Space Ship Designer

[Connors]

Only a matter of time until I make a star destroyer.
Well, maybe not, that could slow down the computer, what's a similar ship lower on the size scale? I bet there's a canon name for one. I hear the Star Wars "extended universe" gets mind numbingly detailed.

[Gan]

Got the preview display working.

I'll do the armor, mass and money calculations tomorrow. Time to hit the hay.

[Connors]

I'd volunteer to make detailed graphics for the preview and outside the editor if you want.

[Gan]

That'd be epic. I was just thinking of having to procedurally triangulate and color fill the shapes but using an inage instead would make it look better and be easier!

The hull image needs to be the exact same shape as the piece. There'll have to be 5 versions of each piece, one colored for each armor type.

A good size for each piece would be 100x100 or 50x50. I can zoom out.

[Connors]

Why are there 5 versions?

[Gan]

I'll post the outline for each block.
5 versions: Copper(copper color), Steel(Dark silver), Titanium(light silverish), Diamond(blueish), Adamantium(Green?)

It'll just be a matter of coloring then in. And adding maybe a texture pattern if you want.

[Gan]

Here are the outlines, just color them in and attach em to a post.

[Gan]

I just went ahead and added triangulation. So Ex-Nay on the last post.

You do not need to color in or texture any of them. Triangulation allows me to fill them procedurally. I can fill them with a color or even a texture.

So Connors, if ya wanna make some fancy looking textures, you only need to make 1 per armor and I can just fill it onto the space ship using the triangulation algorithm.

This shows triangulation in action, thought I'm just filling the blocks with white instead of a texture or color.

[Gan]

I'm really starting to like this.

To do in the designer:
- Change up the blocks data to store points and mass and cost.
- Add a block instance that holds the block data index, that individual block's rotation and the armor index.
- Add the armor data to store armor name, mass, cost and armor value.
- Create the armor display, shows the armors from the armor data. Add a clickable checkmark on the left side that allows you to place blocks with the checked checkmark.
- Add Preview of Ship label above preview.
- Add credits display to bottom.
- Add the mass and armor labels.
- Add some instruction labels to the bottom.
- Make the armor and mass calculations happen on every update.

[Connors]

During gameplay you could have a part of the HUD that's based on the same preview code, which shows information about each part of the ship (mainly damage done and whether stuff has power).

[Gan]

Yeah most definitely. That's a pretty awesome idea. Like target a ship and it'll show the target's ship preview and the equipment on that ship in certain areas. Like radar scanning.

Here's the textures for the armors.
If you want to add cool designs to them so they're not just a plain color that would probably look epic.
The ship's exterior will be mapped with these textures, it'll tile and probably look seamless if I can get it right.

[Connors]

I have to think about what kind of texture to use. Unique textures would mean I could give each piece a defined edge. However, this might be even better: Program it to do automatic shading for the outline.

[Gan]

It'd take a little math to determine what the outside of the ship is but it sounds possible.
I could do procedural shading on the edge.

[Connors]

What are you using for collisions? It seems like box2d would be well suited for this. Especially when sections break off your ship or you hit an asteroid.

[Gan]

I'm not sure. I won't need to worry about collisions until the designer is finished and I get to make gameplay.

Box2D means I wouldn't have to do so much work regarding math but it also means I have to deal with the Box2D framework which can be a tad messy.
I'll have to think hard on this. It'd be really easy to handle things with Box2D cause doing collisions manually sounds like a lot of work. Whole bunch of line-line collision checking. On the plus side in Box2D they have joints which means I can have the ship held together by breakable joints and enough force could break a joint causing your ship to come apart.
Then again I'm going to have to do line-line collisions anyway so I can detect.... no wait I can probably use Box2D to check it points are touching in order to have the ship connect together and then I can do a flood algorithm to do power flow....
Hmmm.

What do you guys think?