Its possible to half voxels?

[Greenmoon]

My question : Its possible to half the standart voxel for a good definition of the ships?

If One Voxel is :

XXXX
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX

to make voxels :

XX
XX

With this we can create a more good ships with chairs,command panels, etc....

 

[Ithirahad]

You can't really 'half,' or rather 'cut into eight,' as it looks like you mean, voxels... You just end up with 8x the amount of voxels (And 8x the amount of lag!). If you mean half and corner blocks, then sure, but you won't be able to combine them because in Starmade blocks apparently can't hold enough data to account for all of the combinations.

 

[NeonSturm]

it would increase memory by a factor of 8.

Except you sacrifice something - like forcing all "sub-blocks" to have the same ID and shared HP, ...
http://starmadedock.net/threads/1-byte-for-8-sub-blocks-shape-and-byte-logic.2395/

Or are you talking about something like in Space Engineers where players can be 5 blocks high and you can make ships of different scale?

 

[Vyor]

Would be a nice mod that adds some blocks that do this(forge microblocks is one for minecraft), but not for the main game.

 

[NeonSturm]

Would be a nice mod that adds some blocks that do this(forge microblocks is one for minecraft), but not for the main game.

Well, that was why my thread suggests some blocks with micro blocks (which are additionally HP-enhancers of the macro-block), other blocks with up to 8 injected functions and logic blocks which work with bytes rather than bits.

I hope all-together is enough of an advantage to consider a change.

But I guess micro-wedges would be a performance killer. It would make small ships behave like big ships lost in little-garden.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Maybe you could use voxels to create a "block" (same dimensions or less than a standard block), and then you could save that "block", which will turn it into one block, not a "block" consisting of voxels.
I'm basically suggesting a way to create new blocks in-game with voxels.

And I'm sorry, but I can't resist: in your explenation you divide it by four, not two.

 

[Ithirahad]

Maybe you could use voxels to create a "block" (same dimensions or less than a standard block), and then you could save that "block", which will turn it into one block, not a "block" consisting of voxels.
I'm basically suggesting a way to create new blocks in-game with voxels.

And I'm sorry, but I can't resist: in your explenation you divide it by four, not two.

Thing is, all the combinations have to be defined already, I think... And that means a LOT of used block IDs... That or, again, we need more data in blocks.

 

[karkinosz]

Thing is, all the combinations have to be defined already, I think... And that means a LOT of used block IDs... That or, again, we need more data in blocks.

And to carry on from @Ithirahad if blocks contain more data that means that the size of blueprints will increase and we will also be further limited in how many blocks we can have on ships (if blocks contain more data that means more lag when loading ships) such an idea would have huge performance impacts.

Either you must use a huge amount of block IDs to cover every possible arrangement of these smaller blocks( with colours) or have 8x times the blocks in one space. Both options are pretty terrible so I don't see this happening in the base game.

 

[NeonSturm]

or you have 8x blocks in same space but they all share the same other 2 bytes.

Some blocks will be 2x2x2 and use the small blocks for more HP (for the whole),
others behave always like a big full block and use the byte for orientation, activation, 2 bit for hp.
others use 8 bit for logic and have a lower max hp value.

Our only limitation is, that the game engine always use 8 bits for hp, just because hardened hull has 200 hp.
The engine always use at least 5 bits for orientation, because primary(6) * secondary(5 other) sides (example: full wedge faces) are already taking 30 options (5 bit = 32) even tough others would only need 3 bits or have no orientation.
And not every block needs the activation bit.



You can free 8 bits by reducing HP to 63, no orientation and no activation. This means 7 bits left with only activation, 3-5 bits left with only orientation...

You can free up 3 bits (3/9 instead of 2/8) just from HPs by reducing max HP to 31 per sub-block,
or 4 bits by reducing max HP to 15 per sub block (still 15*8=120 hp which is 2* as much as power blocks have currently)

Just orientation and 3 HP bits would be sufficient to realize this.

Render full tiles on a 2x2 sub-block surface, wedged sub-tiles on two 1x2 sub-block surface, diagonal sub-tiles on the two options:
X . | . .
X X | X .​

You would lose neither total-HP nor orientation, just the ability to repair a block to full health without a blueprint saved somewhere (can be saved in memory or gradually loaded from disk while repairing).

