crazy idea: artificial planet ring

[spara]

And while we're at it, feel free to use (and improve) the Habitat Stations ( https://app.box.com/s/p52h0w4wj3hxq5h3i4mi ) as part of the Hotel Station pool.

Maybe I should put your Habitat into "Station for Extra Planets" oxp? To get it into play? Unless you want to reserve it for other use of course, as a Hotel Station for example. Shame if it goes unused.

[pagroove]

Tetiri it is then. Now can anyone grab the last version of Ring.oxp and make a script so that it only spawns at Tertiri (G5)?
And then the one with the flashers?

# 70. Tetiri (10,208), {7,137,161,173,205} within 7.0 LY. Radius 5898 km.
Corporate State, Rich Ind. Pop. 6.0 B, Prod. 52800 MCr. HC: 5, TL: 14, Green Horned Lizards.
Tetiri is mildly well known for its hoopy night life.

Proposal name for the Ring:

The Tetiri hoop? (as in a hoop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoop_rolling)

@ Zieman. If you could show that new station it would be cool and otherwise we could indeed adapt a Habitat and paint a HOTEL logo on it.

[Zieman]

@ Spara
If you think that it isn't too ugly as it is now, go ahead, it's not reserved for anything*. Especially if you upgrade some textures (like dock & dome 'floor') & maybe add/replace/move some subents. (Script in the download just puts one Habitat in every TL 12+ system within scanner range of the main station).
* Redspear wanted to use it as Zero-G Stadium, but IMHO that doesn't prevent other uses.

@ PaGroove
Will do this evening, once I get free time with my personal computer.

[Diziet Sma]

can anyone grab the last version of Ring.oxp and make a script so that it only spawns at Tertiri (G5)?
And then the one with the flashers?

The last version already has the flashers.. look very pretty, too..

But getting the stations to look right up close may be a challenge.. the colour of the land or water under them tends to affect them, and/or there seem to be some transparency-type issues to be resolved.

[Zieman]

Ok here's the wacky station:
https://app.box.com/s/mawcvy55bgxqbn4whbby

planetinfo.plist in the OXP replaces Lave Station with "Super Ico Station"

Again, some textures (such as dock) are just placeholders - if anyone wants to make decent ones, I'll upload the UV-maps (& .PSDs).

[Diziet Sma]

By using plate units that bevel up at one end and down at the other, might it be possible to give the appearance of connectivity?

I really like this idea.. but I doubt it would be feasible, as you'd have overlapping bounding-boxes, yes? (trying to remember what little I've learned here about the way such things work)

Does anyone have any other ideas, apart from flashers to connect the sections? A sub-entity at one end (or smaller sub-ents at each end) of each section, perhaps? Or is that subject to the same limitations?

[cim]

Does anyone have any other ideas, apart from flashers to connect the sections? A sub-entity at one end (or smaller sub-ents at each end) of each section, perhaps? Or is that subject to the same limitations?

If it's made of a single entity (even with subentities), its bounding box will touch the planet, and it will instantly collide with it. It'll also be so large that I doubt it would work

If you make it out of sections, so long as they don't actually touch, they'll be fine ... until the player gets away and the collision detection algorithm moves from "exact" to "approximate". That particular optimisation might be possible to remove - I'll have a look at how much time it actually saves. If not, you'll need to use bigger "joints" in the next step.

To cover the joints: provided that the size of the gap is too small to fly a ship through, make the polygons for the joints into a visual effect, not a ship. It'll look just the same - provided everything stays positioned correctly - but it won't cause internal collisions.

So long as the collision radius of each real section does not intersect the planet, it should then be fine. You probably shouldn't have any individual section being significantly bigger than a Coriolis - maybe 5km long at most. Tetiri is a big planet, so you're probably looking at around 150 such sections, plus 150 visual effects to join them together. That's manageable.

[Diziet Sma]

If it's made of a single entity (even with subentities), its bounding box will touch the planet, and it will instantly collide with it. It'll also be so large that I doubt it would work

Well no.. I was referring to Thargoid's already working proof-of-concept demo.. which is made of many individual entities.

If you make it out of sections, so long as they don't actually touch, they'll be fine ... until the player gets away and the collision detection algorithm moves from "exact" to "approximate". That particular optimisation might be possible to remove - I'll have a look at how much time it actually saves. If not, you'll need to use bigger "joints" in the next step.

So are you saying that bevelled ends could be made to overlap, thus, from a distance appearing to be contiguous, so long as they don't actually touch? If so, how close together is it safe for them to be?

