Oolite Bulletins

DaddyHoggy wrote:

We do that for rigidity against weight.

Having worked with aircraft and submarine manufacturers when working for the MOD (the closest things I can think of to spaceships) - such structures are much rarer if not non-existent, either in the internal structure or surface panelling.

Huh... Interesting...

Here are a few screenies of the Carrier I'm working on. I pulled it up in the game using the Debug Console, but I can see that a couple of the ball turrets on the upper sides are not aligned correctly. Back to the Quats.















I attacked it with my SolorWing to get the ball turrets firing, and I also drew the wrath of the Eruptor escorts.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

We do that for rigidity against weight.

Having worked with aircraft and submarine manufacturers when working for the MOD (the closest things I can think of to spaceships) - such structures are much rarer if not non-existent, either in the internal structure or surface panelling.

When it comes to dealing with pressure, internal (space) or external (under water), a sphere will distribute the load perfectly and avoid stress points in structure. Of course, that is not necessarily the ideal shape for most types of vessels, so adjustments are made. The pressure hull of a submarine is basically a perfectly round tube with a half sphere at each end. If you look at deep sea diving vessels, the part that actually carries the people is a perfect sphere.

That's interesting. Now I feel better about basing a lot of my ships on the icosphere.

Gimi wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

We do that for rigidity against weight.

Having worked with aircraft and submarine manufacturers when working for the MOD (the closest things I can think of to spaceships) - such structures are much rarer if not non-existent, either in the internal structure or surface panelling.

When it comes to dealing with pressure, internal (space) or external (under water), a sphere will distribute the load perfectly and avoid stress points in structure. Of course, that is not necessarily the ideal shape for most types of vessels, so adjustments are made. The pressure hull of a submarine is basically a perfectly round tube with a half sphere at each end. If you look at deep sea diving vessels, the part that actually carries the people is a perfect sphere.

I knew that - but I was trying not to make a big thing about it. Spheres of course have the maximum volume for the lowest surface area too - useful if you're a spaceship.

Once again I find myself with the annoying question "Is this a working, legitimate AI?". I have a passenger liner, the Alpha Centauri, that I have included in a new ship package oxp, and I tried to write using another liner AI as an example. I haven't seen any errors, but neither have I seen the Alpha Centauri, so I don't know whether the AI is working, or not. I wonder if I could get someone to look at the thing for me? I know I'm a pest, but I keep having these ideas, you see.......
Here is the link, if anyone wants to check it out. Thanks.

https://www.box.com/s/1efl8ckakoce23dgs7yd

mandoman wrote:

...but neither have I seen the Alpha Centauri...

Why not spawn one after a jump using the spawning script , and then just follow it? See what it does and check it is doing what you want.

Here are a few screenies of a series of ships I'm working on. They will someday be part of what I'm calling the Mandotech Fleet, which includes the carrier I show above, these two, and a few others on which I'm still working. Pics.

MT850Bulldog













MT1012 Pitbull

Smivs wrote:

mandoman wrote:

...but neither have I seen the Alpha Centauri...

Why not spawn one after a jump using the spawning script , and then just follow it? See what it does and check it is doing what you want.

Would it be as good to use the DebugConsole? I can do that, but that spawning script is always a hassle for me.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing the debug console is for.

Smivs wrote:

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing the debug console is for.

Ah, the answer to my question seems to be a big negative. The Alpha Centauri, and it's escorts, spawned very nicely using the DebugConsole, but they just hung there in space. I blew up the Alpha, and two of the excorts before the others even stirred to defend themselves. I'm assuming the ones that woke up had reverted to their normal escortAI.plist. Another grand AI bust for mandoman, LOL.

You've got some very odd lighting effects either side of the front nose (third picture up from bottom - ship viewed from above) - one side has a solid rectangle of darker yellow - the other side has a series of saw tooth triangles of alternating dark/bright. Intentional?

DaddyHoggy wrote:

You've got some very odd lighting effects either side of the front nose (third picture up from bottom - ship viewed from above) - one side has a solid rectangle of darker yellow - the other side has a series of saw tooth triangles of alternating dark/bright. Intentional?

Like the "triangulated rectangular plates" mentioned above this looks like the result of normals not being quite normal to their respective plane. When I made the Thargoid Hive with Wings3D I came across the same problem in the process of exporting to .OBJ. Luckily for me, at that time DryDock still worked, and had a command for re-calculating normals. Otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do.

Look, I'm not sure how to take your comments, either of you. I ALWAYS check the normals, and for double vertices, and try very hard to get everything to balance the same on each side, as well as center when viewed from front, back, sides, top, and bottom. I use wire frame mode to do this, magnifying as close to each matching point as I can get to make everything balance. When I first started, I didn't know to do that, but have learned a little at a time what to look for. I went back and took a look at the model in Blender, and if there is anything screwy with the normals, than I'll admit that I don't see it. I don't know if you criticize other people's work the way you seem to mine, but it's starting to get old. If you want, I can send you the .obj, and .mtls on the Pitbull, and you can try smoothing it out to your satisfaction. Other than that, the only thing I know to do is to stop designing ships. I was doing it for fun, but after getting heckled I don't know how many times about triangles, and normals, and what ever, it's beginning to lose it's flavor. I have tried my best to take it in good nature, but I'll be the first to admit that I run on a bit of a short fuse. If you're offering to help, I would be happy to accept, but if like commanderxairon you just want to critique, then I'm not interested, Let me know if either of you would like to take a shot at it.

This (and every other model of Mandoman's I've seen here) is just a simple case of auto-triangulating not making triangle edges symmetric on X-axis (about YZ-plane).

Here's a simple example:

I whipped up this simple model in Wings3D:


After Tesselate->Triangulate it looks like this:

Note the red edge, I've already marked it for *Turn* -operation, as it isn't symmetrical with the other side of the "nose". Of course, the other side could have been marked instead, but to me it looked like that by *Turn*ing this edge, I get the triangulated model to look more like the original.

So, after performing the *Turn* -operation, the model is symmetrical about YZ-plane and no funny lightning effects: