Blockology (Part 2) - The material of a block

In part 1 we discussed the position of blocks and how they affect each other in the grid that makes up the entire world of Landmark. We now take a closer look at another characteristic that blocks have: Material. (Since some of the terminology changed, you will find red colored terms in the upcoming quotes. Those are changes that I made to keep the content of the quotes up-to-date.)

"Material, in this case, is the material you chose from the Materials Tray. (Example: Red Lumicite is a material. So is Shiny Hammered Gold or Raw Iron.)

When a material is specified for a block, that changes its appearance in the world." Smokejumper

What most players don't realize is that not only is the entire game space made of blocks, all of these blocks also have material applied to them. What makes these materials special is their properties.

Blocks cannot disappear, their material however can. Unknown to most players, air is an actual material. By default it is applied to all blocks that are not terrain. Players can also apply it, by using the Delete Tool. It doesn't really make the blocks disappear, since that is impossible. The Delete Tool merely adds the air material to the block.

"Air blocks act *exactly* like regular blocks. They are just painted with a 100% transparent material, which is air." Smokejumper

The second material that has special properties is default terrain.

"Everything in the world that has not been changed by a player is designated as “default terrain”. It has less data than a user-changed block so that we can optimize the heck out of stuff that players haven’t changed.

The important characteristic about this default terrain is that it cannot be copied.

(Its data structure is simpler and doesn’t have all the voxels/vertices described earlier.)" Smokejumper

Lastly, there is a material effect that can have a big impact on your creation: blending.

Materials can blend or they cannot. A rule of thumb is that refined and processed materials will not blend, while raw materials will blend. However, the material that does not blend will always overrule the one that does.

If you look at the picture above, you can see a lot of different textures. Every material, except for the ground materials, is a refined material and will therefore not blend with the adjacent one - not even, if the adjacent one is a blending material. As you can see, the walls do not blend with the ground.

Extending your understanding of what blocks are and how they can be affected is an important part of using the game's potential to its full extent. Make sure you know how materials react so that you can intentionally use their properties.