Author Topic: [RELEASE] GTI Europa (previously: Small, somewhat crappy modular station)  (Read 30546 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Shivan Hunter

  • 210
  • FRED needs lambdas!
[RELEASE] GTI Europa (previously: Small, somewhat crappy modular station)
It's done as done as it's going to be! There are a few small issues and if I tried to fix them I'd probably never finish the damn thing. So here it is.

Download







Includes a demo mission showing some possible configurations. The demo mission uses "allow daisy-chained docking", as otherwise the stations would split apart whenever one section was destroyed (which might be more realistic- test it out for yourself). It also treats the sections as different ships, without using SEXP trickery to average the sections' hit points or hide the ring sections.

Going to bed now. 2:30 AM. Pew pew pew.



Original post:

Quote
Hello HLP! I've been away for a while, so I haven't been working on any FS stuff, but now that the semester's over and I have more free time than I know what to do with, I have returned!

So this is a small (diameter = length of Deimos, approximately) modular ring station I've been working on. This is what a fully assembled station might look like:
http://i.imgur.com/8SJ8d.png


Core sections

Two core sections are available. This one contains some antennae that look a bit like a sensor array:
http://i.imgur.com/SxK8b.png

And this one contains two dome sections for observation decks:
http://i.imgur.com/WutgD.png

This ring section connects to either of the core sections, and contains one dockpoint on the bottom:
http://i.imgur.com/oT8BJ.png


Boring ring sections

This is the default ring section the others are based on. It takes up exactly 1/16th of the full circle:
http://i.imgur.com/dvVVr.png

Two end caps (one CCW, one CW):
http://i.imgur.com/baXVK.png
http://i.imgur.com/6hk9X.png

And one filler section:
http://i.imgur.com/vA2Ud.png


Ring sections that actually do ****

I'll start off with the good stuff. The defense section has 4 small point defense turrets, and 2 larger mass drivers:
http://i.imgur.com/xUDBR.png
http://i.imgur.com/CzywQ.png

The sensor array section will have the AWACS flag and enables long-range detection:
http://i.imgur.com/EiMj1.png

A residential section is lightly armored and good for civilian stations:
http://i.imgur.com/t2V0j.png

A docking section contains two larger and two small dockpoints (two on the inner side of the ring, and two on the long extended part):
http://i.imgur.com/EKjiS.png

Unless there are some serious issues, I'll need to start on UV mapping. UV mapping sucks. :(
« Last Edit: July 30, 2016, 05:39:59 pm by Shivan Hunter »

 

Offline Legate Damar

  • Keeping up with the Cardassians
  • 29
  • Hail Cardassia!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Will the texture be green?

I think it should be green.

 

Offline T-Man

  • 210
  • I came... I saw... I had a cuppa!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
That's actually looking really good man. We need more civil stations and this one has a really nice look to it. Keep it up; shall be watching this space. :yes:
Also goes by 'Murasaki-Tatsu' outside of Hard-Light

UEF fanboy. Rabid Imagination.

 

Offline Cyborg17

  • 29
  • Life? Don't talk to me about life....
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
I'd use it.  :D

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • My "FS Ships" folder is 582gb.
    • Minecraft
    • Exile
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Terran Karnak or Lucrehulk droid control ship after diet... Looks interesting. I always liked the idea of modular stations.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Dragon

  • Citation needed
  • 212
  • The sky is the limit.
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Interesting idea, very flexible.

 
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Ooh, very cool.  It looks quite good assembled. 

 

Offline ShadowWolf_IH

  • A Real POF Guy
  • 211
    • CoW
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
finish it, i like it and have a good use for this.
You can't take the sky from me.  Can't take that from me.

Casualties of War

 

Offline qwadtep

  • 28
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
I like it. Think it could use a core version that connects on both sides, though. Otherwise it reminds me too much of the droid ships from Phantom Menace.

