@Kassonnade , I love what you're doing. I wish I had the skills to follow along. I find the knobs, switches, etc. very exciting. I, too, would like to see "stuff" on desks and counters. I keep looking at the deco "bookcase" and wish it had some books! Or maybe coffee mugs or something on the tables w/chairs. I don't have the ability to do these things myself, so I haven't given it serious thought. If I can pass along any ideas that you might create, it would please me greatly.
I also went back to SE for a look. It's been so long I have to go thru the tutorial if I want to do anything, but I saw things that made my mouth water. Multiple switches on a single block, large elevators that could lift a SV, and a cross-hair I could see! (do I harp on this too much? Nah.) When I learned how to modify the config file, the first thing I did was make all weapons fire on planet as well as in space. I wish there was an easier solution as it it is tedious and time-consuming. And you know atmosphere has nothing to do with it. I'm on a zero atmosphere moon and those weapons still don't work!! Ships docked to CVs having weapons disabled doesn't bother me as much as ships docked to BAs having weapons disabled. Many was the time where a docked HV could have protected my otherwise lightly defended base.
For me, it was more of the tools being disabled when docked rather than the weapons. One of the early engineering challenges was to use HV drills and drill turret while the HV was docked to a CV mothership. Hover over the resource to be mined, hop into the HV cockpit, mine at will without having to risk the HV falling into a hole. I even mounted an HV at 90 degrees to the CV mothership so 6 drills could be used before switching to the drill turret. Now that you can use laser drills on the SV this is less of a benefit. Still, it was nice. Granted, this "engineering challenge" was actually created by the devs when they put other artificial limitations in place (like no drill turret for SV). Ideally, you should be allowed to use any block/device on any ship/base and not have artificial limitations of any sort to limit this behavior. Would also be nice to have just one grid size (the small grid) and then have the larger grid just be a multiplier of the smaller grid, and allow placement (or removal) of smaller blocks on the larger block once placed. If that makes sense at all. To put it another way, a large block is just x cubed of the smaller blocks. At that point, building in the "large grid" really just obfuscates the fact that the smaller grid is in play. Then you should have the option of placement / removal of blocks in large / small grid on the SV/CV/BA/HV. For example, placing multiple "small objects" like lights or switches on a single "large" block. Having a light switch on a CV/BA take up 2 square meters is just a waste of space. Usually, I play most games vanilla (not against mods, and I've done a bit myself over the years). It's just nice to have a playable game without getting a bit hacky if you know what I mean. Although, I happily spent countless hours tweaking .py scripts in STBC back in the day,.... Maybe I'm just getting old,...
@zertali, If memory serves me (it rarely does these days), in the beginning, the "Starter Block" determined whether the whether it was a large or small hull block, window, etc. Certain equipment was proscribed for BA, CV, SV or HV, but the others would scale to the starter. At least thst is how I remember it during pre-Alpha. If I'm mistaken, it's because I AM getting old! As I mentioned previously, SE has panels with up to 4 switches and equipment with multiple activation points. I live in hope that we can do the same here one day before I join my ancestors.
Today, I finished painting and texturing my Begin starter base. It was to polish the base up so it was presentable for the ZeroG challenge. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1975992848
That's why I showed these knobs and switches... The player's actions are "detected" by the object's colliders. I am trying things to "stuff" more switches in the same 3d "space", which is not strictly related to the block's visual space. See the trees in my previous posts ? We all know that when we put a window corner block, we can't put anything else "under" the window, but the player can walk in there, O2 circulates, bullets pass, etc. That is because the corner block uses a cube collider taking the whole space, and prevents other blocks from being at the same position. But look at my trees and everything on the floor below the glass domes : they are all "inside" the dome's "space" but because I used specific collider shapes that follow the geometry very closely, I can put other blocks under them. Just like everything else in a game, numbers count. Using these more "precise" colliders have a performance impact, but not at the lower objects/ faces counts, just like "decals" are only 2 triangles vs cubes have 12. The player model has hundreds (if not thousands) of triangles, so having a few fancy colliders in the game have much less performance impact than having, let's say, 1 or 2 more enemies rendered at visible distance. SO it's just a question of balancing geometry impact vs benefits : having huge blocks saves lots of triangles, that I can now "exchange" for better colliders (more "faces"). Long story short : this means that I can stuff more switches on a 1-block space, and the player reticle (little yellow square) should "pick up" different "colliders" that have at least 1 face aligned at the right spot. But let me just double-check this and I'll show the results here. .
