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Biological ships


Tnecniw

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In the dev' blog they describe rounded tools, so at least there's that. It probably won't be quite as blocky as Space Engineers or RoboCraft. Think more EverQest: Landmarks construction style. In fact the building tools look almost identical to Voxel Farm used by EQ landmarks.

I heard something about them using the same "crafting" engine... but isn't that a good thing, last I checked were Landmarks crafting quite... well, deep :D

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I heard something about them using the same "crafting" engine... but isn't that a good thing, last I checked were Landmarks crafting quite... well, deep :D

 

It is. Except Miguel Cepero is a tool who doesn't answer his email. Amazing coder, but still a tool.  <_<

(Long story)

 

edit: I meant it is a good thing if it is the voxel farm engine. I don't know if it actually is the voxel farm engine.

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It is. Except Miguel Cepero is a tool who doesn't answer his email. Amazing coder, but still a tool. <_<

(Long story)

And who exactly is this Miquel? The crafter of the landmark engine or... Someone else?

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Stellaris has these "space whales" that fly around aimlessly. They actually "eat" the gas from gas giants. I think something similar that you would build onto them would be cool. Then you could fly them through a gas giant before a long trip. Not sure if this mentioned already, but.... This really makes me think of the ship from Lexx. It was technically a living ship. It would, if I remember correctly, supply food and water for the passengers. Picture to follow......

Just the space whales would be cool, reminds me of a Doctor who episode....

d25ba1d4801604ee12ea0c55d2c4f7e4.jpg

Notice the scale: perfect for the planned epic scale of DU!

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Just the space whales would be cool, reminds me of a Doctor who episode....

d25ba1d4801604ee12ea0c55d2c4f7e4.jpg

Notice the scale: perfect for the planned epic scale of DU!

That looks fucking epic :3

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And who exactly is this Miquel? The crafter of the landmark engine or... Someone else?

The coding genius behind the landmarks engine.

 

Short story long, I was working on the code for generating procedural database summaries out of clipboard references for work, and thought the exact design (though probably not the exact same code) can be applied to voxel maps.

 

For the general idea, imagine for instance if you saved two blueprints of two nearly identical buildings, except for the number of floors. This could in turn isolate the blueprint of a floor and let you place that kind of building at any given height. Change the roof of the second building from a flat one to one with an antenna, and the next time you place that building you could scroll through the two roof types. The result would be kind of a "family relations" between blueprints which adapts to increasingly larger scales - from your style of housing with architectural elements you came up with expended to building to city and cities. 

 

I wanted to test this and have a look under the engine's hood, or at least some feedback on whether it was doable. It wasn't so much a game idea as much as it was a programming experiment that didn't go through. 

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You know, on the topic of living ships, there is the possibility of a biologically engineered species that is combined with types of materials that maybe would be able to produce a armored hull that can repair itself. 

 

As such, it may be possible that if you were hit on the exterior hull in battle, the organism would quickly patch up any breaches, destruction and as such at the cost of basic armor, nutrients to keep the organism alive and as such.

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Just the space whales would be cool, reminds me of a Doctor who episode....

d25ba1d4801604ee12ea0c55d2c4f7e4.jpg

Notice the scale: perfect for the planned epic scale of DU!

 

That is the episode - Starship UK in all its glory - granted, they had captured the star whale and were torturing it into moving when the star whale had been supporting the ship of its own will...sad story.

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I would think that there could be a point where we "discover" alien technology that allows the growing of organic armor, or organo/mechanical integration.

Aaaannnnd. allow me to link you to this forum post where I began talking about that very such thing.

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This would be a pretty interesting idea, and could lead into research and breading of different types of organic matter to use for components. They could follow the same basis as the standard ships being build. But instead of a metal they would have an organic block. 

 

It wouldnt need to be blocky, as the design tool being proposed allows for curves and slopes, so you could make any ship look organic. 

 

I think the regeneration would be a unique property of it, but that would be a feature that would have to be coded into the game. I would think it would be a large endevor, that while worth it, the devs may not want to touch atm. However, Kick starter stretch goal? I like the thought of that because the same mechanics used here could be used for the nanobot repair system I proposed. Well at least in the coding level, as far as what we would see they could seem to operate differently. 

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Maybe it could be a ship type... Like the biological "classes" of ships are more menouverable (since they are alive and can partly react on their own) and can sort of regenerate with time without repair... But they have much less armor and take damage easier due to them only having a sort of biological armor?

They could also have a larger power requirement since its not only the internals that are actively functional but the armor as well which definitely lends them to better be suited to being smaller agile ships since the power requirement increases dramatically compared to their size. 

 

Another thing of note, what if you could make biological drones. They could  make sense when paired with your traditional metal and plating ship. Think of them not as part of the ship but as large hunting dogs that need to be cared for when not active.

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I do like the idea of biological ships. You could find new ingredients on different planets to upgrade your options, growing your ship components. Or you could find very special fertilizer to make stuff grow faster/stronger.

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I do like the idea of biological ships. You could find new ingredients on different planets to upgrade your options, growing your ship components. Or you could find very special fertilizer to make stuff grow faster/stronger.

I wonder if they COULD make biological ships and such... and then make them capable of grow so big as to be a galactical menace :D so then people have to band together to take it down or accept their new emperor :D

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Interesting... the ship developed conciousness and fled :lol:  

More in the case of the ship groing so big that it is incredibly dangerous and must either be taken down or submitted to

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Wait so... The ships is an NPC?

No... more a case of the one owning the ship being so powerfull that it becomes a sort of superpower...

 

Like a deathstart.

 

Either the ship is destroyed OR the players submit to their new emperors.

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I will say that as much as I love B5, Pilot+Moya is/are the most endearing characters to me. So are biological ships just something built from peitri dishes, or are they their own living entities with a mind, desires, and fears? What if the ship can communicate with the Internet and discover all the cat pictures on Spacebook?!

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It is. Except Miguel Cepero is a tool who doesn't answer his email. Amazing coder, but still a tool.  <_<

(Long story)

 

edit: I meant it is a good thing if it is the voxel farm engine. I don't know if it actually is the voxel farm engine.

 

 

I heard something about them using the same "crafting" engine... but isn't that a good thing, last I checked were Landmarks crafting quite... well, deep :D

 

 

Novaquark is making their own in house voxel engine. They are not using voxel farm, they looked into it but determined it would be better done in house.

 

I believe somewhere on the dev blog you can read this paper  on Dual Contouring

 

​Novaquark is made up of a very tech diverse group of people, it makes sense to me they would code their own in house voxel engine. Although complex, I don't think it's as complex as we might believe, forcing them to use a 3rd party for better results, rather it seems they will get better results doing it in house.

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