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Lets talk about Gravity


Semproser

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So obviously gravity onboard ships/space stations is going to be handled somehow within this game. I want to know the specifics:

 

 

 

Will gravity always be locked to the "Down" direction from the starting core?

 

if not:

 

Will there be "Gravity machines" of some kind that will allow us to give custom gravity to certain areas?

 

 

 

 

Really I'm asking because I want to build large ships designed to essentially be cities, and for most designs I want to build, having gravity in a different direction to the rest of the ship would be incredibly useful. For example, a cube city. With unidirectional gravity, the city would be forced to be only inside and ontop of the cube. With multi-directional gravity, I could build outwards on all faces. Cyclindrical cities (like the Citadel in Mass Effect but with the gaps in between the arms filled). Jupiter station from Interstellar.

 

I think you get the point. Anyone know? If not, can someone ask the devs if they get a chance? Or if this get popular enough, maybe a poll? 

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All i know is that i would hate to see that gravity effects are like Minecraft. For example of i build a tall pillar on a planet and remove the base and it stays afloat. That would be terrible. If you remove the base the whole thing should fall and not magically float

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I think I read somewhere that gravity on planets, for now at least, looked like what you describe @Malicious -

 

like, if you were to remove the bottom half of a mountain, the other half would stay up... I hope they're looking to fix that, but on the other hand it's a huge hassle to code something that comes close to natural gravity.

 

As for OP's question; idk, but i'm totally on board for customizable gravity when it comes to space stations.

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All i know is that i would hate to see that gravity effects are like Minecraft. For example of i build a tall pillar on a planet and remove the base and it stays afloat. That would be terrible. If you remove the base the whole thing should fall and not magically float

 

As far as mining is concerned it will be like this : if you carve the bottom of a mountain it will float.

 

As far as player and constructs, gravity should be applied.

 

For buildings I'm not too sure.

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My best guess on gravity is it may be simulated by the voxels simply by having a predefined top or bottom. The top in a hallway is what the player walks runs and jumps on.

 

The bottom is the direction at which they must fall away from should there not be a top. The side is of course would have to be angle determined. But a system like this would allow for some pretty complex creations and "tricks" to build weird and wonderful.

 

My next guess would be gravity is centered towards the dpu so players would need to build around that taking that into account.

 

In terms of the planet and newtonian physics well rotating around a sun will be highly unlikely. But planets rotating may happen but not in the alpha. Mountains will hover when their underneith is mined. Mining too deep results in potential death by lava but not from cave ins.

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As far as mining is concerned it will be like this : if you carve the bottom of a mountain it will float.

 

As far as player and constructs, gravity should be applied.

 

For buildings I'm not too sure.

Well yes it mill float but if you totally wipe a ground level it will fall upon you.

Buildings too, but into space if you apply a static core unit your craft won't have the possibility to move, but I think they are subject to gravity too (field).

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Well yes it mill float but if you totally wipe a ground level it will fall upon you.

Buildings too, but into space if you apply a static core unit your craft won't have the possibility to move, but I think they are subject to gravity too (field).

The Devs have already stated that physics in the world are going to be minecraft esque mining under an entire mountain ad clearing the bottom out will result in a floating mountain. But voxels and other things will have physics so they can fall.

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Just to be clear, I was aware that that voxel gravity physics were supposed to be like Minecraft, where if you undermine a tree it will float, and I'm entirely fine with that. So far everything else I've seen try to go further and have falling buildings and things just never works realistically at all, and generally just detracts from the game as opposed to adding a cool new level. For example if you took out all the walls of a large building, it would simply become 1 floor shorter and stand at an awkward angle while taking a huge amount of processing power to calculate and spaz around a bit and just be an unfix-able nuisance, as opposed to an impressive pile of rubble. 

 

I'm more focused on the non-voxel physics, e.g. Cups, small ships near space stations with their own gravity, and people. 

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As far as mining is concerned it will be like this : if you carve the bottom of a mountain it will float.

 

As far as player and constructs, gravity should be applied.

 

For buildings I'm not too sure.

 

Buildings *are* constructs.

 

NQ have said that all constructs will have some physics applied to them (velocity, momentum, acceleration) but that, for now, digging out a mountain won't cause it to fall. So your buildings will fall if you cut out a floor, but dig under a hill and it'll float.

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All i know is that i would hate to see that gravity effects are like Minecraft. For example of i build a tall pillar on a planet and remove the base and it stays afloat. That would be terrible. If you remove the base the whole thing should fall and not magically float

 

I'm interested to see how this is handled. Surely they can't simulate the physics on such a large scale, but I doubt they want floating buildings and the sort.

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I'm interested to see how this is handled. Surely they can't simulate the physics on such a large scale, but I doubt they want floating buildings and the sort.

For the moment in the build they have totally fixed elements for static stations (they don't move). Though it won't be the same after, I think they will rotate around the most powerful (gravitationally speaking) planet. Still a major question we want answered by the CM.

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I think independent gravity generators is a good idea personnally. As has been mentioned, it would allow for a bit more creativity and efficiency with regard to large space-born objects. Also, how else do you explain the fact that you are walking in a ship, as opposed to floating?

However...there are some potential issues if your multi-directional gravitational construct (cube city, for example,) floats too close to a planet, since the planet would then exert more gravity than the generators. That is unless they incorporate a "gravity re-director" that can take a current gravity source and "bend" it in a different direction. Then you would just basically use the planets own gravity to negate itself, while your gravity generators kept everything in place.

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I think independent gravity generators is a good idea personnally. As has been mentioned, it would allow for a bit more creativity and efficiency with regard to large space-born objects. Also, how else do you explain the fact that you are walking in a ship, as opposed to floating?