SE has two block types - large and small. Some functional block are large only or small only. Many block are however shared between both sizes. Some of course are designed for a specific size because the model dont make sense on the other size. Some blocks only have small or large versions - these days mostly reasonable. One thig I really like is with BA/CV type constructs as they can be changed between the two modes. The difference is simply that in BA mode, block can be attached to landscape or asteroids whereas they cannot in ship mode. In base mode the structure cannot be moved and alot of physics is disabled though sub grids can (stuff on rotors/pistons etc). In order to convert between the modes - then the structure needs to satisfy the new mode first - ie not moving or not partially buried. The big thing I like with switching modes is nearly all of my SE space stations have thruster and jump drives on them so I can move them when required (to pillage another area/planet). Also kind of cool when you get one perfectly positioned and aligned above a base on the planet/moon below allowing you drop stuff with a parachute to the base 40+km below. The downsides with SE: - Gets very laggy with not even that many constructs and sometime for no obvious reason - Physics can be very glitchy 'clang' can leave people extremely pissed off when something they have been working on for ages just explodes... - Not much to do in solo/co-op once the novelty wears off without a load of mods - Vanilla weapons are crap - definitely need weapon mods and shield mod - Basically need alot of mod regardless for a decent game IMHO (again once the novelty wear off). - Block not as nice as EGS blocks and no where near as many shapes and no per side texturing etc - Asteroid hunting get very tedious and frustrating quickly with vanilla sensors and extended range mod sensor can be laggy. - A bunch of other stuff too that I cant immediately think of right now. I also think thrusters are all too weak so alot of vessels can initially end up basically as ugly bundled of thrusters and batteries, but the flight physics feels right and the reach for orbit is satisfying and requires thought and care to do it efficiency especially in small vessel. I like that you have to fly with care when mining etc, but thrusters are very easily damaged. The landing gear are really useful utility gripping devices - pick stuff up drop it etc. You can add you own script or workshop script to control stuff - huge automated inventory management, real time extended huds etc, missile targetting and flight control systems, missile salvo fire scripts you name it, someone has done it. I have a script I use to give me the most efficient burn to orbit - push button and it takes over the whole burn and craft orientation to orbit using only the bare minimum power needed to get you there with auto cut off once you get to zero G. Eventually however you want to kill stuff and blow **** up and this is where SE really fails badly. Even with the mod I have tried it has nothing like what EGS has NPC wise. Hand weapons are just a rifle and that it (some mods improve on this). I would be a happy person if we could take the NPC, factions of EGS and the EGS block variations, materials and texturing etc and stick that in SE. And for SE tone thr physic down just enough to get rid the lag, or at least put if off to allow decent size and amount of structures to be built. As for everything else eleon have done in empyrion - I could happily live without it and would probably take SE any day. Modding sucks, no scripting, silly limits, too much artificial partitioning of types, CPU, kindergarden physics and similar all the mess around moving on ship, dvessels essentially disabled and defenceless while docked etc - hate it all. I dont even care so much for the galaxy in this - sure its cool, but not essential and I never really felt it added much. But EGS with all its terribel flaw seem to be the only game like this that has all the elements of a game instead of basically just being a builder sandbox., At least until we see what happens with star ship evo which look promising but with just one highly talented person on it - maybe not anytime soon. If SE had something to wage war upon, I think I would drop this and never touch it again.
@Kassonnade - this comes back to why I wish they would semi open source this by some means and let people with a care top continue to work on it and improve it and fix the glaring flaws etc. Looks cool what you are doing, but I guess no hope of you ever being able to do this kind of thing as a proper mod?
Thanks ! But no, this is not really "modding" as I am just experimenting within the limits of what can be done with models, collision, and the configuration files (.ecf). I just succeeded in making a custom switch, now I am going to try animations, if the game allows me to... Since we are left pretty much on our own with not much in terms of directions and key info, we have to check and test everything, and it makes things a bit more tedious than they could be. For now I think what most players would like to have is the knowledge how to do all this themselves, I guess. I am not sure if it's worth the time, but I could make some very simple guidelines in a thread, so players can make a simple object from config file, make a simple model in Blender, make that object a prefab in Unity, then test it in a simple scenario. I started making a tutorial for decals, and I got a bit burned from making screenshots and trimming mini menus and similar things, to make everything clear and easy to follow. But that is a small price to pay if, at the end of the process, we see many players diving in and content begins popping up with lots of variety and originality. I'm still having lots of fun, as long as I don't put my headphones on when I check my stuff in game. But I am working on sound too. One tip : with decals, we can have "movies", and movies have... sound ! This means a lot, although most players will only visualize a video clip on a plane. In fact, we can make a 2x2 movie on an invisible plane, and just use the "canvas" to play sounds. And since the video is nonexistent, then we can use these everywhere we want, from ambient sounds to device effects, etc. Unless they allow us to make "sound" in Unity in a more conventional way, of course. ; Back to work play !
