Ship Designer

Discussion in 'The Hangar Bay' started by SilensVentus, Dec 27, 2015.

  1. SilensVentus

    SilensVentus Ensign

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    Greetings,

    Hopefully this has not been posted before. I wanted to provide a link to a site where you can "draw' out basic ship design. It is a Minecraft circle/ellipse/rectangle/line generator on a grid. It will make sense when you see it. I have used it for several "block" type games to design basic layouts very quickly. It will let you create the above shapes.

    http://www.mineconics.net/

    Once you have your shape, open up PAINT application (default Windows App.). Then hold down SHIFT and press PRTSCR on the keyboard. Save the file somewhere.

    You can now open up the file while building your ship (HV, SV or especially CV) and "count" the blocks to reproduce. Just bounce back and forth between PAINT and Empyrion.

    It at least gets you a very good starting point and helps to make "round" shapes out of "square" blocks.

    I assume there are other such programs (please post if something more simple - I would be curious), but I figure this could help some people. You simply CLICK and HOLD on a spot and drag out. The coordinates show up in the top left for each item you create. So if you want the same section side by side, just choose same shape and match the output coordinates.

    It will make sense after your first click and drag. ;) Here's one that took me about 30 seconds.

    upload_2015-12-27_11-54-39.png
     
    #1
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  2. Yolofessional

    Yolofessional Captain

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    thank you for sharing!
     
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  3. LiftPizzas

    LiftPizzas Rear Admiral

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    Yep, there's also plotz.co.uk which does circles/ellipses as well as 3-d torus/sphere and some prefabricated stuff like wizard towers.

    I do mine like this so that I'm not restricted to standard shapes:
     
    #3
  4. SilensVentus

    SilensVentus Ensign

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    I checked that site out. Very cool. Thanks.
     
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  5. Brokenshakles

    Brokenshakles Rear Admiral

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    Yep, this is an essential tool for larger builds, anything beyond 100 blocks long takes outlining and planning to build effectively. I used a similar pixel circle generator tool for my latest project, but this is MUCH more powerful. Thanks for the great link!
     
    #5
  6. hoxer

    hoxer Commander

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    I've been fooling around with a 3d voxel painter for Empyrion. It's probably never getting done because of all the time I don't have.

    See for your selves: http://hoxer.net/empyrion/voxel/index.html

    Hold insert and drag to rotate the scene. And keep in mind that some of the blocks are buggy, so the suggested placement of each voxel might be bothering you.
     
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  7. Angvir

    Angvir Lieutenant

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    That is pretty sweet. I had to hold Shift to rotate the screen.
     
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  8. Brokenshakles

    Brokenshakles Rear Admiral

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    Now all we need is a converter to the Empyrion ship file format for the web tool.
     
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  9. juhlenedni

    juhlenedni Lieutenant

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    For circles and curves or the "zigzag" lines, I use Gimp (freeware).
     
    #9
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2016
  10. hoxer

    hoxer Commander

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    Yeah, but I think going all in on making a web based ship designer is way more than I could handle on my own. My goal for the tool was creating crude or rough designs.
     
    #10
  11. Angvir

    Angvir Lieutenant

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    Made this SV frame with your hoxer.net voxel tool. Kinda buggy with the Half and quarter blocks but all in all pretty useful.

    Fighter.png
     
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  12. [BLG] Dusty Bandito

    [BLG] Dusty Bandito Ensign

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    I'd be willing to help with this. However I don't know how to reverse engineer the saved prints. If the devs wanted to chime in here and provide some input on the method? object structure and serialization?
     
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  13. Furian

    Furian Captain

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    this tool is awesome! would love it if more of the shapes where included
     
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  14. Calabris

    Calabris Lieutenant

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    So what can we do to help? Convert shapes? import textures?
     
    #14
  15. Jonofwrath

    Jonofwrath Ensign

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    #15

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