Read by Council Land of the Giants (build scale)

[alterintel]

Just an Idea I had, thought I'd throw it out there.
I had the idea of greater detail in ships. By having 10 blocks per meter instead of just one block per meter. Then I thought what would it take to make that happen? Would it be possible to use a Mod, or something?

Then I thought it would just be easier if we could just make the players giants, like Land of the Giants, Gulliver's travels, or Prometheus.

Imagine how much detail you could get into your builds if Dave and other NPC's were 20 meters tall instead of 2 meters tall?

So the question is: could we have a config option that changes the size of Dave?

 

[jayman38]

That would be interesting. I have seen amazing detail in a bridge screenshot somewhere on StarmadeDock based on 10- or 15-m tall humanoids.

 

[Jaaskinal]

The thing is, that doesn't actually change the amount of detail. Only the scale. It may encourage players to build larger, but technically it does nothing.
It's sort of like scaling a 64x64 texture up to 128x128. You don't actually get any increase in detail, only size.

 

[sayerulz]

Either way, your going to be increasing lag. I mean, increasing the size of the player model can probably be done (changing the size of all blocks would be meaningless since they have nothing to be changed relative to except the player and the rare few NPC's.)

But more blocks = more lag, no matter what size they are (and really, they will be the same size no matter what, as long as all blocks are the same size, if you understand what I mean.

But since this would be optional, why not?

 

[nightrune]

No matter what, right now, scale just feels very off.

 

[kiraen]

A nice idea, but previously suggested and previously rejected.

Trello
Rejected - Reduce the size of the blocks
Rejected - New approach to the concept of blocks

 

[Magrim]

I think the current block size is fine but I wouldn't dismiss this idea outright. There could be a place in starmade for micro blocks in certain situations. Think about this, we build custom ships from the ground up. So what else could be as customizable? I personally want build my own maintenance bots to float around inside my ship fixing shit or moving cargo around. Making them out of normal sized blocks would be impractical. They would never fit down ship hallways. Schine could give us some cookie cutter bots but that's boring. Give us the freedom to build our own specialized bots. Same goes for astronaut gear. Guns, jet packs, armor, melee weapons could all be built using micro blocks.

Everyone would be wearing their own unique battle suit, with a custom rifle slung over their shoulder, personal helper bot at their side, flying around in their war boat. That's what I want to see.

 

[alterintel]

A nice idea, but previously suggested and previously rejected.

I think the current block size is fine but I wouldn't dismiss this idea outright. There could be a place in starmade for micro blocks in certain situations.

I think you guys may have misunderstood.
I don't want to make the blocks smaller. I want to make us(the player), and NPC's bigger. This would only make the blocks seem smaller.

So the blocks would still be the same size (1 meter) and they would all still have the same mass. The idea is to make Dave bigger. So instead of Dave being 2 meters tall, he would be 20 meters tall.


Also I wouldn't want this to be the default setting. I just think it would be cool if there was a setting in the config that could change the size of Dave. (Oh, and how cool would it be if some of the races in Starmade were giants)

 

[kiraen]

It's all relative.

Smaller blocks means same size player but more blocks.
Larger player means same size blocks but more blocks.

It really doesn't matter which way you look at it. The end result is more blocks for finer details. This means more memory, disk space, and processing.

If you want it as an option, I can't really see a reason not to let you melt your own computer. But I doubt the devs are going to spend the time on a rejected suggestion that will make the game run worse.

Personally, I like the idea. But my computer is already getting warm just thinking about it. Technology just hasn't caught up to the demand yet.
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Everyone would be wearing their own unique battle suit, with a custom rifle slung over their shoulder, personal helper bot at their side, flying around in their war boat. That's what I want to see.

This is also unlikely, for slightly different reasons. There is a modular system planned, but it will most likely not involve microblocks.
Making handheld weapons

 

[Magrim]

I think you guys may have misunderstood.
I don't want to make the blocks smaller. I want to make us(the player), and NPC's bigger. This would only make the blocks seem smaller.

I get what you're saying. It would be interesting and different sized races would be cool for sure.

This is also unlikely, for slightly different reasons. There is a modular system planned, but it will most likely not involve microblocks.
Making handheld weapons

I remember that post. I also know about the plans for modular weapons. The point I was trying to make was, there could be a purpose for smaller versions of the blocks we currently have.

 

[jayman38]

The thing is, that doesn't actually change the amount of detail. Only the scale. It may encourage players to build larger, but technically it does nothing.
It's sort of like scaling a 64x64 texture up to 128x128. You don't actually get any increase in detail, only size.

Wrong. More blocks per "meter" = more detail. Prime example: Detailed chairs.

 

[Magrim]

Wrong. More blocks per "meter" = more detail. Prime example: Detailed chairs.

You can build detail chairs now. They would be enormous relative to the player size but thats the point Jaaskinal was trying to make. It doesn't matter what unit of measurement Schine puts on their blocks, it's all relative.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Wrong. More blocks per "meter" = more detail. Prime example: Detailed chairs.

