Made some great progress on my Cargo Hauler Ship. (AKA the "Pezz Dispenser") Looking to be on track to release this in a day or two. I feel like small details are pulling this together really nicely. Thoughts? Flavors preferences?
I uh... made a thing. And did some stunt-driving to test it out. *Professional nutcase on isolated moon course. Do not attempt. Ever.
You really have the mind for curves, I always struggle wit them. I just tried to make something curvy today and not worked out.
This is what I'm busy with. The last few days I just eat, sleep, and build like an addict, and roll out stuff quicker than I used to. This Manasa Archives still have a long way to go before finish.
As always, absolutely amasing @Ramachandra ! This was my work over the last couple of days. Spent most of today detailing the outside, inside is still completely hollow. I'm not at all happy with the front end - may tear it apart and give it another go, but I really do suck at doing the prow. https://imgur.com/a/ByWl2
I know the game engine doesn't like windows, but they are actually the best to make light airtight walls inside the vessel. The 2x2 window (regular) is 250 kg to cover 4 blocks space, meaning a mere 62,5 kg per block. Compared to 500 kg + for thin steel or 1000 kg for "regular" that's a lot of weight saved on the volume of a large ship. It's even better than shutter windows, for the inside at least. Windows and railings. But of course it means no fancy decorations and "hotel room" looks... But hey, what's a warship anyway !
with WarMachine's permission ill be remastering his Mars corvette Tachi from the TV show the Expanse tonight. tho no images atm here is what i looks like from the show what ive done to it updated blocks from 5.0 to 7.6 changed armaments from sentry guns to minigun turrets buffed intirior added warp tank and core
Thank you. You are working on a nice ship indeed. Those rack looking thing on the side is my favorite, and I like the arrangement of the thrusters. Small and big really work together. The bird on the wing is eye catching, and I agree about the front. The rest of the ship is elegant, and not cooperate with the body somehow. Just a thought: If you extend out the center piece of the nose, maybe work. The rest of the front is too good to erase.
Company has gone home, so I got a couple hours before work to revise my prototype racers. Since the finer details of racing in EGS seem to elude me, I think it is my lack of driving skills, perhaps I will just go with something I would like to be my racer instead. Something to represent me, my building style, and what I might build as a racer based on what I have managed to get through my thick skull so far. Now the problem is picking which prototype to actually finish. Spoiler: Pics I gave each prototype its own number for development purposes. This way I can personally identify the prototypes when I am contemplating what I like / dislike about each. #78 is my newest prototype. I wanted to try to make a small car using the smallest sealed cockpit. I would have preferred to cover the side thrusters with vents, but that would have made the build two blocks wider. So they are exposed to preserve the small size of the build. Don't know why, but I had some crazy desire to make some of the side walls as glass windows. #29 is my bike. The first prototype bike is on the left. I think some of the shapes on the initial look better than the revised version, but the revised version has better stats and a more unified look. A lot harder to keep upright than a multi-hover engine arrangement but I wasn't seeing any other bikes being entered when I first drafted this. Now there is a bike entered in the contest, so entering a bike wouldn't be as unique. If I struggle racing in the first place, there might be good reason to avoid something less stable, and yet I still leave this prototype on the roster for consideration to complete and make it my entry. Probably one of my bottom choices to become my racer--the extra challenge of driving such.... Yet I cannot seem to completely part with the bike either. Even if this never makes it as my entry, I think I will finish this someday. #516 was supposed to look more like a racer. My first draft on the left really got a beating with my poor driving skills. I was always snapping off bits of the "wing" in front. So I decided I needed this a bit tougher to take the blows of my slopping driving, something like thrusters up front. With the rebuild, it ended up with more thrusters and thus better acceleration all around. #73 was taking advantage of a cockpit only two blocks high, so I could put devices under the cockpit and still keep the car from getting tall. Now I like the fin in the back, but those wings were making it wider and hard to manage through turns. So I cleaned up the look with the rebuild on the right. Looks a lot cleaner without the "wings". And I replaced part of the fin with glass blocks to go along with those glass sides. #315 is my original prototype. The original draft is lost to all the alterations I did as I experimented. All of these might have the same number of thrusters in the rear, but they each of these variants also have more side and reverse thrust than that original draft ever had. This is where I did most of my messing around to study the impacts of side and reverse thrust. Now I have added some RCS for the final prototype on the far left of this line, otherwise all the others are consistent in that regard, and yes, they all had plenty of RCS, almost turning as well as the final prototype.
Well, you've kinda done this to yr self , haven't ya lol. I don't have the time to go prototyping usually and even if i had i probably wouldn't. Sticking to 1 vision and work towards it has never failed me yet.
How about... roads on Akua ? Just a small "dirt path" test I did to see if it's possible to modify existing planets instead of doing everything from scratch, which is kind of complex and tedious... The delicate part is to "isolate" the part of the heightmap that will be the road and modify it apart from the whole terrain, then paste it back & smooth the bumps... ... I have to use one of the 5 textures provided by the ecf file, so I chose sand since it really cuts through the grass color... ... View from above : Now I have to "exclude" all unwanted vegetation from the sand...
I like that. But shouldn't it be.... bigger? I am just wondering because i think there will be 20+ racer which is why all those onebase race tracks are not suiteable. But that is just me thinking.
The ship is coming along. It took about 300 RCS to get it decently maneuverable. I didn't lose too much lift from the additional weight so thrusters are set. I'm just adding detail and playing with textures/colors now. What the ship looked like a week ago: What it looks like at the moment: I've been slowly adding more detailing to the hull. The turret has been updated, I constructed a radar dish on the left based on the Falcon's rectangular dish, and I've built a little rocket launcher pod on the right where the radar dish would normally sit. I may end up playing around with the position of the radar and the rocket pod and see what I like best. More detailing on the rear quarter. I also made the main rear thruster housings larger. I wish larger sized SVs were supported more. This thing could use some turrets and a gravity generator(and T2 RCS!).
That is just the "framework demo" but in fact it can be any size wanted. I'm still working on an easy workflow anyone can replicate on any map, and I might make a small tutorial for this with detailed explanations. The "underlying texture" that covers all the terrain could also be used for roads, just like if the player had used his drill to remove the grass to make a path. The subtle part is making the path just a few feet deeper /higher than the terrain around, and also to keep everything "aligned" because we are working on different size / color depth bitmaps: 2 rgb 4 channels splatmaps and 1 huge grayscale heightmap.
Which reminds me, one of the things I'd like to see in Empyrion are terrain tools. Specifically a terrain paint tool. Something relatively simple and could be similar to the one in the Sims. *adds terrain and water tools to her list*
