This Thread Explains which could help all people here. The Procedural blocks. In Kerbal Space Program moder made it possible(And IT USES UNITY ENGINE). And there would be less need to add Extra Cubes and Shapes. Unless specific requirements. https://empyriononline.com/threads/new-modular-blocks.47381/
There's a bottom-less pit of shape suggestions and we're still working on angles. Start to throw in curves with a block radius greater than 1 and it will explode further. Well I can't help but think there's perhaps a different way other than blocks. What if you did blocks for internal spaces but drew a hull shape that got baked to surround it? Then impose some kind of virtual grid over the baked hull and... Okay, yeh, its probably way to late too rip up this part of the game. More blocks, got it. I wanted to make a geodesic dome -- something like in Silent Running -- but realized it was built on triangles, not squares. I can kind of still make it work and discovered that all of the glass seems to make the size class go way up. I wanted to grow trees (like on the starter planet) but that's not possible either, so I was thinking about multi-tiered gorwing plots in the dome and... yeh.
I don't quite understand this response. I don't think the Unity game engine suffers any limitations that would prevent this type of mod. 7 Days to Die is on the Unity game engine and uses a similar block based building system yet modders are able to add custom blocks. The texture tool in Empyrion has multiple pages of textures, why doesn't the block shape UI also use that same widget? Regarding debugging, I agree that mods would muddy the waters when reporting bugs, but other games simply stipulate that mods must be disabled or uninstalled before submitting bugs and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Either way, keep up the good work. I see a lot of shapes requested in this thread that would be very useful!
@Hummel-o-War - Could you please consider to RENAME "Gepanzerten Betonblock" to Stahlbeton? Hence Concrete and Steelplates, you know?
Excellent ideas all! More 'pipe' variants please. Excuse the crudity of my examples. 1) Like shapes B8, C8 and DB. Single 'pipe' cross variant but also a double 'pipe' option and conection variants 2) E8 variants 3) a way to connect A3 to B8 4) single block spheres please. 5) Could we also have the thing flat 'wall plates' for the hollow examples given by @Exacute Something we and personnel turrets can shoot through but not pass through. Also to lean through and pull a switch.
It would seem logical to let players build the shapes they want, submit the design file to Eleon for testing and publication. Would it be too expensive for Eleon to publish a block building program that we could download, design, and then send the file to Eleon? Such a design program would put the creative ideas of the world at Eleon's fingertips.
I would like to suggest adding shape transitions to existing blocks, 2 such suggestions are to have ones that transition to and from ramp top, or bottom, and slope. i have attempted to supply the required wire frames.
I don't think there are enough people to justify them making a tool to do it. However, I do think that modders should be able to do it, if they would either accept raw coordinates, or some type of mesh format. If it was extensible at all, I think you'd find that the block shapes would explode quickly. But that would be true of anything they allowed modding. There are thousands of blueprints in the workshop. It would be nice if we could add recipes, devices, blocks, plants, creatures, etc.
I dont know how to wireframe this.. but its pretty obvious in attached screenshot: basically a thicker version of the (rounded) inward corner.
For big blocks (BA + CV); corridor blocks. I've made an example of something that would require a minimum of 2x2 in the game now. variants to this theme are easy to imagine (rounded, arched, vents/tubes, etc) different shapes to make corners, crossings, doors, etc.
I think it is enough if we get all missing blocks to the existing ones. Corners transitions etc. It is easy to figure out. And it is enough... for now.
Sorry for the late response but I just saw this and since I have seen this misconception a lot of times in the forum as well as the discord(s) I'd like to weigh in on this, sorry that it is a bit off-topic: The "game engine" referred to here is not Unity. It is the Empyrion game engine. This engine is made using Unity, yes, but Unity is just a toolkit, the game engine uses a subset of the toolkit and implements the mechanics of the particular game in question. I often see people claiming that Unity < Unreal and things like that - these arguments are almost always silly as most features exist in both toolkits and just about any game can be made using any of them. Sure, some things are easier to make in one and other things are easier in the other, but in general, the toolkits are both great and a comparison is irrelevant. So, in response: The Empyrion game engine only supports a fixed number (64 I think) of block variants per block type. A "palette" for selecting block shapes can, however, contain shapes from more than one block type, so the number of variations appear increased to the players. In theory this means that, technically, player-defined blocks could probably be added, but figuring out a way to identify and resolve block type and shape dependencies for blueprints would be complex.
