Minecraft Forums

Let's put it this way.

When you make a texture pack for Minecraft, it needs to appeal to people in some way for them to like it. It can be original, aesthetically pleasing, fit a niche audience, require patience and thought, provide a service or feature not in the game already, or any number of other things. The idea is that a texture pack must be admirable in some way for people to enjoy it in some way, whether they use it or not.

When you post a texture pack that has literally one or two colors per block, with no shading, no added depth, nothing resembling detail so people can't tell what the texture even is, no style, and no overlying theme beyond the lack of all these qualities, and when you know that there are multiple of these exact same texture packs posted on a daily basis, it gives nobody any reason to admire or use the texture pack, much less applaud it.

This is the problem with simple packs. People thinks simplicity is all about a lack of detail, but it's not. People think they can color fill the boxes on the terrain.png file, add some pixelated lines here and there and it's completely fine. They think maybe someone will find some use out of a pack that took them a combined 24 hours to make. They might even feel like they are providing a service to people, or that what they have made is original enough to justify posting, or that it doesn't need to be original for people to like it.

The answer to all those things, is no. There are good simple textures that are made by people who know the standards of the forum and follow it. They think about color co-ordination, depth, shading, detail, and doing it with as little as possible. Bad simple texture packs are lazy, poorly designed, poorly colored, poorly shaded, poorly arranged, bland, uninspired, unoriginal, unstylized, unlikable and not worth the time to make, post, or download. I do not say this out of contempt or anger, this is really the truth.

And here's the final nail in the coffin. Art is subjective, and I fully know that. However, even if a texture pack is good, it absolutely MUST be original. Everyone likes the Mona Lisa. What if every artist and their grandmother repainted the mona lisa over and over again for a year with only extremely tiny differences between one Mona Lisa and the next. Oh, they might all look nice, and it might mean we have a lot of good artists out there, but for them to submit it to a museum and say "this is my art, please put it in your gallery" is ubsurd.

Now, take that analogy, and replace the Mona Lisa with a very bad videogame, like, say, E.T. for the Atari 2600 (or Superman 64 if you're too young to know what an Atari is). Say you recoded those games, hosted it, and posted a link to it on a videogame forum, saying "this is my video game, I hope you like it." How fast will it get old, to see that exact same thing posted several times a day by different authors?

Originality is the key to success, but if people know that what's behind the door is bad anyway, they'll probably be glad they don't have the key.

That's what's wrong with simple texture packs, and that's what's wrong with this texture pack. I hope you found it informative and think about it if and when you make another texture pack.