I want multilayered sprites (for masked color variations)

[muzzy]

I'd love to see support for multilayer sprites. Basically, I ran out of my 1024M video ram when I wanted to try DyTech and I noticed a great deal of the graphics are just recolored versions of the basic stuff... No reason for all of these to waste my VRAM!

So, I'd like to have sprites which first render the base texture, and then render another texture multiplied with an RGB value to enable cheap color variations for biters, inserters, ores, splitters, transport belts, and so on.

[FishSandwich]

+1 This would be useful on this very memory heavy game, but seems more like something they'll probably do when they are close to releasing the game.

[muzzy]

Well... what about multiplayer that's next in their TODO, will all players have the same color? Will their cars have same identical color while they're driving? I think differentiation would be useful there.

[ssilk]

When you think logically, this will pop up automatically at the devs during the next 2-4 month...

[Drury]

Speaking of players, I'd actually prefer separate sprites.

That would allow different characters, alien characters, robot characters... That'd be more fun than just red guy, blue guy, green guy.

[ssilk]

I think we need objects containing out of different small layers. Like a cars and its wheels. Or a turret and it's rotatable gun. This should spare also some video RAM

[slay_mithos]

The layering could also potentially benefit a lot for mods, even more if it is made possible to change some layers on the fly, only for a specific instance of an entity.

[SilverWarior]

I think this is a verry good idea. I have seen it implemented in another game called Gnomoria. But the problem is that if your graphic engine doesen't have hardware aceleraed support for merging several textures into one you could be facing with serious performance isues.
Author of Gnomoria actually made some changes on graphic engine he is using to make this hardware acelerated so it doesn't afect the game performance to much.
I had been in contact with author of Gnomoria in the past so I might be able to get more information on this system if needed.