Grass

[Hoberton]

It would be nice to be able to add grass to your plot. Have it as a planning option just like planning a Stone flooring. Should be extremely easy to do. 3x3 to 9x9 sections of grass. [I]

[LaughingOtter]

Changing the ground texture isn't an option, since that has to be done on a world level - it's the same kind of change as adding a new landmass. If you're talking about a constructable object that looks like grass, it's going to either look like garbage or have more polygons than all of Tazoon and be a black hole of lag.

Forgrass to look like grass, you have to model at least some of the blades to at least some level of detail, and that means many small polygons in a small area. The greater then number of polygons, the slower the game renders.

Second, having 3x3 or 9x9 sections of grass sitting in the middle of a plot is going to look, well, like a big square patch of sodin the middle of an empty dirt yard, not a smooth, boundry-to-boundry carpet. It can'tchange shape or size to fit with the layout. You can't put buildings on it. If the 'edge' is too high, adult dragons can't walk 'up' onto it.Because it's an object, you won't walk through it, you'll walk on it - on the tips ofthe grass blades.It would be like a very laggy spoof of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'.

Maybe oneday there will be a procedural effect(the sort of thing blighted nodes and wisp residuehave) that can be used to make grass.For right now, though, the available options aren't really easy or even desirable.

[LaughingOtter]

Any object means polygons - furniture, flowers, decorative gruok statuary - it all adds up.

[imported_tjl]

Any object means polygons - furniture, flowers, decorative gruok statuary - it all adds up.

terrain clutter can be turned off though, if you so choose. I like the idea.

[PJ]

terrain clutter can be turned off, but as it stands if it were to be added it most likely wouldn't count as terrain clutter, and would be rendered just like any other plot decoration, flooring, building etc. Meaning Lag city. Until we get some sort of preference that prevents the loading of decorative plot features.

[LaughingOtter]

Terrain clutter is a graphic feature, not an object.

[Goriax]

Several months ago someone brought this up and DB responded. I think his response was they cuoldn't just add texture to the plot but they could add some sort of sod or something that would lie on top. He sounded worried that it would look pretty bad. He was responding off the top of his head. I don't know if they actually tried it later and it looked horrible or what.