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Yes, yes I know it all sounds rather silly doesn't it? And it may very well be, my friends. However, allow me a moment to elaborate on this idea for a moment and I'll let those of you who are more knowledgeable about what is possible to program in a game such as this debate it's probability of existence. Imagine, if you will, a block not unlike a ship core, placed in the same way and able to be built upon with power, thrusters, weapons, etc. The difference of this rather special block lies in the fact that it would have predefined zones, not dissimilar to the zones a docking module displays, to differentiate between the head, torso, upper arm, lower arm, upper leg, and lower leg. I am leaving out the hands and feet for simplicity's sake.
What we are left with at this point is rather interesting. We have a ship core, with a number of pre-generated zones around it. A head zone above, a torso zone around it, an upper and lower arm zone on either side and a pair of upper and lower leg zones below it. Again, for simplicity's sake, let's assume this is your classic humanoid mech. Now, we have the zone size in which we can start to place blocks and build our mech piece by piece. The introduction of a couple of new blocks may be necessary. For example, the first of these would most likely need to be a "Servo" or "Motor" block that statically increases the speed at which your mech can walk, run, or even the height to which it could jump without the aid of thrusters if under the influence of a planet's gravity. These would, for lack of a better term, be the "muscles" of your mech. The second proposed block would most likely need to be a "Joint" block. This would be a block placed at the areas of each limb, and the neck even, that would tell the game where to attempt to articulate your parts you've built. Naturally, these would need to be placed in such a way that the game can apply movement to the parts without clipping. You could not, for example, place the elbow joint block on the upper arm and expect the game to articulate correctly. Alternatively, the game could simply attempt articulation at the point two zones meet, thus rendering a joint block unneeded. That would be up to whoever codes the game to decide what would be easiest. The third and final proposed block would need to be a block that increases the scale of every zone on the mech at the same time (simply to keep the proportions the same). A hard cap would most likely be needed on this block, as I'm sure applying animation and movement to a behemoth size mech would undoubtedly crash the game.
Now, that all sounds pretty silly doesn't it? I mean, how the heck are you going to apply animations to something so customizable and still expect it all to work? Well...a big humanoid robot is essentially a scaled up version of the astronaut himself, right? And the fact that you kept all your parts inside of the game's predefined "Part Zones" means that it's all within a field capable of animation application...so...and this is where I'm unsure and may make or break this topic entirely...just use the same planned run, walk, and jump animations being made for the astronaut. I'll take a moment to let you all flame this down with displeasure or, hopefully, debate it's possibility.
Done? Ok. Moving on. How would the animations play? Well, as in astronaut mode, pressing W would mean the mech would start to walk and eventually build into a run. How quickly it would do this is dependent on the amount of Servo Blocks the mech contains.
"BUT! BUT! BUT! I don't need to run if I'm in space, do I?!", said the little engineer that could.
No, no you don't. So if not in a gravity field, W would instead activate any thrusters present on the mech to generate forward movement. This is identical to a ship. So what about the space bar, eh? Well, let's say you're in a gravity well. Cool. Good for you. Press space to jump, press Q to activate your thrusters and get the heck off-world, assuming you have enough thrust.
As for the rest of it, I leave it to you guys to debate. I have a lot more I'd like to add but I'm about to leave work and I'd rather not stay over and get paid to talk about crazy space mechs with you guys all night! Just kidding...I'd love to...but dinner calls. Anyways, please add to this what you think may make or break the idea, what you think could be changed, how something I didn't cover in my brief writing may work or be implemented. OH, btw, we need Grav-Clamp blocks to allow the mech walk or run on a structure in space. But that may be too hard to code. I digress. Let me know what you think and help me out on understanding if the game is even capable of handling something like this. I hope it is well received by the audience here, and I apologize if something like this has been suggested before.
What we are left with at this point is rather interesting. We have a ship core, with a number of pre-generated zones around it. A head zone above, a torso zone around it, an upper and lower arm zone on either side and a pair of upper and lower leg zones below it. Again, for simplicity's sake, let's assume this is your classic humanoid mech. Now, we have the zone size in which we can start to place blocks and build our mech piece by piece. The introduction of a couple of new blocks may be necessary. For example, the first of these would most likely need to be a "Servo" or "Motor" block that statically increases the speed at which your mech can walk, run, or even the height to which it could jump without the aid of thrusters if under the influence of a planet's gravity. These would, for lack of a better term, be the "muscles" of your mech. The second proposed block would most likely need to be a "Joint" block. This would be a block placed at the areas of each limb, and the neck even, that would tell the game where to attempt to articulate your parts you've built. Naturally, these would need to be placed in such a way that the game can apply movement to the parts without clipping. You could not, for example, place the elbow joint block on the upper arm and expect the game to articulate correctly. Alternatively, the game could simply attempt articulation at the point two zones meet, thus rendering a joint block unneeded. That would be up to whoever codes the game to decide what would be easiest. The third and final proposed block would need to be a block that increases the scale of every zone on the mech at the same time (simply to keep the proportions the same). A hard cap would most likely be needed on this block, as I'm sure applying animation and movement to a behemoth size mech would undoubtedly crash the game.
Now, that all sounds pretty silly doesn't it? I mean, how the heck are you going to apply animations to something so customizable and still expect it all to work? Well...a big humanoid robot is essentially a scaled up version of the astronaut himself, right? And the fact that you kept all your parts inside of the game's predefined "Part Zones" means that it's all within a field capable of animation application...so...and this is where I'm unsure and may make or break this topic entirely...just use the same planned run, walk, and jump animations being made for the astronaut. I'll take a moment to let you all flame this down with displeasure or, hopefully, debate it's possibility.
Done? Ok. Moving on. How would the animations play? Well, as in astronaut mode, pressing W would mean the mech would start to walk and eventually build into a run. How quickly it would do this is dependent on the amount of Servo Blocks the mech contains.
"BUT! BUT! BUT! I don't need to run if I'm in space, do I?!", said the little engineer that could.
No, no you don't. So if not in a gravity field, W would instead activate any thrusters present on the mech to generate forward movement. This is identical to a ship. So what about the space bar, eh? Well, let's say you're in a gravity well. Cool. Good for you. Press space to jump, press Q to activate your thrusters and get the heck off-world, assuming you have enough thrust.
As for the rest of it, I leave it to you guys to debate. I have a lot more I'd like to add but I'm about to leave work and I'd rather not stay over and get paid to talk about crazy space mechs with you guys all night! Just kidding...I'd love to...but dinner calls. Anyways, please add to this what you think may make or break the idea, what you think could be changed, how something I didn't cover in my brief writing may work or be implemented. OH, btw, we need Grav-Clamp blocks to allow the mech walk or run on a structure in space. But that may be too hard to code. I digress. Let me know what you think and help me out on understanding if the game is even capable of handling something like this. I hope it is well received by the audience here, and I apologize if something like this has been suggested before.