 

Offline Black Wolf

  • Twisted Infinities
  • 212
  • Hey! You! Get off-a my cloud!
    • Visit the TI homepage!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Awesome! I tried for ages to make a modular station work - I never hit on the idea of ring segments (although I should have - I have nother model that uses ring segments, and a ring station as well, just not properly modular).

My only suggestion at this point would be to come up with some way of stacking rings together, some kind of vertical joiner for the central cores.

And, less of a suggestion and more of a request - how hard would it be to add some square 10m x 10m docking points to allow modular construction kit pieces to dock to your stations? It's not a massive deal, franky, but it might add somewhat to the modularity.
TWISTED INFINITIES · SECTORGAME· FRONTLINES
Rarely Updated P3D.
Burn the heretic who killed F2S! Burn him, burn him!!- GalEmp

 

Offline redsniper

  • 211
  • Aim for the Top!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
.... why are there two end cap models? Couldn't you just take one.... and flip it? Or wait, dock points. You need both for dock point orientation I guess, nm.

Hmmm, now there should be reversed versions of every section so we can dock them into S-shapes and cloverleafs and stuff. :p
"Think about nice things not unhappy things.
The future makes happy, if you make it yourself.
No war; think about happy things."   -WouterSmitssm

Hard Light Productions:
"...this conversation is pointlessly confrontational."

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

  • 210
  • FRED needs lambdas!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Yeah, dockpoints are quite wonky since you can't edit orientation (or position offsets, though that'd be a bit much).

Progress so far:



7/10 models UV'ed, still have the turret section and the cores to do.

At the moment, the bottom four models share a single texture, as do the two on top of them (sensor and residential sections), and the two on top of that (dockpoint and core-connector sections). The cores will obviously share a texture since they share so much geometry. I could make the turret section with its own texture, or share it with a new section- possibly a vertical connector like BW suggested, as a ring section instead of a core section. Otherwise, I could make the turret section with its own UV, which may be necessary since the two types of turrets will require a good amount of detail.

About the core section connecting on more than one side: I'll probably do that. I have yet to UV the cores, and it'd be trivial to copy the existing geometry to make ones with 2, 3 and 4 connectors at 90 degree angles. This would mean 8 models instead of 2; models for 1, 2, 3 and 4 connectors for both cores.

Technical issue (so many :words:)

Consider the ring section here:



Section 1 connects to S2, S2 to S3, and so on, until S15 connects to S16. This means we have a 16-section ring, all docked in one piece, and all the sections have well-defined positions relative to S1. This includes S16.

So what if we add a connection between S1 and S16?

In this case, S16 has two well-defined positions: the one defined by the S1-S2-...-S16 docks, and one defined by the S1-S16 dock. Because it's a 16-piece ring, these two positions are the same. Approximately.

I really doubt that the exact floating-point representation of S16's dock is equivalent to S1's dock, after being transposed 15 times, including all the error inherent in that process. This means that FSO cannot be expected to resolve the position of S16, and since our selection of "S1" is arbitrary, FSO cannot be expected to resolve the position of any section in the ring. I've done some testing in FRED, and it doesn't crash, but I'm still treading in the murky waters of undefined behavior.

In case you're still thinking of S16 being in the exact position that's needed: Imagine if I tried to connect S15 to S1. Would the ring just "bend" inwards to accommodate the 15-section ring? No? Didn't think so. Two possible positions for S15, and no good solution as to where to put it.

There is one obvious solution: simply not to dock a section to another. Leave S16 unconnected to S1. This is an acceptable solution, assuming the entire station remains intact. But most ships, and this station is no exception, exist to be PWND by BEAMZ. What happens if, say section 9 is destroyed? The rest of the station is pushed away by the explosion- and, because of the S1-S16 gap, "the rest of the station" is now two distinct pieces. S1-S8 and S10-S16 float away from each other, and S1 drifts away from S16 without any warning of their separation.

Quick fix: When any section of the ring is destroyed, use an explosion-effect in FRED placed between S1 and S16, and explain it away as structural failure caused by the same impact that destroyed S9.