You would gain the ability to create wedges/corners without needing to rotate a block or change what ID you edit.
You would gain the ability for double-sided pentas or wedges - or even a one-side wedge, one-side penta (diagonally: front top, rear bot)



I do not support 4 individual small blocks, however I support sub-blocks sharing the same ID and the same 5 out of max. 8 HP bits.

I support automatically converting (at least some IDs) look to wedge-look when seen from one side. to hide blocky sub-block feeling, but not support having 1 sub-wedge and 1 sub-block next to each other (would be too much data)

((except when they are from different macro-blocks which will be ok))​

 

[Mariux]

One does not simply half a voxel.

 

[_TheRealAmeRicA]

Do it like minecraft, 2 slabs put together make one "block", only it doesn't need the data from 2 voxels :/
Correct me if don't make sense, I like feedback : )

 

[jayman38]

I think you're simply going to need to double the scale of your ship. "You're gonna need a bigger boat!" So 1-meter tables will be 2 blocks high. Chairs will be 3-4 blocks high. Standard 5-meter decks will become 10 blocks high. Dave will look like a small child. Life will be good and detailed.

 

[Ithirahad]

Do it like minecraft, 2 slabs put together make one "block", only it doesn't need the data from 2 voxels :/
Correct me if don't make sense, I like feedback : )

It indeed doesn't make sense. If I remember correctly, Minecraft stores a LOT more data in its blocks, so things like that can happen without having to do strange things to their format.

 

[WaffulMann]

maybe schema can do what he does with storage blocks, would save a lot of memory. Or however space engineers does it with large blocks that's 125x the size.
I 100% support this idea more detail is always helpful to the eye and game. Plus, would make shuttles a lot easier to make. and things like chairs and tables and viewports and all that.

 

[ltmauve]

Storage blocks are done through the systems (basically, the data is stored in the same place as all your weapon and logic linking) I believe, so unless you want to use that data, and have it somehow transferred to the player's computer to use for graphics information (and by the way also have to load it for physics possibly) you're a bit out of luck.

 

[Keptick]

I assume that you mean something like microblocks for minecraft? That would be pretty cool, except that there's some issues like higher memory usage and inventory clutter.

 

[Wtfasaurous]

In my opinion, allowing the use of quarter sized blocks would empower the player to create smaller craft with much greater fidelity and detail. In the picture below, I give an example of what would be a normal sized block on the left, and then a quarter sized block on the right. There are different ways this could be implemented. One way, for example, could be to add another type of ship core that only specifically uses quarter sized blocks, or just enable quarter sized blocks to be used so that they may be stacked with the regular 1 cubic meter blocks.

As of now, this TIE Fighter from Star Wars would be quite large if a player wished to achieve this much detail. But, if smaller blocks could be introduced to the game, then this TIE Fighter would more easily fit into a 1:1 scale representation, without sacrificing too much detail.

 

[Ithirahad]

Dude. We get that mini-blocks would have a ton of awesome advantages. No more proof of that is needed. If it wasn't for obvious (and not-so-obvious) technical issues, we'd probably have them in the game by now, or at least in development.

 

[Wtfasaurous]

Thank you for that productive statement.

 

[NeonSturm]

It indeed doesn't make sense. If I remember correctly, Minecraft stores a LOT more data in its blocks, so things like that can happen without having to do strange things to their format.

We do also have more than 3 bytes per block. Imagine lightening, etc... just not stored in the same way directly in blocks (maybe per chunk).


* Currently IDs (10-11 bit), HP (8 bit), Orientation (4-5 bit), activation (just 1 bit)
* Connection dunno how they are stored, but I guess values around 3-5 byte per connection - just does not need to be transferred from CPU-RAM to GPU-RAM
* Lightening per block ... maybe 2 bytes.

* If 1/2 sized sub-blocks have 1/8 hp each, but hp are stored per 2x2x2, you would save 4 orientation bits, 3 hp buts but would require 8 sub-block bits (1 of 24 bits per block more)
* If 2^3m super-blocks would define a limited pool of 3 IDs and 1^3m blocks would choose from them, you would save (5/8 - 2/10) = 17/40 bits


HP and ID are the heaviest drain. Reduce it and you have place for other data.

It is not an issue of memory, but memory management. I dunno if shadders can handle this but hope it gets implemented.