A quick comment on the “new textures”:

Previous textures:

The previous textures were presented in a world with a balanced palette (people may remember the block depots with the minor colour variations) and a balance sky and world lighting. This made the world and blocks look balanced and cohesive.

The previous textures were “low contrast” and supported a “single tint colour”. As we vary the tint colour per world, you can’t rely on the colour of a block to know the material. And as the texture were low contrast it was also hard to distinguish the block by the detail in the texture.

The New textures

The new textures are now “higher contrast” - so that it’s easier to distinguish the block type by the detail. They’re also thematically styled to be consistent with the other visual elements in the game: characters, creatures, props, visual effects, etc. The texture detail must convey the material without colour and shape. This requirement figuratively tasks our talented artists to create assets with both hands tied behind their back. There are many amazing looking modern games that achieve much of their beautiful visual look with colour and shape alone (and no detail) - for example The Witness and Firewatch. So it’s actually an extremely hard challenge. But we’re taking on this challenge because we want every world to be coloured differently, so that every world is as fresh and original as possible.

The new textures support a “triplet colour tint”: a low light colour, a colour, and highlight colour. (I think this is particularly clever.) This means that we can vary the colour across a block more creatively. This can be used (as before) to tint the block with a single colour, or more creatively tint shadows and highlights separately. A subtle purple hue in a shadow balanced against a orange glow in the highlight. Pretty! (This triplet colour can be seen in the World Builder block colour selection.)

The new textures are much quicker to create. So we can make the 100s of blocks and variations required.

We’re yet to present the new blocks with a balanced set of world palettes, and sky and world lighting. The game is no-where-near the final visual balance and polish. This will make a massive difference to the presentation of the game. It will be night and day…