The other solution-- and I am entirely unsure if this would work-- is to dock the entire ring and pray like crazy that the behavior isn't TOO undefined. FSO will be able to resolve positions exactly as soon as one section is destroyed. As to what happens before that... I'd need to do further testing.

 

Offline jr2

  • The Mail Man
  • 212
  • It's prounounced jayartoo 0x6A7232
    • Steam
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Is there a way to tell the FSO engine to 'snap-to', if something is supposed to be docked to something else and it's within a certain value of distance?  Got the idea from Winamp's (at least Winamp 2.53 or w/e... good old days, but I digress) feature of 'snapping' component windows to each other if they get within 5px (or another defined value) of each other or the edges of the screen.

I have no clue if that would be easy, hard, impossible, not feasible, not even plausible, or whatever, from an FSO code standpoint.  It's just an idea I'm tossing out there for anyone who does know the answer.

 

Offline MatthTheGeek

  • Captain Obvious
  • 212
  • Frenchie McFrenchface
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Another solution : purposely letting a gap in the ring. Problem solved.
People are stupid, therefore anything popular is at best suspicious.

Mod management tools     -     Wiki stuff!     -     Help us help you

666maslo666: Releasing a finished product is not a good thing! It is a modern fad.

SpardaSon21: it seems like you exist in a permanent state of half-joking misanthropy

Axem: when you put it like that, i sound like an insane person

bigchunk1: it's not retarded it's american!
bigchunk1: ...

batwota: steele's maneuvering for the coup de gras
MatthTheGeek: you mispelled grâce
Awaesaar: grace
batwota: oh right :P
Darius: ah!
Darius: yes, i like that
MatthTheGeek: the way you just spelled it it means fat
Awaesaar: +accent I forgot how to keyboard
MatthTheGeek: or grease
Darius: the killing fat!
Axem: jabba does the coup de gras
MatthTheGeek: XD
Axem: bring me solo and a cookie

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

  • 210
  • FRED needs lambdas!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
I suppose, for n objects with n connections, the engine could treat one of them as a "loose connection", not enforcing the distance calculation until another docked ship undocks or is destroyed. Any mesh of docks would have to have enough of these that the "graph" of docks would form a "tree" containing no loops. But that sounds pretty complicated given how hard it was- or so I hear- to get multiple docking implemented. I realize that's a huge can of worms in terms of physics, but it seems the docking code is pretty complicated. I wouldn't expect this from the FSO team especially given all that they've got to deal with atm.

[EDIT] Matth: yes I mentioned that in my pöst

 

Offline redsniper

  • 211
  • Aim for the Top!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Could you have a sexp telling S16 to dock with S1 when like any-of <S2...S15> are-destroyed?
"Think about nice things not unhappy things.
The future makes happy, if you make it yourself.
No war; think about happy things."   -WouterSmitssm

Hard Light Productions:
"...this conversation is pointlessly confrontational."

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

  • 210
  • FRED needs lambdas!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
I think for that to happen, the pieces would have to be able to move on their own, which would require engine subsystems, and even though I can make them untargetable it's a really sloppy hack.

 

Offline Legate Damar

  • Keeping up with the Cardassians
  • 29
  • Hail Cardassia!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Is it going to be green? I need green space stations for my mod. You will get credit.

 

Offline Droid803

  • Trusted poster of legit stuff
  • 213
  • /人 ◕ ‿‿ ◕ 人\ Do you want to be a Magical Girl?
    • Skype
    • Steam
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
Is it going to be green? I need green space stations for my mod. You will get credit.

It's called GIMP.
It lets you edit textures.

Don't worry, no need to credit me for that tidbit.
(´・ω・`)
=============================================================

 

Offline Legate Damar

  • Keeping up with the Cardassians
  • 29
  • Hail Cardassia!
Re: Small, somewhat crappy modular station
I have GIMP but I have never tried editing textures before