|
Mothership concept
|
|
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Friday, 22.06.2012, 18:38 | Message # 61 |
 Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Quote (altfuture) Cool, I will create small tileable textures and they will be reusable for anything (they will be e.g. plates, girders, grates, radiator, etc). They will be in the range 64-512 pixels and probably there'll be some bigger ones for big flat areas. Can textures be rectangle (1:16, 1:4, etc)?
It can be a ractangle, but dimentions should be power of two: 512, 1024, 2048 etc.
Quote (altfuture) For ambient occlusion, are you thinking of implementing something like SSAO, or we will go with baked textures?
Yes, I will implement SSAO. Baked textures is something like lightmaps? So every module or ship should have a huge texture cover the entire ship's surface? If so, this is bad, because the texture budget for ships is limited by 100-200 Mb, because graphics card should have at least 400 Mb for planets textures.
Quote (altfuture) The number sounds rather impressive. Just to make sure about sizes of modules, for reference, what would be ideal triangle count for a hydrogen sphere tank that is 200m in diameter? Is one tank considered a single module, or it is the entire cluster with all twelve tanks?
You may make them low-poly but still cool looking:
*
|
| |
| |
| altfuture | Date: Saturday, 23.06.2012, 15:23 | Message # 62 |
 Observer
Group: Users
Serbia
Messages: 11
Status: Offline
| Quote (SpaceEngineer) Baked textures is something like lightmaps? So every module or ship should have a huge texture cover the entire ship's surface?
Yeah, like lightmaps. But you are right. At first I was thinking we could make them small, maybe 128x128 pixels, but in low resolution it doesn't look too well with narrow skeletal parts.
That pic is nice  Ok, so I'll spontaneously decide on triangle counts while modeling as long as it looks cool and is in 1 million budget.
Edited by altfuture - Saturday, 23.06.2012, 15:24 |
| |
| |
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Sunday, 01.07.2012, 19:33 | Message # 63 |
|
Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| A question: is there are term for interplanetary space ship exists? An interstellar ship can be called "starship", but how about a ship that have an ability to interplanetary flight but not for interstellar flight? "Planetship" sounds wierd.
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Sunday, 01.07.2012, 19:46 | Message # 64 |
 Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| I have never heard of such a word existing. Any particular name would usually depend on the function of the ship and the locations that it visits. "Interplanetary shuttle" is probably the best name for a ship that transports people between worlds (if it flew from Earth to Jupiter, it would likely be know as a "Jovian shuttle" to its Terran passengers, and a "Terran/Earth shuttle" to its Jovian passengers). Likewise, "interplanetary freighter" for a light freight hauler, or "interplanetary [insert craft role here]" for [whatever]. There is no specific name for such vessel types in English.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| apenpaap | Date: Sunday, 01.07.2012, 21:19 | Message # 65 |
 World Builder
Group: Users
Antarctica
Messages: 1063
Status: Offline
| How about just 'spaceship'? It's not so precise, but it's basically correct for anything that goes out of atmospheres, including interplantetary things.
I occasionally stream at http://www.twitch.tv/magistermystax. Sometimes SE, sometimes other games.
|
| |
| |
| werdnaforever | Date: Sunday, 01.07.2012, 22:37 | Message # 66 |
 World Builder
Group: Users
Pirate
Messages: 897
Status: Offline
| I think a class system is necessary for vessels (as it is for stars, planets, galaxies, etc)- based on the average range/usage of the ship.
Proposed Space Engine ship class system:
Universal: These Goliaths can go anywhere. I envy your civilization...
InterGalactic: Within clusters and superclusters of galaxies
Intragalactic: Throughout an entire galaxy- large or small
Subgalactic: A region of a galaxy- a sector, quadrant, arm, or dwarf galaxy
Interstellar: A small area of a galaxy- a cluster of stars (or several close clusters), a globular, etc.
Intrastellar: These are suited for within a single system.
Intraplanetary: It can reach orbit around a planet, and can travel to that planet's moons- the DeltaGlider from Orbiter is a great example of this.
