Rainbow Roads (1.0.0): Stone Paths with Style

[Jobediah Timberman]

One of the very few things I quickly found was missing from the game was the ability for Stone Paths to maintain their color. But at the same time, I'm glad the standard version was set in place from the start. 

For those who also find the Stone Paths to be a bit limiting, I've devised a solution. When using Low Quality Soil, you'll get the same old roads that reduce down to being identical. I also removed the ability to use Terra Preta or Compost, which would be a huge waste of good resources. 

But now when using Medium Quality Soil with Stones, you'll get a nicely tinted version of Stone Paths. I simply took the original 3 Stone Path textures and Greyscaled them, then I overlayed the plain Rock textures of each kind of stone. This not only gave the color tint of each stone, but added bits of the stone's quality into the Stone Path. I set the Layer Blend Mode from Normal (Lighten, Darken, etc) to "Overlay" if you're that curious. The way it merged the textures was perfect for this situation.

I've also upgraded them to have more variations of mossy overlays, making the repetition much less obvious. The most amazing part of this is that the game engine only required 3 versions of each type of stone, and then a dozen mossy tint overlays, it takes care of the busywork. And I could easily mix them up even further if I wanted, but it would probably take up too much texture memory to be worth it.

Speaking of which, if you're running on a very old system with low GPU memory, theres a slight chance you might want to skip out on this for now. If enough people request it I'll make a Reduced Memory version, but hopefully it won't be needed. They will be compatible as far as local savegames, but you would end up with whatever version the server has provided they end up adopting this mod. So it's better if there's only one version anyway.

I also made a slight increase in WalkSpeedMultiplier from 1.3 to 1.4, but other than that the blocks are identical to Stone Paths. This means they behave like Gravel rather than Soil or Cobblestone. I could adjust this, but it felt better to keep it as it is. 

Speaking of "style", as the title suggests, I've dug through countless fonts online and found one that works very, very well with the game's aesthetic. Take a look at the screenshots and let me know if you agree. Instructions below on how to install it. 

Spoiler

Obsidian is not available as the game won't allow it. Limestone I have taken out because it should be used for making Lime, and it basically looks like Peridotite anyway. 

I have updated the recipes for the original Stone Paths, as they didn't entirely make sense to me. I've also adjusted the Walk Speeds from 1.0.0, as I was playing around with stair speed and forgot it didn't make logical sense. But I do like the benefit that higher quality stairs don't slow you down. I'm a bit of a speed runner, and it's hard for me to be patient sometimes. 

You can find this font I'm using in the game ("Albertus Medium") for free at https://best-font.com/font-download/download-albertus-medium-font.html

Just download and open the TTF file like any document, and Windows Font Viewer has an Install button at the top. 

Then you'll have to open your VintageStoryData folder, which should be available by using the magic path "%APPDATA%\VintagestoryData\" instead of C:\ as usual. 

You can also just go to Start -> Run, and type in "notepad %APPDATA%\VintagestoryData\clientsettings.json", without quotes.

Scroll all the way down to line 500, or press Ctrl+F to Find "font". Change the value of "defaultFontName" to "Albertus Medium" and close and save. 

You should shut down the game before doing this, otherwise your changes will be overwritten. Probably should have told you that first. 

I've been working with more and more ideas since I found Vintage Story back in early December 2020. I decided to keep them all to myself until I could post them all as quickly as possible. Basically this is my way of celebrating my mother's birthday today. I'll be giving you all a pile of gifts and hopefully making it feel like a holiday in the Vintage Story world. 

Download Link:
RainbowRoads1.0.1.zip
 

1.0.1 - (2-17-2021): Updated to fix the Walk Speed multiplier.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jobediah Timberman

[DanaCraluminum]

Looks nice

Edited February 17, 2021 by Craluminum

[l33tmaan]

This is good stuff, man. How come I didn't think of it? 

[DArkHekRoMaNT]

The walking speed on the stairs is strange. Less for vanilla, but higher for new stairs.

[Jobediah Timberman]

I had forgotten I was playing with the stair speed when I first made this months ago, so I've updated them all to the same speed. I like the idea that the higher quality stairs give you the same speed as the flat blocks. 

[DArkHekRoMaNT]

6 hours ago, Jobediah Timberman said:

I had forgotten I was playing with the stair speed when I first made this months ago, so I've updated them all to the same speed. I like the idea that the higher quality stairs give you the same speed as the flat blocks. 

By default, stairs are always slower, even if they have the same speed. The actual distance that you walk the stairs is not 1 meter, but sqrt (2) ~ 1.4 meters (diagonal).

[Lisabet]

any chance you could add in stone types that don't have a use in roads (or cobblestones) atm? i.e. obsidian, white/pink/green marble stones, kimberlite, etc? I'd love the extra color options.  Especially the black/purplish color of obsidian