However...there are some potential issues if your multi-directional gravitational construct (cube city, for example,) floats too close to a planet, since the planet would then exert more gravity than the generators. That is unless they incorporate a "gravity re-director" that can take a current gravity source and "bend" it in a different direction. Then you would just basically use the planets own gravity to negate itself, while your gravity generators kept everything in place.

I think the cube unit implemented in any structure, movable or static, permits to have a gravity field inside of the structure that permits to walk as on earth

The last part I didn't get a word, too sophisticated.

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The last part I didn't get a word, too sophisticated.

Sorry, got caught up in the moment. :(

 

Basically, I was saying that any construct that has gravity in more than one direction (like a planet, where it pulls everything toward it's center, even if you are on the bottom of it,) would have trouble if it got too close to a planet. Using the cube city as an example, if you were standing on a side facing the planet when this happened, the planet's gravity would overpower the cube city's gravity on that side, and you would "fall" off the city and onto the planet.

 

The only way I see to prevent this would be to create a device that can somehow bend gravity from an already existing source. It could be a gravity generator or a planet. It could even bend the gravity 180 degrees so that it is working aginst itself.

With a system like that, the gravity generators on the cube city would no longer be competing with the gravity from the planet, since your "gravity bender" is using the planets own gravity to cancel itself out.

 

For example, let's say the planet is pulling on you with 1000 pounds of force, (I know this isn't how gravity is measured, but it is easier for me than using the real equation,) and your gravity generators are only pulling on you with 500 pounds of force. This means the planet is pulling on you twice as hard as your generator. So in essence, your construct's gravity is at -500 pounds.

The gravity bender acts like a mirror, reflecting that 1000 pounds of force back toward the planet, 1000 - 1000 = 0, which means your gravity generators are back up to exerting +500 pounds of force on you, keeping you safely anchored on the surface of the city.

 

I hope that makes sense.

 

I apologize again for the techno-babble in my previous post, looking back, I can easily see how it was confusing. If there is any part of this explanation that you don't understand, just let me know and I will try to clear it up. ;)

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You see the city as something not on a planet but on a flying cube... Meru! Classy, yet easy.

So you wish to have gravity generators that powerful? A planet can be 200 km large or more... It's technologically impossible. But reactors why not. I thought you could use the planet's gravity field to get somewhere easily just by not falling into the planets' atmosphere (with lateral reactors), as done for the Martian rover to get to Mars.

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Nicely pointed out, I hadn't considered that option:

 

*Avatar specific gravity*

 

It would be certainly perfect for the things I'm suggesting building wise. The only downside really is that occasionally while working in your office building someone might just casually walk up the wall and through your 80th floor window. haha.

 

As for your problem AccuNut with other gravity sources nearby, somehow I doubt their engine will actually employ a universal gravity field. It will probably be more in the sense of "if within X Radius of planet, affected by gravity of planet" for people and constructs, and a different model entirely for the space stations as they are supposed to just orbit the nearest large cosmic entity (or so someone said, I've got no sources on that). This would mean that on ships it would be likely gravity is handled in a way similar to "Everything inside this cuboid is affected by construct Y's gravity", where the cuboid is just big enough to encapsulate the construct. This is the most likely, as pretty much every other free roam space game does it like this. This would also mean that the cuboid gravity of the construct overrides the gravity of the planet entirely, otherwise things would become extremely strange in orbit. 

 

However "gravity emitters" like I suggest wouldn't use a cuboid that by default encapsulates the entire construct, but would give the user the ability to put a shape somewhere and anything inside that shape is affected by a certain gravity simulating force. Thing is, if this shape is a square (like in Space Engineers) my cuboid city idea still couldnt be employed perfectly as the corners wouldn't be covered properly without extra, diagonal facing gravity emitters. Which would be rather strange. This is what that would look like: http://www.printablee.com/postpic/2014/04/square-box-template-printable_116047.png - the important part here is the lack of gravity at the corners. 

 

However if the shape of the gravity emitters would be customisable, that would lead to a lot more fun. For example, gravity parcour maps, multidimensional command stations/bridges (which I have several concepts for), and of course cuboid city ships. However actually doing that even with the given tools might be hard, as the "correct" gravity field shape for a cuboid would be what I can only describe as an inverted square based & topped trapezoid sided pyramid. Like this: http://www.mathaware.org/mam/00/master/essays/B3D/2/JPG/figure19.jpg

Specifically 6 of them, one for each face, this allows for no gaps in between, and would look like this: http://www.mathaware.org/mam/00/master/essays/dimension/JPG/figure28.jpg

 

 

So in the end (and TL;DR) : 

 

Although it would lead to quite a lot of creative outlet to have customization of shapes from gravity emitters I imagine, it would probably be a great deal simpler and easier for the developers to just have user-set gravity, allowing any client to orient themselves however they want when off-planet. Probably locking this to 6 axis or so would be advisable. 

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...the "correct" gravity field shape for a cuboid would be what I can only describe as an inverted square based & topped trapezoid sided pyramid.

 

WOW! now that's a mouthful!

 

Seriously though, your post was very informative. I am glad you posted links...otherwise I would have had absolutely no clue what you were referring to! :lol: 

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WOW! now that's a mouthful!

 

Seriously though, your post was very informative. I am glad you posted links...otherwise I would have had absolutely no clue what you were referring to! :lol:

 

Totally. Even the 'inverted square based & topped trapezoid sided pyramid' sounds like spoken from a scientific with a high degree. xD. Though it's not that difficult to understand then, the field he talks about is basically contained into the space taken by each of the spaces between the exterior faces and their projections into the centre, a hypothetical 3-axis orientated normalized polygon (a cube). It's even clearer now.

Seriously though, the images makes it heavenly easy to understand.

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