Such idea was implemented in Realms of Arkania. 90% of a few dozens of skills/spells were absolutely or nearly useless... Some of the effects are really not seen ingame even after studying the manual.
Fail.
You might like (according to your description) to discern between "useful" and "aesthetic" skills. There is some reasonable point in this.
I'm afraid I don't know how to :) I just compile the programm in Lazarus to get windows/linux executable... Never worked with libraries before... And I don't think lazarus/fpc unit would be of any use, not so many apply it for game development.
Moreover I use only 4 tiles for walls/floors, and most map algorithm create just one pair. Plus several other 'to-do' ideas. I'm going to improve this soon, but I mean that it is not 'finished' yet. I hope that will be completed after integrating the game with Castle Game Engine for better graphics.
Came up with another idea - determine which parts of the ship are plot/mechanics-important. I.e. which should be detalized. e.g. if you would like to walk around the ship, then its all the rooms you have access to. If the player spends most of his time in the living quarters, you should make them large. If you need to calculate ship systems damage and crew fatalities depending on attack angle, the systems should be simple and not detalized, just some approximate space. And if you need it just for decoration/ship upgrades visualization, it is absolutely arbitrary how you place the ship elements and which size they are, they just should be large enough to see the difference between 'crew quarters' and 'ultra-comfortable crew quarters' / 'cloaking device mk1' and 'cloaking device mk2', etc.
(UPD) HEY!!! We've forgotten the most important part of the ship - the SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON. Should reserve at least a 1m2 for it, because it is usually large. :D
Hmm... if you do not care about realism, so the task is rather simple. You just have to set minimal sizes for every unit of your list. 150 m long x 20 m wide x 20 m high (approximately according to the 'clay model' you give) In non-realistic setting you'd station decsk 'along' the ship, as navy ships do, not perpendicular as acceleration force requires. Then each deck is roughly 4 m high. Let it be 3.5 m plus 0.5 m for armor and technical supply equipment. You get 5 decks x 20 m x 150 m = 3000 square meters x 5 decks = 15 000 sq.m. of space. Multiplied by 3.5 you get 52500 cubic meters of the ship interior.
Let's think now about the interior.
Modern reactors are large (core 25 m long and around 20 m wide). And safe non-explosive reactor models (e.g. a travelling wave reactor) are even larger (core up to 60 m long, around 20 m wide). That would take all the ships rear.
So the ship interior will instantly drop to 120m long and we get 12000m2 and 42000m3 respectively.
Crew quarters must contain roughly 50 people. With ceiling height of 3.5 m a two-storey bed of 2m x (1m+1m free space) is applicabble, resulting in 2 square meters per a crew member living space requirement. So you get 100 sq.m for crew quarters. Let the gym be half of it. 10 Showers/bathroom would roughly be 10x4 sq.m. = 40 sq.m. Leave at least 0.2 m as a wall between rooms. Plus captain quarters larger than that for others, let it be 10 sq.m.
Water tanks must contain water for 2 days it is (in ~realistic) 50x2litresx2days = 200 litres or 0.2m3. Water filtration facility may be very small.
Escape pods must be capable of containing 50 crew members. I.e. each has at least 1m2 per man, that is about 4x15m2. Now add armor, flight control, engines for each escape pods. So, each would then take about double that amount so, reserve 4x30m2 space. The escape pods may be rather large in height (let it be 5x6x4m), so its dock would stretch two decs high including additional equipment and facilities, so each escape pod dock would take 30m2 for the pod, additional 30m2 for equipment and maintenance space around x 2 decks = 120 m2.
Medical facilities must host at least half of the crew simultaneously, but better all of them cramped on double-stored beds. So its the same as living quarters space - 100sq.m.
We're left with roughly 11000m2. Now for the cargo.
2 hummer/warthog like transports dock would be roughly half of escape pod dock i.e. 60m2
1-2 heavy vehicles seem the same size to me, so their dock would take another 60m2
2 small/light fighters would be twice the escape pod size i.e. they take 240 m2 each = 500m2 dock.
2 heavy/larger fighters would be three times larger than the previous, would take 3 decks and resulting space requirement 1500 m2 for 2.
2 drop ships are even larger, let them be twice than the previous, so 3000 m2 for two is enough for both.
So... we're left with 6000 m2 of space.
We cannot specify sizes of the main battery, oxygen scrubbers, armory, cargo hold, communications, galley, food storage, cooling and heating, stealth drive core, cloaking device, main shield generator, hydraulic dropping floor as we do not know what technologies they require. Maybe some of them, like stealth device, shield generator should be 2 or 3 decks high.