Here's an image I ripped off the internet. I think it's meant to look like sonic. Here it is in 8x8. We'll call this small ass, because it looks like ass.

This is what the *current* blocks would be like, and now here's a 256x256 version. We'll call this big ass, because it also looks like ass.

There's almost literally no more detail in this image. I cheated slightly, because in the original image, there are these black lines, but other than that, smass ass looks exactly like big ass. The thing you're thinking of with detail is the capability of creating detail, but even that is false with just making blocks smaller.

You can still build a chair exactly as detailed as one you could with the size changes, it's just that it would look strange when actually compared to the player.

 

[jayman38]

Here's an image I ripped off the internet. I think it's meant to look like sonic. Here it is in 8x8. We'll call this small ass, because it looks like ass.

This is what the *current* blocks would be like, and now here's a 256x256 version. We'll call this big ass, because it also looks like ass.

There's almost literally no more detail in this image. I cheated slightly, because in the original image, there are these black lines, but other than that, smass ass looks exactly like big ass. The thing you're thinking of with detail is the capability of creating detail, but even that is false with just making blocks smaller.

You can still build a chair exactly as detailed as one you could with the size changes, it's just that it would look strange when actually compared to the player.

But the point of this suggestion is not to increase the size of the blocks. The size of the player relative to the blocks is what would change.
So to re-use your example of Sonic, let's look at a new small version, 8x16, scaled down from an original piece of art that is about 300 px wide:

Now here is that same example of Sonic, at 5x scale (40x80), again scaled down from the original artwork of 300 px:

Quite a bit more recognizable.

 

[Jaaskinal]

But the point of this suggestion is not to increase the size of the blocks. The size of the player relative to the blocks is what would change.
So to re-use your example of Sonic, let's look at a new small version, 8x16, scaled down from an original piece of art that is about 300 px wide:
View attachment 26208
Now here is that same example of Sonic, at 5x scale (40x80), again scaled down from the original artwork of 300 px:
View attachment 26209
Quite a bit more recognizable.

Yes, but all of the same ships, same build styles, and same everything will be there. Just because there's a capability for more detail (which there actually isn't) doesn't mean people will use it for such.

 

[Keptick]

The thing is, that doesn't actually change the amount of detail. Only the scale. It may encourage players to build larger, but technically it does nothing.
It's sort of like scaling a 64x64 texture up to 128x128. You don't actually get any increase in detail, only size.

Well, from that giant player model's point of view things would probably look higher res as well due to the higher amount of blocks in the same viewing area (and individual blocks would look much smaller).

I still don't think that it'd work so well because most block textures produce a clear separation between the blocks. Ice crystals, terrain blocks and std armor are pretty much the only exception... The result would be that things would probably look and feel like 10m high from afar, and not then intended 1m. Even if it didn't, having miniature tiles on everything would look whack.

Making ships would also be a lot more work intensive. A 10m long fighter would be 100 blocks long. And a 100m long ship would be 1000 blocks long. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that you could do some really cool stuff with that, but in the end most people probably wouldn't bother.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I think all the OP wants or needs is a mod that alters the camera perspective to make everything look smaller.

 

[Borr]

1x10 beams would be more useful. Because less blocks= less lag. In From The Depths you can have 4 block long beams, they added them to reduce lag. Why not add beam blocks to StarMade?

 

[Sgtwisky]

Although it might make an interesting option, The issue boils down to this:
If your player is 10x larger. And the blocks seem 10x smaller... your going to use roughly 10x the blocks to build with.... NOW that titan that was 1km long... its 10km long and murders the server just because you spawn it. 10x the W/H/L ends up being 100x 1000x the file size and processing power required to render/read/wright. SO While yes, its technically possible to have a higher irresolution, you get even more of a bottleneck then when moving from 1080p to 2k or 4k. 2k = 4x the power required from the video card while 4k requires 16x from the card for the SAME image.

Its the same with the size of your creations. Weather your using smaller blocks, or a bigger player, your going to increase the CPU/GPU/Hard Drive load by roughly 100 1000 times due to everything being cubic calculations. I have a pretty hefty PC myself and I know it would cave under that strain. There would not be many people in the world capable of dealing with that kind of data load.... ALSO its possible that with that amount of data being read and written to the Hard Drive, that you would bottleneck there... and SSD might solve that, but with SSD's the more you write to them the faster they die.

Just my 2 cents on the technical aspects of it all.

 

[Madman198237]

Actually, Sgtwisky, it's 1000x the file size (10*10*10=1000, you've basically applied physic's law of scale to....oh wait, this is exactly what we're dealing with)

Decreasing block size allows for more detail, no matter what you might think. If you can use 10 blocks in one meter, then your ship suddenly has a lot more detail, because you have 100x the detail to work with on one face of a block (Instead of one block that has one texture and one color, you have 100 blocks with different textures are colors, all in the same space).

It is also a terrible choice for a default, but is an interesting concept for a mod. Like the mod that adds miniaturized blocks to Minecraft to allow for small-scale builds and added detail. It works as a mod, but is unnecessary for the game itself, as many people will not use it.