To cover the joints: provided that the size of the gap is too small to fly a ship through, make the polygons for the joints into a visual effect, not a ship. It'll look just the same - provided everything stays positioned correctly - but it won't cause internal collisions.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "make the polygons for the joints into a visual effect" for us not-up-to-speed types, please? I have a project of my own in mind where this idea might be helpful.

So long as the collision radius of each real section does not intersect the planet, it should then be fine. You probably shouldn't have any individual section being significantly bigger than a Coriolis - maybe 5km long at most. Tetiri is a big planet, so you're probably looking at around 150 such sections, plus 150 visual effects to join them together. That's manageable.

Thargoid's demo currently uses over 300 sections with no problem. Each is about 1km long, I believe, with a 200m gap between sections, currently filled with a pair of flashers. A less "cheaty" way of filling the gaps would be great.

[Thargoid]

Replacing the flashers with visual effects should be quite easy and would look good (they weren't in the core game when I coded the demo). If I get some time I'll look into it. As Cim says problem could be with size, aes things will be able to fly through them though.

[pagroove]

Great this project is underway. I'm gonna make a nice texture for Tetiri this weekend.

[cim]

So are you saying that bevelled ends could be made to overlap, thus, from a distance appearing to be contiguous, so long as they don't actually touch? If so, how close together is it safe for them to be?

If the player is at long distance, the centres of the objects must be separated by at least the sum of the collision radii of the objects.

If the player is nearby, the collision detection is more precise. Exactly how precise varies depending on the overall size of the objects - smaller objects have more precise detection.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "make the polygons for the joints into a visual effect" for us not-up-to-speed types, please? I have a project of my own in mind where this idea might be helpful.

Let's simplify it to two boxes you want to put together. They're both "ships" through shipdata.plist

Code: Select all

+-------+   +-------+
|       |   |       |
+-------+   +-------+

If you move the two boxes so they actually or nearly touch, they'll collide, and that won't work.

Code: Select all

+-------++-------+
|       ||       |
+-------++-------+

So what you do instead is take the model for the box and break it into two bits.

Code: Select all

+------   =*
|1        2|
+------   =*

The big bit stays as your "box" model. The little bit you stop being a "ship", and make it into a visual effect instead. It's still a model and still looks the same, but it can't collide. Then, you put all the bits together in a row:

Code: Select all

+------=*+------=*
|1     2||1     2|
+------=*+------=*

The two real objects (+-1) aren't touching, but the visual effect (=*2) gives the illusion of it being a single continuous object. So long as the gap that the visual effect is filling isn't big enough for the player to fly through, the player will probably not notice that a bit of the wall of the box isn't "really" there - because they always crash into one of the bits that is if they try to get through.

If you're not building a loop of them, you'll need to handle the elements at the ends of the combined object slightly differently, of course.

[Diziet Sma]

So are you saying that bevelled ends could be made to overlap, thus, from a distance appearing to be contiguous, so long as they don't actually touch? If so, how close together is it safe for them to be?

If the player is at long distance, the centres of the objects must be separated by at least the sum of the collision radii of the objects.

But isn't this exactly what would happen if the ends of the segments were bevelled so as to overlap without touching? As I understand things, the collision radii would extend from the "o" in the centre of each object, to the "+" at the furthest corners.. thus, the centres would be separated by less than the sum of the collision radii if the bevels overlapped to even a tiny degree. Or am I not understanding something correctly?

Code: Select all

+----------------------------------    +-----------------------------------
 \                                  \   \                                   \
  \                                  \   \                                   \
   \                 o                \   \                 o                 \
    \                                   \   \                                   \
     \                                   \   \                                   \
      ------------------------------------+   ------------------------------------+

Let's simplify it to two boxes you want to put together. They're both "ships" through shipdata.plist

Very cool.. thanks for the explanation!

Now I need to get back to getting to grips with Blender..

[cim]

thus, the centres would be separated by less than the sum of the collision radii if the bevels overlapped to even a tiny degree.

Correct. Potentially even if they didn't. As I mentioned above, that optimisation on the collision detector may need to go - it's player-centric, which I don't like, but it may be that in typical systems on old computers it's also necessary.

[Diziet Sma]

Ok.. so overlapping bevels are not possible.. cool.. visual effects it is, then..

[Thargoid]

I've updated the ring demo to replace the flashers with visual effects. It's still a very basic model for both the main solid segments and the visual effect joints, but that of course is why it's a demo not an OXP

Each segment is 1000m wide, with a 200m gap between each which is filled by the visual effect. There are also Coriolis gateway stations at intervals around the ring, as before. It may be possible to make the segments wider and the effects thinner, but it will of course need some playing with the see what collision effects occur (plus 1000m is a handy width for the segments as it allows the Coriolis core model to be used as a gateway station directly).

Download link is here from my box account for anyone interested.