Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: mikhael on January 16, 2002, 12:03:00 am
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Oh what the heck. This is Raindance Station. It was originally concieved as an asteroid-made-drydock facility, and things just moved from there. Like most things I do, there's a sort of internal fiction that goes with this. It started with East Rock, which has the three reactor cores, main concourse, and three drydocks. Eventually, more room was needed to add large ship docks, so South Rock was towed into place and the Shipworks was built on the interior surface. The addition of the shipworks required the addition of North Rock as a sort of habitation, facilities support and waystation area. West Rock was added for future expansion, and to balance the layout. Two parallel high speed tram tubes were built to unify all the asteroids into a coherent structure. I've got four images here:
This is the view from front to back, so East Rock is on the left. For scale, the three small things in the middle are 1.1km long Waterdancer class cruisers.
(http://www.404error.com/unsorted/raindance01c.jpg)
This is a view from outside the ring, looking directly at East Rock, where you can see the three main reactor cores. West Rock is hidden. Up top you can see North Rock in profile, including the Main concourse to the right and the habitation to the left. Down below, you can see South Rock, with its shipyards for super-vessels, such as dreadnaughts, colony ships and even small asteroid stations. To the right of South Rock, you can see the Shipworks campus.
(http://www.404error.com/unsorted/raindance02c.jpg)
In this view from above and to west of the station we can see both the main concourse of North Rock, the original facilities of East Rock, and--if you look closely--North Rock's auxiliary reactor cores. They appear as three groupings of six 'blisters' on the west side of the Rock.
(http://www.404error.com/unsorted/raindance03c.jpg)
Finally, we have the last view, also from above, but a reverse of the previous angle. From here you have a much clearer view of the main reactor cores, the Shipworks campus, and the habitation areas of North Rock. You also have a better view, perhaps, of the banana shaped tram stations on the aft ring.
(http://www.404error.com/unsorted/raindance04c.jpg)
This version of the Raindance Station mesh has been massively trimmed from 230k polygons, to about 153k. This took about a month to construct, piece by piece. During that month, several versions of North Rock and South Rock were discarded. All up, more than fourteen asteroid nodes were built, and only three survived the process. West Rock remained the same throughout. All of the work was done in Truespace 3.1, at true scale.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
ruhkferret on ICQ/AIM
"Your guy was a little SQUARE! You had to use your IMAGINATION! There were no multiple levels or screens. There was just one screen forever and you could never win the game. It just kept getting harder and faster until you died. JUST LIKE LIFE." --Ernie Cline
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looks...fragile.
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Originally posted by Carl:
looks...fragile.
Absolutely. If you wanted to wreck the whole thing, all you would have to do is go boulder bowling with a group of tugs. It is, however, not meant to ever be in such a situation.
If I were to redesign Raindance Station now, It would likely be incorporate six Apollo class asteroids in an octohedral formation, with another four off to the side, on the other side of a heavy arm to serve as the anchors for the shipyards. Of course, it wasn't designed by an engineer, no? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
Something else I would do, were I to design this station again, is keep the polycount much lower. I didn't know any better at the time, and I solved problems by adding geometry, usually. How I managed to do this on my system at the time (a k62-350 with 32mb RAM), I'll never know. This scene still makes my current system (1gig T-bird with 1.5gig RAM) stutter and choke a bit. I think I have blotted out the memories. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
All in all, though, I'm pretty satisfied with it, though I have contemplated taking one of the Rocks and using just that as a base in an animation.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
ruhkferret on ICQ/AIM
"Your guy was a little SQUARE! You had to use your IMAGINATION! There were no multiple levels or screens. There was just one screen forever and you could never win the game. It just kept getting harder and faster until you died. JUST LIKE LIFE." --Ernie Cline
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I agree it looks fragile but the design is not bad. Looks like it is fit to be a pirate base.
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Hmmm.... any chance of getting that thing into FS2? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/tongue.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
Seriously, though - awesome work, dude! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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mmh, just gonna say that a drydock is a place where lots of accidents can happen. it better be solid (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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A solid support pole in between asteroids, or SOMETHING simple in the middle, would go a long way to making it look less tempting to run into (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
All in all, highly cool.
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(http://community.theunderdogs.org/smiley/armed/dark2.gif)
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It looks like the complex is meant to be the pride of some spacefaring nation.
The stories one could make around that...
Nice, very nice
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Veryyyyy Nice! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
How about a GTVI shipyard.
RE: stability.
The asteroids mass would probably prevent the base from desintegrating in case of an accident. Unless you ram it with a destroyer, or something.
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Wow! That is extremely detailed! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/icons/icon14.gif) Kind of has the look and feel of the Ancients' architecture and design...
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Originally posted by Ryx:
Veryyyyy Nice! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
How about a GTVI shipyard.
RE: stability.
The asteroids mass would probably prevent the base from desintegrating in case of an accident. Unless you ram it with a destroyer, or something.
I think that Carl was referring more to the fragility of the tram tuberails and the lightweight tether structures that attach the drydock yards to the Rocks.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
ruhkferret on ICQ/AIM
"Your guy was a little SQUARE! You had to use your IMAGINATION! There were no multiple levels or screens. There was just one screen forever and you could never win the game. It just kept getting harder and faster until you died. JUST LIKE LIFE." --Ernie Cline
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reminds me of hoffer's gap
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Originally posted by PhReAk:
reminds me of hoffer's gap
(http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
I wish. Hoffer's Gap is actually in a game. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/lol.gif)
Actually Hoffer's Gap is one giant asteroid, split vertically, and connected by a dense array of structures. Besides that, its a hell of a lot larger.
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--Mik
http://www.404error.com
ruhkferret on ICQ/AIM
"Your guy was a little SQUARE! You had to use your IMAGINATION! There were no multiple levels or screens. There was just one screen forever and you could never win the game. It just kept getting harder and faster until you died. JUST LIKE LIFE." --Ernie Cline