PoisonKitchen

So I am wondering how to approach this idea.
I have a construct that is running a script. The construct has 20 doors. The script wants to open or close each of the doors individually. A relay is not appropriate, because I don't know before hand which of the doors will be open or closed, so I can't do fixed wiring.
I have not been able to confirm if a Control Unit will be able to handle 20+ Out Plugs from one unit or script. There seems to be a limit of 1 to other Emitting Elements.
Any one have any other insights on this?
 
I am using the published dev blogs etc as reference here. Can't wait for pre-alpha to start so I can toy around with this

Without breaking NDA, I think you can use several "keyboards" unit and assign some doors to each one.
Not 100% sure if you can activate all keyboard at the same time, but it's what the July dev. diary looks like.
 
Regards,
SHadow

While we don't actually have any real answers to these questions at this time, I would be very surprised if Air-to-Ground combat wasn't a thing. Keep in mind that buildings and ships are both constructs, and so there's no reason to believe they would function differently in terms of combat and taking damage (besides the fact that buildings are static ofc).
 
Not necessarily. Buildings could simply be resilient enough that destroying them isn't feasible without significant effort. We don't really know anything about automated defenses at this time, but JC has mentioned them in several interviews, and has specifically floated the idea that they would operate at significantly reduced fighting capacity for balance purposes. However, the main problem with strong automated defenses is that they are impossible to balance in an unstructured game. There's nothing stopping wealthy organizations from buying and installing tons of them all over their territory, thus making themselves impervious to attack from anything besides other major organizations. This would seriously cripple the viability of smaller organizations, not to mention solo players, and would ultimately push many people out of the game. 
 
So, while I sympathize with the desire to have strong defenses that people can't easily defeat, that would ultimately hurt the game. I'm much more in favor of very weak asset protection systems because that forces a more honest and interesting dynamic between players and organizations. If anyone can come along and wreck your stuff at any time, that will foster much more co-dependence and community unity than a system that makes this hard. Strong automated anti-air/ground systems are the antithesis of that.
 
(this might seem a little off-topic, but I think it's really important to explaining why strong automated defenses and hard-to-kill buildings are bad for the game)
 
EVE Online is a perfect example of why strong asset protection can be bad in an open-world single-shard game. In EVE there are rather robust systems in place that prevent people from quickly destroying other people's things (the reinforce and timer systems for player structures in particular). This is necessary in EVE because entire organizations can exist in high-security space where their assets are untouchable. However, huge segments of the community abuse this system and spend hours grinding down other people's structures just to piss them off, and they can get away with being this nasty and petty because there's fundamentally nothing anyone can do to stop them. This behavior would not exist if everyone was vulnerable to destruction at any time, because the community would gang up on and annihilate bad actors. 
 
DU could avoid this problem to an extent because virtually all of the game is open to PvP, so DU can (and should) implement a system that forces people to work together for mutual protection. Adding in strong automated defenses and buildings that take hours to kill would make it impossible to retaliate against people who are far stronger than you. For example: It would allow rich and powerful players to grief smaller organizations with impunity, because they could just retreat to their virtually unassailable base where the smaller players have no way of attacking them back. In contrast, If no one is ever really safe, then people will be less willing to make enemies and break other people's things just to be petty, because it could have very real consequences for them. So, going without major asset protection systems will allow us to avoid much of the trolling and nastiness that comes from giving everyone a place where they're relatively untouchable.

There's MagicaVoxel, which is quite simple

Hello PoisonKitchen,

I know the situation you're in just too well. 9 months ago, I stood exactly where you are now. I was looking for a simple programm as well, especially for DU designs.
I'm gonna be straight forward and tell you:
SketchUp is the tool you're looking for. It's free, it's super-easy, maybe the easiest program out there, and yet really powerful. The only downside to it is that you'll need exponentially more time for detailed art than you would with professional programs, as they are automated to a degree. SketchUp does not provide any automation, but that is one less thing to worry about since a lot of these automated functions in professional software also cause a few problems if not used 100% correctly all the time. SketchUp also only has less than 10 tools, where professional software has hundreds for everything imaginable. But that also means less to learn, and you can still do everything with those few tools provided. 

Maybe another, possible downside is that SketchUp does not have a built-in renderer. There are plugins for that though, some a free, some are cheap, and some will cost you 300 bucks. But rendering is a whole different topic.
Have a look at my first few creations. Each of them took be between three to five hours to finish.

 

 

 

 

 

 
SketchUp also has a free upload platform where you and others can 3D view your models with, I believe, umlimited storage space.

Like this:
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/9cf408f4-7a59-476a-872c-1878c1e2dc6a/Dual-Universe-ODY-Exploration-Crusier-Bulldog-V2

Hope I could be of help.