Orbital: It can reach Orbit- this includes smaller shuttles or SSTOs that only need to worry about rendezvous with motherships (not enough fuel to reach a moon). Most of the spacecraft we've built today would probably fall into this category- the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, etc: they go to the ISS, and then come home.
Note: The distinction between Intraplanetary and Orbital is very important. Intraplanetary spacecraft are much more independent with significantly more fuel. Orbital spacecraft aren't going anywhere beyond orbit... hence the name. :)
Subplanetary: Anything which cannot attain orbit on its own. This includes suborbital craft, as well as anything else: a small deployable drone aircraft, a rover, etc.
(applause, cheering, and fanfare follows as the system is accepted for use in .96 )
So, "intrastellar" is the class of ship you guys are looking for. Problem solved!
EDIT: Added another class...
Edited by werdnaforever - Sunday, 08.07.2012, 05:12 |
| |
| |
| werdnaforever | Date: Monday, 02.07.2012, 00:42 | Message # 67 |
|
World Builder
Group: Users
Pirate
Messages: 897
Status: Offline
| "Intra-" doesn't seem to get it's fair share of use. It's the perfect prefix for this system- it means "within".
We could also have a class system for subplanetary vechiles/vessels. It would probably be more straightforward... suborbital, airborne, surface-bound, and submersible.
|
| |
| |
|
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 01:02 | Message # 69 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Quote (altfuture) Here's my ship concept. I named it Sincerity.
I like it
I have a few issues with it though
1) The design seems to be not very efficient. It seems that you could pack the same modules/equipment into a smaller space/area (think more in 3 dimensions).
2) The dimensions seem unnecessarily large. Why must the ship be nearly 5 km long? (EDIT: I just noticed that you mentioned this, so never mind)
3) This is more of a curiosity than an issue, but what is the purpose of the giant factory?
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 01:25 | Message # 70 |
|
Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Quote (altfuture) Here's my ship concept. I named it Sincerity. As I foretold earlier it is very similar to SHW-2, don't be surprised! I borrowed a few nice SE screenshots from "image dump" thread for the backgrounds, I hope the authors are ok with it.
Exellent! Except for the radiators. You make them look like air-cooled radiators (the reactor's one reminds me of a CPU cooler). They will not work in space. In a vacuum there is only one way to get rid of heat: emit it as infrared light of hot surface. The radiators should be huge flat plates with heat tubes woven into them. They should be located to prevent heating of each other by emitted radiation, you make a large number of small plates located at small angle to each other - so they will absorb radiation emitted by its neighbor and will be heated up.
Quote (altfuture)
A couple of questions:
1) Does Space Engine support smoothing groups?
2) Can we use decals?
No, smoothing groups are ignored. However, the way of export (triangles in .obj format) make them, taking into account then vertices export performed.
Decals are not supported for now, but feel free to make them. All these will be added in a future version. The latest version 0.96 will support bump/normal mapping and detail textures.
|
| |
| |
| werdnaforever | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 05:00 | Message # 71 |
|
World Builder
Group: Users
Pirate
Messages: 897
Status: Offline
| My current project is an SSTO with a "rocket" form factor. Currently I'm modeling the huge linear aerospike engine. So, basically, it's basically the F1 of linear aerospike engines. Why aerospike? It's the obvious choice for an SSTO because it's efficient at low and high altitudes. No more pesky ramjets! It's not anywhere near finished but it's starting to progress really well.
Obviously, there is some extra detail. I make sure to model the insides even if they aren't included in the final ship model- it helps me create an accurate design.
It will be a cross between a Space Shuttle, Douglas's SASSTO, and the Aries Ib from 2001: A Space Odyssey (best movie ever). One side will be a heat shield (like the shuttle), and it will have landing legs similar to Aries.
Maybe it can be used as a rocket SSTO for planets w/o runways? (...after the ship is finished...) I hope the aerospike concept is modeled correctly (so far)!!! What do you guys think?
