleanup” but I don't really see any improvement nor a concrete need. The color space is not expanded. It's still the same colors. Just different names. It's an utterly pointless cosmetic change which brings massive breakage.

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Re: MTGame dye, wool mods: base/ex/unicolor groups removed

by TenPlus1 » Post

Wuzzy, those tons of [game]'s all include their own Dye mod to use, and any mod that still requires excolor or unicolor are having pulls sent to remedy it.

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Re: MTGame dye, wool mods: base/ex/unicolor groups removed

by Wuzzy » Post

But exactly that's the problem.

We now have games with two conflicting, redundant color group schemes. One with unicolor/base/exccolor, one with color_. This sucks.

Practically speaking, as a modder, you need to add groups for both redundant color schemes to ensure maximum compability.
This is just stupid!

It's a stupid idea to just let it happen that game authors start to just chooses to use a random color group scheme which is intentionally incompatible with anything else? If we let Minetest Game get away with this, other game developers might stop caring about interoperability as well. I predict a proliferation in incompatible color groups unless we do something about it now.

The point of having groups is to have something that works beyond mod/game boundaries. Intentionally adding redundant but different groups waters down the usefulness of groups.

The new groups aren't that great, actually. They offer less coloring options AND they break things. It's a lose-lose situation.
If the new groups would at least have the same flexibiliy as unicolor! But noooo! Already that is too much to ask.

MTG's new groups aren't re-usable either. They specifically ONLY added and documented the wool colors. I.e. there's dark green but no dark blue. There's no system behind this.

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