---eng--- That's exactly one thing that annoys me (that and having to keep pressing F6 to clean up the HUD.). Error messages must also be clicked away. If you are in a fight and an "internal error" occurs, it is annoying. Only with luck can you stay alive. A Steam friend once wrote to me "The developers all have to be Ziraxes, otherwise, they wouldn't help them like that" o: ---de--- Genau das ist eine Sache, die mich nervt (Das und ständig F6 drücken zu müssen, um das HUD aufzuräumen.). Fehlermeldungen müssen auch weggeklickt werden. Wenn man im Kampf ist und ein "internal Error" kommt, dann nervt dieser. Nur mit Glück bleibt man am Leben. Ein Steam Freund schrieb mir mal "Die Entwickler müssen alle Ziraxe sein, sonst würden sie denen nicht so helfen" o: ---eng--- If you sit at the wheel in the CV and press "O", then the spaceship is oriented towards the planet. Did they change that? I restarted a single-player game and tested it. It does not work anymore. I had aligned the stations on my planet in this way. Now I wanted to continue with it and it no longer works. ---de--- Wenn man im CV am Steuer sitzt und "O" drückte, dann richtete sich das Raumschiff doch zum Planeten hin aus. Haben die das geändert? Ich hab mal ein Singleplayer Spiel neu gestartet und es getestet. Es funktioniert nicht mehr. Ich hatte an meinem Planeten so die Stationen ausgerichtet. Nun wollte ich damit weiter machen und es funktioniert nicht mehr.
Been tooling around with reforged designs here's the hybrid CV/Space Station I came up with. Not for combat but used as a mobile base I can drag CV's around.
I may wet my pants in anticipation! So, meaning no disrespect to the Devs, why don't they do this? That "phantom cube" has caused me no end of frustration. In one case, I had finshed the interior of my Assault Tank HV using an open cockpit inside. While I had no problem sitting, exiting encased me in the corner window cube! I had to blast my way out or go to godmode. Not to mention using half blocks to gain some ceiling height only to be unable to mount lights there. I just found out that my CAD program has disappeared. I was hoping to be able to provide some sketches of ideas. To make things worse, my scanner isn't working, so hand-sketches are out, too. Clearly, I have some work to do. I applaud your efforts and hope they can be translated into something I (and the rest of the community) can use. That little square is yellow? Hmmm. Always learn new things here. Thank you.
The messages I'm referring are the ones about Zyrax attacks, self-destruction imminent, reputation changes and so forth. They don't interfere with the game like the error messages you mentioned. They could easily (I think) stay ontil ESC or other key was pressed. If I'm the only one having trouble with this then I suppose there is nothing to be done. If not....
Been a while since i've built anything. But I needed an entirely new POI for the next chapter of the Reforged Galaxy/Reforged Eden main story mission "Chapter 6: Hostile Apparatus" so i've built this nice new underground POI. As with the replacement story missions in Reforged, they introduce the player to new factions, techniques and traps in a noob-friendly environment with an explanation so that they can recognise Incinerator traps, air vents, etc... which will be useful in other POIs like the Bastion and Missile Base. Top down view Entry hall Control Room Radar room Generator Room Crew quarters The server room (B2). The consoles have dialogue tags attached to them, but no dialogue written as of yet. That'll be tomorrow... maybe.
Got back on EGS this last week Good to be back. Enjoying modifying my old stuff to suit the modern era. threw a new sv together which im using on HWS atm
This reminds me... We really need to find some new, more appropriate hologram displays. What you've got looks great (no surprise there) but how much better if the big screens didn't look like "office fire escape" plans, or an episode of the BBC's "Planet Earth". I mean there could be a power flow-diagram, or anything less plebeian. And couldn't the screen with the planet be not so obviously Earth? Sorry about that. Impressive, as always.
