Space Ship Designer

[Gan]

Full Size


I was thinking of how dull a space game would be if all you did was fly around and shoot other ships.
Then I thought, it'd be a lot more fun if you could design your space ship. So I figure, the more permutations of possible ships, the more fun!

Here's the gist, the first step to designing your ship is taking a bunch of blocks of various shapes and connecting them.
*yawn* I'd just get on Minecraft if I wanted to connect blocks.
Adding blocks adds mass to your ship, mass makes it harder to move. Bigger ship will move slower.
Still kinda dull...
Each block can be a different type of armor. Each armor has pros and cons regarding cheapness, mass and armor value. This alone makes the permutations of designs skyrocket.
Okay that's a little bit interesting.

Thread to be continued....

[Gan]

Full Size- Glare's blockin out the power, it says Power: 100/125

The outfitter, the place where you place equipment on your design.
Oooooh
You have a plethora of items. Radar, power supply, lasers, shield generators, and engines. Each of these have different pros and cons, produce or take energy, take space and have mass. Design the ship your way, make a brutal warship, a flying tank, or even a good samaritan repair ship.
There are millions of possibilities.
Wow
This is only the ship creation, imagine what it would be like in battle. Flying around, shooting lasers. But remember, the ship is made of blocks. A ship under stress may be likely to come apart. Just imagine your right wing tearing off, you losing 1/5 of your engines, half your cargo and a lazer.
Or a missile hitting the mid-section, causing your power supply to go offline.
You would be disabled and at the mercy of the space pirates!

That sounds epic Gan! When are you gonna make it!?
Good question, the answer is I don't know. My time is often taken in random directions and as of now I'm in college. But!
If one of you developers would like to stab at making the ship designer, I'd gladly help out.

[Connors]

This has the potential to be really cool if it's done right. It reminds me of another game, Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts lets you put together boats cars planes or whatever weird combination of those, using a 3D grid. Very similar to your idea. And it worked really well.

[Zoo]

1. http://armorgames.com/play/3955/upgrade-complete
2. http://armorgames.com/play/10015/bubble-tanks-3

[Connors]

Neither of those games really took this idea to it's full potential though...

[Zoo]

Nope, but they still rock. Wasn't there a SC spaceship creator at some point?

[Circuit]

Sounds like a fun game, Gan.  I'd like to see it become a reality.  If I knew a little bit more about math, I'd try to make it myself.

[Gan]

Says the guy who made the spectacular dynamic line landscape and uber matherific encryption programs....

Designer maths shouldn't be too hard, biggest obstacle I see is a collision algorithm regarding space flight. But that's not necessarily in the designer itself.

[Gan]

Actually I'm starting to see where you're coming from.

How would I detect a viable ship and not just a bunch of random placed blocks?
How about I don't.

Any ship is viable, but when you test it, it either works and or it doesn't.

Which comes to ship design testing, flying around and shooting. How will it work? Well a ship composed of blocks with different equipment would be just fine but what if it's a bunch of random blocks?
I think those random blocks would become dead blocks. But then how do you differentiate between dead blocks and the space ship? The camera has to focus on something.

I got it. You assign a block as the main control center and your camera will follow that, the control center is where the captain hangs out. If the control center is destroyed, the ship becomes useless cause there's nothing to control it.
I think I'll make the control center the radar item.

I dunno though, that gives an inherit weakness to ships. Just destroy the control center.
Maybe I should make the camera latch on to the first working piece of the ship that contains a working power source. And if none contains a power source, it just grabs a random piece of the ship to focus on.

You are the captain of your ship, perhaps wherever the captain is....

What do you guys think?

[Connors]

Well it makes sense that the command center and/or the pilot of a ship would be the target. You'd have to be able to protect that area. A good design would protect important pieces of the ship. And it would be really interesting if you had to target certain parts of enemy ships to take them out.

[x]

Actually I'm starting to see where you're coming from.

How would I detect a viable ship and not just a bunch of random placed blocks?
How about I don't.

Any ship is viable, but when you test it, it either works and or it doesn't.

Which comes to ship design testing, flying around and shooting. How will it work? Well a ship composed of blocks with different equipment would be just fine but what if it's a bunch of random blocks?
I think those random blocks would become dead blocks. But then how do you differentiate between dead blocks and the space ship? The camera has to focus on something.

I got it. You assign a block as the main control center and your camera will follow that, the control center is where the captain hangs out. If the control center is destroyed, the ship becomes useless cause there's nothing to control it.
I think I'll make the control center the radar item.

I dunno though, that gives an inherit weakness to ships. Just destroy the control center.
Maybe I should make the camera latch on to the first working piece of the ship that contains a working power source. And if none contains a power source, it just grabs a random piece of the ship to focus on.

You are the captain of your ship, perhaps wherever the captain is....

What do you guys think?

You could treat all the blocks as points on a grid, compute the convex hull, then take the center point.

[Gan]

I suppose but the blocks move freely in space. Blocks not connected will float away.

[x]

I suppose but the blocks move freely in space. Blocks not connected will float away.

Just recompute the central point every time a block becomes detached..?

Personally I think having a 'control center' is a good mechanic. It would effect ship building too--you will always want to put armor blocks around it.

[Connors]

Right. And if something is knocked lose or an engine is knocked out the game could recompute your center of gravity and you might lose control, at least temporarily.

[Gan]

Good ideas.

Dynamic grid is in. 5x5 limitation no more! You can have ships as big as you want them.