A bit of an unconventional bug report this time, as it is more of a summary of some issues seen throughout the forum. I was unable to find a place to discuss this exactly, although the problem has been touched upon in topics about slightly different (but often related) issues. So, I thought I’d make one.
There are a couple of ways in which items or blocks can end up in the same place, causing graphical glitches or inadequacies. Here are some examples that I’ve seen come up on the forum:
Wall types overlapping in a building; it is of course a problem in itself that you can (could?) get two wall types, which was what the actual bug report was about, but related to this was the glitch of seeing both at the same time, causing lots of flickering and such when the camera moves. Link.
Sometimes items get placed in the same place as well, for whatever reason. Again, an issue by itself if it happens, but it also causes such glitches. In this case, if it’s the same item multiple times, you don’t get the flickering, as the models aren’t actually competing/interfering with each other. Instead, the item is just shown brighter and brighter the more of the item there are. Examples: link (note the bright chair(s)), link, link (perhaps I should have just edited this one, but I’ve come this far, and this one will be more general I suppose). It happens consistently on carpenter workbenches, as several wooden logs (or other similar items) are often needed there to build certain products (this can be seen in the last link).
When I designed a concave house in release 114, the corners had scaffolding for both adjacent sides. In this case, the scaffolding was in a different orientation for both walls, so instead of brightness, you get the flickering. See at 19:18 in the video below.
You can sometimes get a blueprint overlapping with an actual item, as well. This happens in particular with items designated to be placed prior to saving, and then placed after loading that save. Link (topic talks about selectability but I think the problem is that the blueprint is still there and not removed upon placement as usual, so it probably both causes the brighter beds and the difficulty selecting the actual bed underneath the blueprint).
It also may happen when citizens are in the same place (what’s the term for this again? Clipping?), an example of which can be seen in the same video at 17:03.
I have a suspicion that this issue is also related, since there is similar flickering going on (to the point that it responds to camera movement (and lasts a second or so longer), same as with, say, the scaffolding mentioned here). Perhaps in this case, the edge of the fog of war is both there and not, so that it flickers between fog of war and non-fog-of-war landscape.
It seems to me that in some of these cases, you just wouldn’t want any clipping/overlapping to occur to begin with (the citizens, for example, or the different wall types). In others, a specific solution is probably required, e.g. corner scaffolding (that would be cool, and sensible as well), and items used for crafters’ workbenches (perhaps only the last one added should be shown? Would be imperfect because it’s less visually informative, but I don’t know any other easy ways to deal with it…)
Yeah I’ve witnessed most of what you described and I agree on your thoughts in the last paragraph too. Things like tree leaves occupying the same space I am absolutely fine with, I just don’t think they should be brighter. However having two beds occupy one place in the stockpile is a huge pain and could cause confusion (I told my carpenter to always have 3 beds but I can only see 2!), so multiple fixes are perhaps required.
So, not sure if this is another instance of this bug or not, but it looks similar so I thought I’d add it here. When building a particular house, I had the familiar issue of windows not being placed. Then, one of them was placed. And after that, I saw all the other windows suddenly shown weirdly/brightly. See the screenshot.
Now, I’m actually not too sure if this is an instance of multiple windows placed in the same place, if only because I don’t think I had crafted that many windows. Perhaps it’s something like the windows being shown in build preview mode or something (or that whole house, with only the windows not being done yet)? However, you can see the house being built in the background isn’t shown that way.
Added a link in the original post to a topic that I had forgotten about before, describing an issue which involves an overlap of an item with a blueprint, and has a similar graphical effect.
Well, as I had discussed earlier with @Geoffers747, this was more of a summary thread to link to all issues that are interrelated like this, … but I guess it could work just as well as a bug report on its own.
A new instance of this that I’ve noticed is when making a flat roof on a building. At least in the building designer (I have yet to actually build such a house), it appears that the roof is one voxel too low, such that the top of the wall overlaps the actual roof.
32:44.
Also thanks to @Krovikan for making me first notice this with his video (15:53):
That sure does look like it’s an instance of this thing as well, yes. And, is it just me, or are these goblins a bit shorter than you normally see them? In that case, it could also be an instance of this.
Another one - comfy chair + log. Moving the carpenter’s workbench fixed this, but did result in the log hovering high overhead. This latter was just a graphical glitch though, as said log was used in the production of another comfy chair a moment later, and promptly disappeared from overhead .