I.e. we just take all the remaining space and share it between them (12 units listed here). i.e. approximately 500m2 each.
the engines and the primary weapon system are located outside the ship's decks.
What's the next step? Depends.
You may take a 5 sheets of paper and try to draw everything on them with a pencil and eraser. Or, cut a colored paper into pieces of the respective size (i.e. in scale 2mm = 1m you would get an A4) and try to play with moving them around. When you are satisfied with the result, you draw it with ink. Then you look at the plan and then finally re-draw it clean.
I'm going to use Castle Game Engine (Open-source). It is definately not the best 3d engine, but it is 1) free (which is imporatnt for my opensource game) and 2) designed for free pascal. I still haven't gone deep inside it, but roughly it meets all my requirements.
Maybe I may put the question more specific. I'm still new to 3d modelling and therefore path 'from simple to complex' is more prefferable for me. I.e. I cannot start to work as pro designers do - create a general level map, then add details, then test it and add more details until the effeciency is ok. I start from modelling something small and simple like candles, rocks, barrels... and after I gain enough experience I will start modelling the castle/home/cave they are in and then place the already-made models inside. And in the future I want to make a level-generator that would automatically place the objects 'in spawn points' on the generated map.
It is much more easier for me to make a more complex model, than a more complex texture. E.g. it is easier for me to model a high-poly barrel than a low-poly barrel with everything else painted by textures. Another example: should I make models of spoons, forks, plates and other utensils or leave it to texture.
And definately it comes only with experience, but still... I do want to think in a correct way.
Of course, player characters, who he will see constantly must be high-poly, but these are only around 13 models. Other game objects quality may be sacrificed for effeciency to different extent, but I whish I could approximately catch the balance beforehands, so that I won't end up remaking too much of the art that I would have spent few years to make.
Too pro questions for me :) I couldn't even understand some of those :) I'm a programmer, not a '3D designer'.
Don't forget to specify the questionaire is about 'pro-level 3D modelling'.
Awesome!
Such idea was implemented in Realms of Arkania. 90% of a few dozens of skills/spells were absolutely or nearly useless... Some of the effects are really not seen ingame even after studying the manual.
Fail.
You might like (according to your description) to discern between "useful" and "aesthetic" skills. There is some reasonable point in this.
We have a similar one in Ukraine/Kyiv :) http://www.panoramio.com/photo/33316263
Hmmm! It's much better in firefox :) But clicking that many times makes my hands hurt :)
* You can't spend 25 gold if you have 25 gold, only when you have 25+1, chek the condition to be not ">0" but ">=0".
* Seems that bying a health boost for 25 gold if you have 51 gold results in 1 gold left (double payment).
I'm afraid I don't know how to :) I just compile the programm in Lazarus to get windows/linux executable... Never worked with libraries before... And I don't think lazarus/fpc unit would be of any use, not so many apply it for game development.
Moreover I use only 4 tiles for walls/floors, and most map algorithm create just one pair. Plus several other 'to-do' ideas. I'm going to improve this soon, but I mean that it is not 'finished' yet. I hope that will be completed after integrating the game with Castle Game Engine for better graphics.
Came up with another idea - determine which parts of the ship are plot/mechanics-important. I.e. which should be detalized. e.g. if you would like to walk around the ship, then its all the rooms you have access to. If the player spends most of his time in the living quarters, you should make them large. If you need to calculate ship systems damage and crew fatalities depending on attack angle, the systems should be simple and not detalized, just some approximate space. And if you need it just for decoration/ship upgrades visualization, it is absolutely arbitrary how you place the ship elements and which size they are, they just should be large enough to see the difference between 'crew quarters' and 'ultra-comfortable crew quarters' / 'cloaking device mk1' and 'cloaking device mk2', etc.
(UPD) HEY!!! We've forgotten the most important part of the ship - the SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON. Should reserve at least a 1m2 for it, because it is usually large. :D
Hmm... if you do not care about realism, so the task is rather simple. You just have to set minimal sizes for every unit of your list.
150 m long x 20 m wide x 20 m high (approximately according to the 'clay model' you give)
In non-realistic setting you'd station decsk 'along' the ship, as navy ships do, not perpendicular as acceleration force requires. Then each deck is roughly 4 m high. Let it be 3.5 m plus 0.5 m for armor and technical supply equipment. You get 5 decks x 20 m x 150 m = 3000 square meters x 5 decks = 15 000 sq.m. of space. Multiplied by 3.5 you get 52500 cubic meters of the ship interior.