The centre of the planets is something that might have or not have limitations or even be allowed to be reached. Nyz has commented that there could be temperature related issues with trying to reach the centre of the planet,
 
I would imagine that they will not allow you to go to the centre because it might give weird coding issues and physics once you get there, like a centre point of gravity that you cannot get out of because there is nothing 'below' you. Same reason why SE doesn't have a centre, there is some odd returns from the code involved in making the planet that just doesn't allow it.
 
However, link to the thread that has Nyz idea on planets and centres: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/414-underground-possibilites/
 
nora,

I feel like a broken record going over these things over and over, so instead, I thought I'd just write up some of the more interesting things I learned at PAX this week. 
 
Now, I certainly am not at liberty to discuss everything I learned from PAX. It's also worth pointing out that many of these things are likely subject to change:
 
Ships have 3rd person view (at least in pre-alpha).  We may see more complex forms of linking elements, aside from Lua/power/fuel (no promises, and not going into details, but fingers crossed regardless) "One Week" means "One Week"   The number of TCU's we get in pre-alpha will probably be limited to 3-4, or thereabouts. Much smaller than the several thousand available to players at PAX. Ship combat will not be automated. If you see a ship with 30 cannons on it, it's likely there are 30 people onboard manning those cannons.  Avatar combat may have some automation in the form of simple base defenses that fire on people who aren't allowed in your territory. The game will be roughly a 10gb download, and those with pre-alpha will likely get a day or so to pre-download it. Flying in the first-person mode is much easier to get used to rather than 3rd person mode.  Celestial bodies like Asteroids cannot be moved, which is to say that attaching several rocket boosters to an asteroid won't just make it start moving. Asteroids will be in pre-alpha The scroll wheel is currently used as a speed throttle in ships, which takes a little bit to get used to. Fingers crossed that this changes, as it's a bit weird. Atmospheric and Space thrusters are two separate items. Just because a ship can fly in the atmosphere doesn't mean it can fly in space.  In the same vein, Atmos and Space fuel are two separate things.  Star probes will not be physical things flying through space, so no tracking them down to destroy them as they fly through space.  A question came up about how far they are along with the skill system, the answer is "almost zero". They're just not at that point in development yet, which is understandable. Digging to the center of a planet should result in players bouncing around like a spring around the absolute core. However, we'll have to test this to see if it actually works.  Of course the closer you dig the center, the harder it will be to reach because of the way that territories stretch all the way to the core.  Planets were not rotating in the PAX Demo, unclear if this will change in pre-alpha on the 30th or if that's planned for Alpha instead. Coming up with crafting recipes is difficult because of the balancing required for them.  Making ships is not going to be easy, people are seriously underestimating just how difficult it's going to be to get into space. Even in creative mode people had a very hard time doing it.  Water is extremely difficult to get right. The water in the pre-alpha is just a placeholder texture for now, and their plans for water sound awesome, it's just not an easy task at all.  
 
I'm sure I'll have more info to add to this thread as I remember it over the course of the day.
 
As for my thoughts on how the pre-alpha played at PAX....
 
Many people who didn't know anything about Dual Universe sat down to play it and were kind of left dumbfounded as to what to do. The open world aspect of it without any tutorial was a bit overwhelming, and people were left clicking random buttons and walking away confused. Those that did understand Dual Universe, however, seemed to have a blast playing around in the world. Despite complaints I've seen to the contrary, I didn't find the UI to be overly complex or confusing. Just looking at screenshots is pretty self-explanatory. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of things, and there are certainly some terms you should be aware of, but it certainly wasn't this monstrously complex thing that warranted the complaints I've seen. On the topic of building ships. Many people sat down expecting to just have their hands held building a ship. It's not easy at all, which I think is a good thing. If it was such a simple process that any random person could do it in 5 minutes, it would be a whole lot less impressive to actually build one that works. I am happy with the way this works out. Not everyone is going to be able to build a space ship. The game played rather fluidly. There were some trivial bugs here and there, but nothing that brought down the server (which is the key point here).  Again, building a ship is not a process that someone can just explain to you in 5 minutes. If you're expecting to just jump into the pre-alpha right away and be flying off the planet in a few minutes the first time, it's not going to happen.   
 
Overall I was very pleased with what I saw at PAX, I think that anyone coming into pre-alpha with leveled expectations (not a complete game) will be very happy with how far they've come. It's going to be a very fun time for all of us. The game has a learning curve, even at this point in creative mode, so if you're expecting something where your hand is held and everything is as simple as WoW or No Man's Sky, you're going to be disappointed. I know others will disagree with me, but I found it just as easy as learning to play Everquest Landmark.
 
 

No wheeled vehicles. Hovercraft will be the ground vehicles. Wheeled vehicles could be possible in a later expansion after release.