Question about alignment and the game engine

[Tekd]

In the SyFy television show called The Expanse, there is a beautiful ship called The Rocinante. This ship is designed so that it is like a small building with multiple floors when under thrust. The thrust produces a form of gravity so that the people can walk around inside the ship. The interior of the ship is divided up into floors from the "top" of the ship down to the main thruster at the "bottom". The people inside use stairs to move between floors. Is StarMade capable of supporting a ship like the Rocinante? Or is the align-to-ship feature designed to have ships that are horizontal when compared to the thrust vector?

 

[kulbolen]

you could build a vertical ship that flies upward to make gravity but itd be extremely unstable and subject to clipping through stuff and getting stuck in blocks etc, collision detection isnt consistent.

also unless that ship were constantly accelerating, it seems like that would be a really unreliable method for gravity when not under the influence of outside gravity sources

 

[Tekd]

Can the direction of gravity be set to be perpendicular to the direction of the ships forward movement? And can the ship still be flown normally? I don't think the "gravity under thrust" is a requirement for my design, I was explaining where my idea came from.

 

[kulbolen]

ah i thought you actually meant to use the same design, but moving around during thrust is really clunky so it wouldnt work well. you can set gravity to any angle based on which way the grav block faces

 

[Tekd]

So if I understand correctly, I can set gravity on my ship to be however I want. And the front of my ship can be whatever I want. They do not influence each other?

 

[Jaaskinal]

So if I understand correctly, I can set gravity on my ship to be however I want. And the front of my ship can be whatever I want. They do not influence each other?

Yup, they don't influence each other. The top of the gravity module is the grey bit with an image of a player character walking on it. Any time you press r on it, you will always align to the direction of the gravity module, and not the ship.

 

[SkaireKrough]

So if I understand correctly, I can set gravity on my ship to be however I want. And the front of my ship can be whatever I want. They do not influence each other?

The arrow in build mode indicates what the game determines the front of the the ship, only viewpoints from core or cameras facing forward will allow changes in ships facing, other view points allow moving the ship but not roll, yaw or pitch.

Making a ship as you described is possible but block textures will be turned wrong when looking at them when under ships gravity. and when not under ships gravity, aligning to the ship will result in your character aligning with the ship 'normally', doors and such that are usable while in ships gravity may not be usable when aligned to ship. Also building this way can get very frustrating, try building while looking nearly straight up or down and you will see what I mean. This would not be as much of a problem if build mode and free-fall astronaut movement had true 6 directions of movement like ships do. Would be nice if all camera directions allowed full control of the ship, that alone might make this build style much easier to do, but would require thruster plumes direction be set accordingly.

 

[jayman38]

I would recommend building the ship with each floor vertical, so that thruster plumes are facing the right direction. (Effectively, if you stand on the ship with "normal" gravity, you'll be standing on the "bottom" wall of each floor.) Then, set up gravity blocks, rotated to point "down" aft. That is, the "in-flight" gravity blocks will point rear-ward. Then you can simulate thrust-gravity by simply activating one of the rear-facing gravity blocks, so that you can stand on each floor normally. Once you are in that gravity mode, you won't even notice that you are "walking on walls", because you'll design the interior so that it feels like you are walking on the floor. Block rotation will be critical at this stage, to make each "floor" look right. Just for completeness, you should make your stairwells traverse-able in either gravity mode. The display blocks will display text sideways, but to me, the thruster plumes are worth it. I developed this method while building my "Clarke Explorer" ship, which is designed to look like it uses thrust for gravity as well.

On a side note, I think the display blocks can display unicode text, and I think there are side-ways letters, so you can write on your display blocks so that they appear to display normal text under "thrust gravity". Has anybody tried that yet? I'll see if I can get sideways text working. If not, you may have to use extended characters to build your own sideways font. (Could be cool!)

 

[JinM]

So if I understand correctly, I can set gravity on my ship to be however I want. And the front of my ship can be whatever I want. They do not influence each other?

You understood half correct: Yes, the gravity can be set into every direction. The front and the direction your ship moves can NOT be set different. Because you can't steer a ship if you use camera blocks to face another flying direction.

So just rotate the gravity block to the angle you desire, and you can still design the Rocci. =)

Show some pictures of it if you are done.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

In the SyFy television show called The Expanse, there is a beautiful ship called The Rocinante. This ship is designed so that it is like a small building with multiple floors when under thrust. The thrust produces a form of gravity so that the people can walk around inside the ship. The interior of the ship is divided up into floors from the "top" of the ship down to the main thruster at the "bottom". The people inside use stairs to move between floors. Is StarMade capable of supporting a ship like the Rocinante? Or is the align-to-ship feature designed to have ships that are horizontal when compared to the thrust vector?

For this TV show, does the captain of the ship say things like "Twist the engine's rubber band extra tight, I need to keep accelerating to maintain gravity and we're already moving at the speed of light" and "Prepare to scrape the old crew off the ceiling and hire replacements; I'm about to decelerate!"?

 

[Edymnion]

Yes, you can do that very easily. All blocks can be rotated in all directions, so you can make stuff sideways just fine, and you can set the gravity in any direction you want. At most it'll look sideways when you're in build mode, but running around inside the ship will look normal because you'll align with the gravity in whatever direction its pointing.

 

[Groovrider]

Considering that the ship would accelerate under 1g until half way until turn-around and then decelerate under the same math. You would only be in zero g when not moving, which would be brief compared to the journey time. The science is sound.