Let's think now about the interior.
Modern reactors are large (core 25 m long and around 20 m wide). And safe non-explosive reactor models (e.g. a travelling wave reactor) are even larger (core up to 60 m long, around 20 m wide). That would take all the ships rear.
So the ship interior will instantly drop to 120m long and we get 12000m2 and 42000m3 respectively.
Crew quarters must contain roughly 50 people. With ceiling height of 3.5 m a two-storey bed of 2m x (1m+1m free space) is applicabble, resulting in 2 square meters per a crew member living space requirement. So you get 100 sq.m for crew quarters. Let the gym be half of it. 10 Showers/bathroom would roughly be 10x4 sq.m. = 40 sq.m. Leave at least 0.2 m as a wall between rooms. Plus captain quarters larger than that for others, let it be 10 sq.m.
Water tanks must contain water for 2 days it is (in ~realistic) 50x2litresx2days = 200 litres or 0.2m3. Water filtration facility may be very small.
Escape pods must be capable of containing 50 crew members. I.e. each has at least 1m2 per man, that is about 4x15m2. Now add armor, flight control, engines for each escape pods. So, each would then take about double that amount so, reserve 4x30m2 space. The escape pods may be rather large in height (let it be 5x6x4m), so its dock would stretch two decs high including additional equipment and facilities, so each escape pod dock would take 30m2 for the pod, additional 30m2 for equipment and maintenance space around x 2 decks = 120 m2.
Medical facilities must host at least half of the crew simultaneously, but better all of them cramped on double-stored beds. So its the same as living quarters space - 100sq.m.
We're left with roughly 11000m2. Now for the cargo.
2 hummer/warthog like transports dock would be roughly half of escape pod dock i.e. 60m2
1-2 heavy vehicles seem the same size to me, so their dock would take another 60m2
2 small/light fighters would be twice the escape pod size i.e. they take 240 m2 each = 500m2 dock.
2 heavy/larger fighters would be three times larger than the previous, would take 3 decks and resulting space requirement 1500 m2 for 2.
2 drop ships are even larger, let them be twice than the previous, so 3000 m2 for two is enough for both.
So... we're left with 6000 m2 of space.
We cannot specify sizes of the main battery, oxygen scrubbers, armory, cargo hold, communications, galley, food storage, cooling and heating, stealth drive core, cloaking device, main shield generator, hydraulic dropping floor as we do not know what technologies they require. Maybe some of them, like stealth device, shield generator should be 2 or 3 decks high.
I.e. we just take all the remaining space and share it between them (12 units listed here). i.e. approximately 500m2 each.
the engines and the primary weapon system are located outside the ship's decks.
What's the next step? Depends.
You may take a 5 sheets of paper and try to draw everything on them with a pencil and eraser. Or, cut a colored paper into pieces of the respective size (i.e. in scale 2mm = 1m you would get an A4) and try to play with moving them around. When you are satisfied with the result, you draw it with ink. Then you look at the plan and then finally re-draw it clean.
Looks very similar to (Free)Albion https://code.google.com/p/freealbion/ and here https://github.com/freealbion/freealbion
I think you can borrow some art there (check their license and format)
Thanks for the answers.
I'm going to use Castle Game Engine (Open-source). It is definately not the best 3d engine, but it is 1) free (which is imporatnt for my opensource game) and 2) designed for free pascal. I still haven't gone deep inside it, but roughly it meets all my requirements.
Maybe I may put the question more specific. I'm still new to 3d modelling and therefore path 'from simple to complex' is more prefferable for me. I.e. I cannot start to work as pro designers do - create a general level map, then add details, then test it and add more details until the effeciency is ok. I start from modelling something small and simple like candles, rocks, barrels... and after I gain enough experience I will start modelling the castle/home/cave they are in and then place the already-made models inside. And in the future I want to make a level-generator that would automatically place the objects 'in spawn points' on the generated map.
It is much more easier for me to make a more complex model, than a more complex texture. E.g. it is easier for me to model a high-poly barrel than a low-poly barrel with everything else painted by textures. Another example: should I make models of spoons, forks, plates and other utensils or leave it to texture.
And definately it comes only with experience, but still... I do want to think in a correct way.
Of course, player characters, who he will see constantly must be high-poly, but these are only around 13 models. Other game objects quality may be sacrificed for effeciency to different extent, but I whish I could approximately catch the balance beforehands, so that I won't end up remaking too much of the art that I would have spent few years to make.
Pages