Paint Gun - realistic painting for survival + special creative features

This mod adds a Paint Gun hand tool giving an easier and more immersive way of coloring and skinning blocks.

The biggest benefit is it aims like a hand welder/grinder, you can select blocks in between other blocks. Aim-down-sights even provides an option to paint at a specific point in space, allowing you to paint some very hard to reach places.

Vanilla painting hotkey is untouched. There is a mod linked at the end of the description to disable that if you want.

Feature list

• Fast color/skin switching using mouse scroll/shift+scroll.
• Colors and skins shown on the HUD.
• Block aiming works like welder + aim at harder to reach blocks by moving closer while aiming down sights (RMB).
• Color+skin picking from other blocks and players (their selected color and skin for building, not their suit color and skin) using Shift+LG for the mode or Shift+RMB for instantly picking from aimed target.
• Hide skins from this mod's palette by editing the config (either the config file or ingame by opening chat and press F2).
• Easily replace color/skin/both on the entire ship in creative mode/creative tools with Shift+CubeSizeMode (Shift+R default).
• Right-side GUI for target info (using TextAPI, it's optional).
• *NEW* In-game config editing (Text API mod menu), open chat and press F2 to begin.
• Have a purpose for gravel! (convert it to paint chemicals for paint gun).
• In-game help, just type in chat: /pg
• Allows faction members to paint and skin ships (vanilla allows this now too, it used to not, might still change again in the future =) ).
• Support for mod-added skins! See example mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1860860182

Usage in survival

• Make the tool (Paint Gun) in an assembler;
• Make a generous amount of Paint Chemicals in the assembler too (it's the consumable for painting);
• Have both the tool and chemicals in your inventory;
• Equip it from the G menu like any other tool;
• Use scroll-wheel to pick a color;
• Use shift + scroll-wheel to pick a skin;
• Aim at a block and hold primary action to paint it!

How it works in detail

In survival the paint process is not instant, and the speed depends on the difference between colors (if it's a totally different hue then it needs to first remove the color) and it also depends on the size and side surface area.

In creative it's always instant and doesn't need paint chemicals.

You also have the replace-color feature in creative, using Shift+CubeSizeMode (Shift+R default) to toggle the mode and click on a block to replace all blocks which have that color.

A small ship armor block will be painted really fast while a large ship large container will be painted really slowly.

The paint speed is also affected by the world's welder (for painting) and grinder (for removing paint) speed multipliers.

Multiple people painting will speed up the process just like welders/grinders.

Crafting a single paint chemicals blueprint gives you 1 unit and painting a block uses 1 on every update and it updates 10 times a second. The paint chemicals item is really small and lightweight, 1000 units having 1kg and a volume of 2L.

In survival you can't paint damaged (more than 10% damage) or below the red line, you'll need to repair/finish them before painting.

You can only paint grids that you own or are allied to the owner. The owner is determined by the player(s) that own the most blocks on the grid. In contrast, vanilla game only allows painting on your owned grids, allies or small owners (players with at least 1 block owned on the grid) can not paint.

Commands & Hotkeys

Mod has some chat commands and hotkeys, can be seen by typing /pg in chat.

Config

The mod also has a client side config file that you can access at: %appdata%/SpaceEngineers/Storage/500818376.sbm_PaintGun/paintgun.cfg

You can change the file while the game is running but you'll have to reload it manually by typing in chat: /pg reload.

Per-world settings

There's also a config to tweak some things for everyone, like not requiring paint chemicals, changing how fast it paints, enabling replace mode in survival.

The config gets written to <WorldFolder>/Storage/500818376.sbm_PaintGun/ServerSettings.ini when the mod first runs. And as mentioned inside the file too, it only gets loaded when server starts, so that means you have to restart server/reload world to apply changes.

Known Issues/To-Do/To-fix list

- Some people get high performance impact from cycling skins (and does so with block equipped and changing skins fast in vanilla menu), to aleviate this for this mod you can turn off Skin Magazine from mod's config or ingame mod config (Chat+F2 then PaintGun>Tool>Skin Magazine - OFF). - Selected skin, ApplySkin and ApplyColor from vanilla color picker menu are not retrievable by mods, therefore the selection for those is independent to the paint gun (feature request to vote: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/modapi-api-request-for-owned-skins-list-and-applycolorapplyskin ). - Mod-added block skins will vanish from ships when you paste them, see the above bugreport. - Having weapons turned off will not prevent this from working (since it's a rifle) but it will nag you about it being disabled, nothing I can do about that notification. - Can no longer display vanilla block info for tools because it's being overwritten by the new hint system, textAPI is required to have the right side info (non-issue unless textAPI breaks). - (FIXED) [spoiler]No way to know what skins local player owns, so all of them are shown and it's up to you to hide the ones that don't work using the config (open chat and press F2).[/spoiler]