Linked texturing for thrusters.

[schlid]

With the recent addition of new thruster plume effects, I've been experimenting recently with engine design, and have come to one conclusion every time. Unless the engines are small (I'm talking about clusters of 1-4 thrusters), they can quite easily start to look like a bit of a mess when they're a large panel of circles.

My proposition is to have linked texturing for the thrusters, so that when large clusters of thrusters are placed next to each other, the output face merges to make one large output face (see crap ms paint diagram below)

This would be a pretty neat addition, that would actually match the new thruster effects. that don't show when you can't see the output face of the thruster but that's a different argument for another day.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, there are quite a few textures that would look a lot better if they would auto-scale like that.

 

[nightrune]

I'm actually perfectly ok with what we have now, and I doubt you'll ever see anything like that in the current engine. Maybe in a mod later but I would imagine its pretty hard to do this performantly especially if it was changing a lot due to damage.

 

[Karride]

While I get why people want this for thrusters and weapons, I have to say the thrusters bother me the least when I see them.

They always remind me of a large soviet-era rocket I saw a picture of (can't remember the name) that had like 25 bazillion* (relatively) small rocket nozzles.

*(Ok, it wasn't 25 bazillion, but it was a lot)

 

[Edymnion]

I'm actually perfectly ok with what we have now, and I doubt you'll ever see anything like that in the current engine. Maybe in a mod later but I would imagine its pretty hard to do this performantly especially if it was changing a lot due to damage.

I dunno, auto-tiling blocks were a thing in Minecraft long, long ago.

 

[Captain Tankman]

I don't want to be mean, but just don't have a giant blob of thruster modules hanging there.
Get creative!

Also check out this thread

 

[schlid]

I don't want to be mean, but just don't have a giant blob of thruster modules hanging there.
Get creative!

Also check out this thread

Hell yeah, I'm all for being creative, but sometimes a creative design warrants a large thruster which can be layered upon with different blocks and still be a unique design, and not 20 million cooking stoves.

 

[Space Shaman]

I have my own solution to this. Alternate textures. You could choose from within the core what you want all of your thrusters to look like on each ship individually. For example: Ship 1 could have all normal thrusters and ship 2 could have thrusters that glow and look like ice crystals.

Another way to solve this is to have covered thrusters just move their plume to the next empty space further back. That way you can still hide the plumes by giving them a "plume pocket" behind your concealed thrusters.
[doublepost=1476916442,1476916194][/doublepost]

I don't want to be mean, but just don't have a giant blob of thruster modules hanging there.
Get creative!

The thing is, sometimes you want the full solid glow of the thruster plumes and other times, you just can't afford to add that much more weight to your ship. Meanwhile, such misfortunate people are still stuck with stovetop arrays.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Good thing the plumes go through one or two layers of blocks. So you can atleast cover them with ice-/crystals

 

[Calhoun]

I believe you have to leave a block gap behind the thrusters for the plumes to work. Another block or two beyond that gap should work but don't quote me on that.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Either way, there are better ways to have large engine groups than leaving them totally open (which is also a big weakpoint armor-wise) and to implement a new texture system.

 

[Valck]

Either way, there are better ways to have large engine groups than leaving them totally open (which is also a big weakpoint armor-wise) and to implement a new texture system.

Connected textures have been suggested before and tentatively confirmed as being a desirable feature.
There are a multitude of blocks that would benefit from connected textures, engines being just one of them, and probably not the most important, so I think this suggestion does have merits beyond mere engine aesthetics.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Connected textures have been suggested before and tentatively confirmed as being a desirable feature.

I didn't say that connected textures are a bad thing. I personally would enjoy them for blocks like decorative screen (and hopefully even displays), but this thread is aimed towards thrusters and engines so I stated my point of view on said thrusters and engines

 

[schlid]

Connected textures have been suggested before and tentatively confirmed as being a desirable feature.
There are a multitude of blocks that would benefit from connected textures, engines being just one of them, and probably not the most important, so I think this suggestion does have merits beyond mere engine aesthetics.

]

Oh yeah, thruster were just what mainly came to mind since that was what I was working with. It's definitely something that could expand onto other blocks and something I'd back. It's not something too complicated either, as others have mentioned, minecraft had the feature way back in beta (I think)

 

[Edymnion]

I believe you have to leave a block gap behind the thrusters for the plumes to work. Another block or two beyond that gap should work but don't quote me on that.

Nope, my old combat miner has plumes showing up from thrusters behind armor. They show through everything if not fully buried to the point the entire plume is hidden.