EDIT: The heatshield will take up one side of the ship, thus the docking port, window, and any misc. openings will be on the other side. This adds a bit of convince when docking with the Mothership- all the important stuff is on one side. I can't give an exact description of the shape but it will be based around the engine- it could end up looking similar to an X33, but designed for vertical takeoff and landing.
...and, of course, the mothership will dwarf this thing- you could take a dozen! Imagine- something for those fresh new planets once you're finally ready to send some crew members down.
Edited by werdnaforever - Thursday, 05.07.2012, 05:16 |
| |
| |
| altfuture | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 12:37 | Message # 72 |
|
Observer
Group: Users
Serbia
Messages: 11
Status: Offline
| Thanks for the comments
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
1) The design seems to be not very efficient. It seems that you could pack the same modules/equipment into a smaller space/area (think more in 3 dimensions).
I did it that way for two reasons. 1) To keep the frontal shield small and efficient, so the ship is kind of shaped like an arrow. 2) Modules are now basically stacked like train cars, so it's easy to make them modular and rearrangeable. But you are still right, there's room to make it more compact in the length axis, I will try to compress it a bit (perhaps to 75% of its current length).
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
3) This is more of a curiosity than an issue, but what is the purpose of the giant factory?
SpaceEngineer mentioned somewhere (in this thread I believe) that motherships will have a factory that will be used to manufacture various things (buildings, small ships etc), so I assumed a large factory would suffice.
Quote (SpaceEngineer) Exellent! Except for the radiators. You make them look like air-cooled radiators (the reactor's one reminds me of a CPU cooler). They will not work in space. In a vacuum there is only one way to get rid of heat: emit it as infrared light of hot surface. The radiators should be huge flat plates with heat tubes woven into them. They should be located to prevent heating of each other by emitted radiation, you make a large number of small plates located at small angle to each other - so they will absorb radiation emitted by its neighbor and will be heated up.
Ah, I was unsure about those radiators, will change Should radiators emit strictly infrared waves or they also glow in visible light? If they are, will we be able to put lights there so they cast real light on surrounding area (maybe it could also change intensity based on how heated they are)?
Quote (SpaceEngineer) No, smoothing groups are ignored. However, the way of export (triangles in .obj format) make them, taking into account then vertices export performed.
Sounds good. Just to make sure I understood well, while working on the model I will assign smoothing groups normally, but when I export it into .obj the vertices will be broken on right places to make hard edges on certain places as if it still had smoothing groups. So the game will not use smoothing groups, but the model will look as if they were there, right?
Quote (SpaceEngineer) Decals are not supported for now, but feel free to make them. All these will be added in a future version. The latest version 0.96 will support bump/normal mapping and detail textures.
Awesome!
|
| |
| |
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 17:39 | Message # 73 |
|
Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Quote (altfuture) Ah, I was unsure about those radiators, will change Should radiators emit strictly infrared waves or they also glow in visible light? If they are, will we be able to put lights there so they cast real light on surrounding area (maybe it could also change intensity based on how heated they are)?
Yes, radiators will be drawn using special shader that compute a dark red glow depending on current reactor/engines power. This also mean that radiators shold me made as separate model (however 0.96 does not support multiple models per ship).
*
|
| |
| |
| Vinny | Date: Thursday, 15.11.2012, 21:50 | Message # 74 |
|
Explorer
Group: Users
United States
Messages: 172
Status: Offline
| Hi, SpaceEngineer!
I wanted to ask you, how is the mother ship coming along? I'm really looking forward for flying the mother ship! Thanks!
Cheers,
Vincent
|
| |
| |
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Friday, 16.11.2012, 00:20 | Message # 75 |
|
Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Vinny, I don't understand your question...
|
| |
| |
ENG
New site
Russian Federation 
Serbia 
United States 
Antarctica 
Pirate 
) but I will fix this in next iteration. I will also strengthen the chassis a bit with additional supports (for example between shield and the maneuvering thrusters. I will also add thrusters for lateral movement. And probably gonna shorten the ship slightly, making things more compact. If you notice some other problems please let me know. Or if you have some idea, anything! 
