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Mechanical Contraptions: will the game feature moving parts?


Traceur

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Just saw the e3 trailer... And I have one question:

 

Will the game feature moving parts that allow us to connect multiple player built structures?

 

I don't just mean animated prefabs like turrets and doors, but more along the lines of  Sliding rails, rotors, hinges, and everything that connects one voxel structure to another? If so, is there any word from the dev's on how the game is going to handle it in terms of physics? Will we be able to script the contraptions using LUA? 

 

I've heard the lead developer came from the field of robotics, will he be bringing robotics with him?

 

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Just saw the e3 trailer... And I have one question:

 

Will the game feature moving parts that allow us to connect multiple player built structures?

 

I don't just mean animated prefabs like turrets and doors, but more along the lines of  Sliding rails, rotors, hinges, and everything that connects one voxel structure to another? If so, is there any word from the dev's on how the game is going to handle it in terms of physics? Will we be able to script the contraptions using LUA? 

 

I've heard the lead developer came from the field of robotics, will he be bringing robotics with him?

 

Hi and Welcome to the Forums :)

 

Lua will be a thing to script your constructs, we don't know the limitations of Lua yet, but we know you can script in DU :).

Hinges and rotors we don't know 100% yet, but we know that there will be countless elements that you can put onto your constructs. Constructs being anything you create in voxels, base stations or capital ships or little fighters. Everything is a construct and built in the same process as all constructs will be :)

 

nora,

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It has been brought up about making ATAT walkers and Mechs, utilizing mechanical components. They have defiantly been suggested so we can make our own doors, hangars, rails, or whatever. 

 

There was an old post I cam across that talked about these, I tried searching for it real quick but no luck.  And some designs were linked on a docking clamp that could operate as a hinge were linked. It wasnt its purpose but could be used for such. I would expect they will give us some basic mechanical components, especially since so many of us request them. 

 

They are still early in development, so it may be something we wont see until Beta or release. 

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This is from very early on in development (earlier than the date shown) https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/39-props-generating-interaction-between-constructs-idea-from-estevan/:

 

The Novaquark Team:

It will be possible to have moving parts on a ship, with the use of “Anchors” (a special unit type). But keep in mind this is still a very early design, and there is no promise this will be implemented in the game from start. You can see a Concept Art research here on our Facebook page. However, to have these moving parts used in PvP Mechanics is not what is currently intended, but this is definitely an interesting idea.

 

I definitely recommend reading the devblogs to get a good idea of what they are doing with this game.  However on the building side, here's a very brief overview.

 

Voxel-based Elements (voxels for short) are basically shapes made of some material.

Mesh-based Elements (elements for short) are pre-designed, functional components.

Constructs are player-made designs made up of voxels and/or elements.

Distributed Processing Units (DPU's) are LUA programs that define what elements can do.  They are almost all pre-written, except...

Control Units are elements with a modifiable DPU.  You can write LUA functions to respond to other elements broadcasting events and then call functions from other elements.  As the name suggests, you can design a control system for your constructs.

 

We're not sure yet how the "anchors" mentioned in the quote will work, or even if they are still planned.  I imagine that something like that is still in the works but there's no info on it as far as I know.  I would be very surprised if there was no way to connect player constructs.

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Theres going to be thrusters right? Why not just crash the two together? Im sure you will get some pretty cool lag effects and mysteriously join the two together :3

Well I suppose you can always try to use the good old collision engine for your mechanical interactions, and.... Move very very carefully...  But just saying that feels like us threatening the front-end game-play designer by taking a baseball bat and pointing it at whoever is doing it the server architecture, and you know, that's the very same person who needs to work their thrusters off trying to create a world where we don't need instances and don't have size limits on what we can build, we need their brain intact. 

 

This is from very early on in development (earlier than the date shown) https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/39-props-generating-interaction-between-constructs-idea-from-estevan/:

 

 

I definitely recommend reading the devblogs to get a good idea of what they are doing with this game.  However on the building side, here's a very brief overview.