---de--- Diesmal hab ich zwei mal die F5 Taste zum Aktualisieren des Forums gedrückt und beobachtet, dass die Tasten-Eingabe erkannt wurde. o: Daher hatte ich beim letzten Mal vieles nicht gelesen. Die letzten drei Tage hab ich an meinem Zoo, Tier-Depot bzw. Kreaturen-Depot weiter gearbeitet. Ich kam da richtig in Fahrt. Um diesen Schwung nicht abzubremsen hab ich vieles andere beiseite gelegt. Das Kreaturen-Depot ist fast fertig. Ich muss es noch testen. Der Erste Test ging in die Hose. Ich hatte die Station zum Planeten ausgerichtet. Dabei musste ich feststellen, das die Spawner-Kreaturen sich nicht nach der Station ausrichten, sondern nach dem Koordinatensystem. Die Station war im All mit einem Vektor 0, 30, 300 positioniert. Dementsprechend liefen die Kreaturen in Schräglage die Wände hoch. Pustekuchen, für die Ausrichtung des Athena-Verteidigungsnetzwerk zum Planeten Aureus. Alle Stationen wollte ich noch als POI raus bringen. Aber das hat keinen Sinn, wenn die Gegner an den Wänden und der Decke rum laufen, je nachdem wo um den Planeten die Station steht. ---eng--- This time I pressed the F5 key twice to refresh the forum and observed that the key input was recognized. O: So I hadn't read a lot last time. For the last three days, I have worked on my zoo, animal depot or creature depot. I really got going. In order not to slow down this momentum, I put a lot of other things aside. The creature depot is almost ready. I still have to test it. The first test failed. I had aligned the station with the planet. I had to find out that the Spawner creatures do not align themselves with the station, but with the coordinate system. The station was positioned in space with a vector 0, 30, 300. Accordingly, the creatures ran up the walls in an inclined position. Puff pie, for aligning the Athena defence network with the planet Aureus. I wanted to bring all stations out as POI. But that makes no sense if the opponents are walking around on the walls and the ceiling, depending on where around the planet the station is. ---de--- Ja das Fadenkreuz, dass kann ich auch kaum sehen.und ich spiel auf einem 55 Zöller. Wenn es zweifarbig wäre, dann würde ich es vielleicht sehen (Eine Farbe, die man auf dunklem Hintergrund sieht; eine, die man auf hellem Hintergrund sieht. Das mit dem Aufzug kann man doch basteln. Vor allem, wo man nun alles an alles andocken kann. Ich hatte so etwas als CV-Aufzug in einer BA. Nun könnte ich es als SV basteln, wenn ich dafür Zeit finde. ---eng--- Yes, the crosshairs, I can hardly see that either. And I play on a 55 monitor. If it was two-tone, then maybe I would see it (one colour you see on a dark background, one that you see on a light background. You can tinker with the elevator. Especially where you can now dock everything to everything. I had something like that as a CV lift in a BA. Now I could do it as an SV if I find the time. ---de--- Das hört sich kompliziert und aufwendig an. Wenn man nur eine Funktion auf einem Block darstellen kann (Bsp. Toilette usw): Kann man dann nicht durch Anklicken eine Art Menü, bzw. Schalttafel erhalten, wie das P-Menü oder ein Bild, wie die Map? ---eng--- That sounds complicated and time-consuming. If you can only display one function on a block (e.g. toilet, etc.): Can you not then click to get a kind of menu or control panel, such as the P-menu or a picture, such as the map? ---de--- Ich weiß jetzt nichts von einer Challenge, aber so etwas hatte ich auch gebastelt, um Meteorite abzubauen, die im Meer aus Laver nieder gegangen waren. Es kamen halt keine neuen, wenn da zu viele drin lagen. Das Bild hatte ich damals in Steam veröffentlicht. Das war dann auch ein Projekt von mir, das gestorben ist. ---eng--- I don't know about a challenge now, but I had also made something like this to mine meteorites that had fallen in the sea of lava. No new ones came when there were too many in there. I published the picture on Steam at the time. That was also a project of mine that died. https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....693/9400722DEB2A2BA9669564CF60CA246F068E5298/ ---de--- Ein Problem hier war es, dass das CV hin und wieder hoch gesprungen ist, wenn man den Pilotensitz verließ und niemand sonst drin saß. Das geschieht heute ja auch hin und wieder. Immer dann, wenn irgend was zwischen den Fahrwerken oder der CV-Struktur ist, wie Steine, Bäume und Meteorite. Im Weltall wird man weggeschubst. ---eng--- One problem here was that the CV would jump up every now and then when you left the pilot's