 

Voxel-based Elements (voxels for short) are basically shapes made of some material.

Mesh-based Elements (elements for short) are pre-designed, functional components.

Constructs are player-made designs made up of voxels and/or elements.

Distributed Processing Units (DPU's) are LUA programs that define what elements can do.  They are almost all pre-written, except...

Control Units are elements with a modifiable DPU.  You can write LUA functions to respond to other elements broadcasting events and then call functions from other elements.  As the name suggests, you can design a control system for your constructs.

 

We're not sure yet how the "anchors" mentioned in the quote will work, or even if they are still planned.  I imagine that something like that is still in the works but there's no info on it as far as I know.  I would be very surprised if there was no way to connect player constructs.

 

The anchor design is interesting, seems to work more as a hinge with limited movement then a full rotor.

 

I'll be honest: I am arriving here from Space Engineers, a game that severely lacks in providing context for your spaceship builds because pretty much everyone else is a builder, given that it's the only thing the game is about. So far from what I've read and seen, After seen the trailer and by now catching up on most of the devblogs (I am now down to on august 2014). The only advantage left - the only part of SE that everything I know of Dual's design doesn't completely suppress - is the ability to tinker with mechanical contraptions, which often ends up as my main activity in SE. It would be a shame if they don't, given that LUA is a much better suited for programming mechanical contraptions then C#.

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I think it's a great idea to bring up this discussion now. One of the greatest struggles the Space Engineers team is dealing with currently is that their custom VRAGE engine was not originally designed to cope with "multi-entity" moving part machines. This has led to a lot of limitations when dealing with rotors and pistons- arbitrary speed limits and intense physics bugs among other things. 

 

I think Dual Universe has the chance to succeed where Keen SWH had failed: in anticipating the popularity of mechanical contraptions and moving parts early in development and accommodating for it accordingly. Something like relative physics reference frames for "anchored" voxel grid entities (ala KSP) would be absolutely awesome. Admittedly I'm not a programmer and have no idea how hard something like that would be to implement in Uniengine 2, but I feel like the ability to design and build working, stable mechanical contraptions might make it worth it at least considering.

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I think it's a great idea to bring up this discussion now. One of the greatest struggles the Space Engineers team is dealing with currently is that their custom VRAGE engine was not originally designed to cope with "multi-entity" moving part machines. This has led to a lot of limitations when dealing with rotors and pistons- arbitrary speed limits and intense physics bugs among other things. 

 

I think Dual Universe has the chance to succeed where Keen SWH had failed: in anticipating the popularity of mechanical contraptions and moving parts early in development and accommodating for it accordingly. Something like relative physics reference frames for "anchored" voxel grid entities (ala KSP) would be absolutely awesome. Admittedly I'm not a programmer and have no idea how hard something like that would be to implement in Uniengine 2, but I feel like the ability to design and build working, stable mechanical contraptions might make it worth it at least considering.

 

Also Space Engineers tried to do it within the physics engine accounting for each part as it's own physical object. Based on the server architecture description in the mmorpg.com interview, I suspect dual universe might need be a lot more careful on how and where it applies physics (or anything that tends to create syncing issues in servers, like ragdoll, soft physics destruction, etc). That would give them the leeway to go with something closer to the starmade solution, which functions quite a bit smoother.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anchors are pretty much rotors/pistons, it's pretty obvious by looking at the concept design. They said that they're not intended for pvp, and that probably means that they're not a weapon, so you'll not be able to build a huge mechanical claw to crush an enemy ship (maybe because the collision system can't handle it, especially in massive fights). Beside that, i expect them to be quite similar to the one we have in space engineers, so we'll probably be able to build hangar doors, mechanical legs/arms, rotating turrets, and stuff like that. If this is the case, it would be huge on his own, we don't need that claw.

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