seat and no one else was in it. That happens every now and then today. Whenever there is something between the landing gear or the CV structure, such as stones, trees and meteorites. In space, your CV gets pushed away. ---de--- Vieles andere wurde ja kaputt auch kaputt gemacht: Das fehlen der "public" Fraktion und die Volumenkontrolle hat mir teilweise das hier kaputt gemacht. Ich hatte damit immer meinen Spaß, gestrandeten Raumfahrern zu helfen: ---eng--- A lot of other things have also been broken: The lack of the "public" group and the volume control partially ruined this for me. I've always had fun helping stranded space travellers: ---de--- Die explodierenden Generatoren haben mir das hier kaputt gemacht. Man darf es nur noch bedacht nutzen. Viele haben über fehlende Lager-Logistik geklagt. Das hier war für mich persönlich die optimale Lösung. Ich wollte es auch für CV-Teile bauen: ---eng--- The exploding generators broke this for me. You can only use it carefully. Many have complained about a lack of warehouse logistics. For me personally, this was the optimal solution. I wanted to build it for CV parts too: ---de--- Meine Raumstation funktioniert ja auch nicht mehr. Auf 9 konnte ich fast ruckelfrei durch, nun ist das nicht mehr möglich. Diese Station war schon 80% POI-ready. Wer Lust und Zeit hat kann ja mal durch das Gefängnis und den Hausmeisterbereich ruckeln. Der Ausbruch war vom Hausmeister schon geplant. Er scheint da einige Notizen verloren zu haben. ---eng--- My space station no longer works either. On 9 I was able to go through almost smoothly, now that is no longer possible. This station was 80% POI-ready. If you have the time and energy, you can jerk through the prison and the janitorial area. The outbreak was already planned by the caretaker. He seems to have lost some notes there. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1894467180 ---de--- Ich hoffe ich kann das Spinnenforschungszentrum noch nutzen. Momentan trau ich mich nicht dran. Ich will mich nicht ärgern müssen. Das Teil mag kaum jemand, aber ich bin stolz auf diesen Bau. Die neuen kleinen Spinnen reizen mich dazu, diese Station endlich in ein POI zu verwandeln. Geschichte und Umsetzung sind hier bei ca 70% fertig. Der Einbruch sollte durch das Lüftungssystem, die Kühlanlage und /oder dem riesigen Hydrauliklift stattfinden. Die Eier wollte ich aufsprengen, wenn man an ihnen vorbei geht. Vielleicht klappt es diesmal. Beim Botanischen-Forschungslager hat es nicht geklappt. Auch die Verwendung von Falltüren am Ei, lief schief. Ich denke manch einer würde geschockt werden, wenn er ganz unten in den großen Raum kommt. ---eng--- I hope I can still use the spider research centre. At the moment I don't dare to do it. I don't want to have to be angry. Hardly anyone likes this station, but I'm proud of this build. The new little spiders encourage me to finally turn this station into a POI. History and implementation are done here at around 70%. The break-in should take place through the ventilation system, the cooling system and/or the huge hydraulic lift. I wanted to break open the eggs when you walk past them. Maybe this time it will work. It didn't work out at the botanical research camp. The use of trap doors on the egg also went wrong. I think some people would be shocked when they walk down into the big room. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1897825129 ---de--- Spaß! Das ist die Hauptsache. Deshalb lass ich mich nicht in irgendwelche Projekte hinein ziehen. Da wird aus Spaß sehr schnell Arbeit. Hinter jeder Version nachzuarbeiten war sehr stressig, bis ich auf die Idee kam, bei Version 9 zu bleiben. Ich konnte so alte Projekte endlich fertig stellen. Bei 11 oder 12 bin ich wieder dazu gestoßen. ---eng--- Fun! That is the main thing. That's why I don't get drawn into any projects. Fun turns into work very quickly. Editing after each version was very stressful until I got the idea to stick with version 9. I was finally able to finish such old projects. At 11 or 12 I got back to it. [/QUOTE] ---de--- Jep, in meinem Bahnhof, als POI, hab ich LCDs als eine Art E-Books in die Schränke gepackt. Es wäre schon klasse, wenn man dort Nachrichten speichern könnte und die auf dem Boden liegen lassen kann. So wie die Dinger, die man in Subnautica findet. ---eng--- Jep, in my train station, as POI, I put LCDs in the cupboards as kind of e-books. It would be great if you could save messages there and leave them on the floor. Like the things, you find in Subnautica.
