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[Kofthefens]

1. I've been working on jobs and robots, and I would like some 3d models of workshops and robots, if any of the 3d designers are free. on the Doc it says that araph, dreadmullet, and malloc can do some 3d modeling.

2. Malloc- I'm going to be working on pathing soon. I'm not really sure what the code for your voxels looks like, so could you give me an idea of how to tell if a robot is colliding with one?

3. I think we should have another conference this weekend, if somebody would be willing to organize it.

4. DrPoo, could you put a link to the Doc in the OP, so people new to the project can find it more easily?

[dreadmullet]

1. Final versions of models, or just placeholders? I kind of expected to be the one to model the robots, unless someone else feels they can do it. If I modeled them, it would be great if someone could draw some awesome concept art for me to go on. There has to be one of youse that can draw, because I sure can't.

3. Most definitely. Perhaps if there were a conference once a week at a fixed time it would make everything more organized, and help keep the project going steadily.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

3. I missed the first but this weekend look open enough. Also I agree with dread that a weekly conference at a set time would greatly help the project

As for the robots themselves is seems we need some concept art for them so I think we should answer a few questions about the robots first before we get down into the art part.

Are they going to be short squat and basically metal dwarves but steampunk?

Are we going for the steam pipes everywhere type of steampunk or the gears type of steampunk (or maybe both but choosing one or the other would make it easier)

Are the different jobs going to have widely different shapes or will it be basically the same base model plus tools, whether they are built in or actual tools (In other word the are we going to be easy on the modeler or making them cry tears of blood when we want 30 different jobs with 5 subjobs each)

How much are our robots going to be breaking the rules and being all magic but not

[Kofthefens]

1. Final versions of models, or just placeholders? I kind of expected to be the one to model the robots, unless someone else feels they can do it. If I modeled them, it would be great if someone could draw some awesome concept art for me to go on. There has to be one of youse that can draw, because I sure can't.

Just a placeholder. Right now they are just cubes; anything would look better.

Are we going for the steam pipes everywhere type of steampunk or the gears type of steampunk (or maybe both but choosing one or the other would make it easier)

Well, buildings will need pipes, though the robots themselves won't. Maybe a gear or two laying around in some of the workshops to give it a steampunk feel.

Are they going to be short squat and basically metal dwarves but steampunk?

I'm thinking kind of like WALL-E (from a pixar movie), but steampunk, so lots of random tanks pipes, and gauges sprouting from its back.

Are the different jobs going to have widely different shapes or will it be basically the same base model plus tools, whether they are built in or actual tools (In other word the are we going to be easy on the modeler or making them cry tears of blood when we want 30 different jobs with 5 subjobs each)

I think a job for each building (see the Doc), though maybe a few sub-jobs for the forges.

How much are our robots going to be breaking the rules and being all magic but not

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Well for instance one piece we will have to do is greatly exaggerate how much power you can get out of a steam engine. Basically we plan to have robots powered by steam which in some weird theoretical world could work, I am asking how far out are we going with this. Are we going for what would be termed Hard Science Fiction where while we might bend some of the physical laws we mostly stick to what is possible or are we doing some sorta space opera type of deal where if we need a robot to float for no reason it just does.

Edit: I just checked the Googledoc and I see what you mean with the robots. It was updated since I last saw it. Anyway it looks like we are going to want to go with the base robot that gets addons. Just some thoughts on how to do this using one specific thing I see in the doc:

The steam tank determines how much strength the robot has.

With this we would have the base robot have a steam tank, of course material would affect how much pressure it could store and thus a simple color change could be used for that but for upgrading a single material type we could have metal bands around the tank to represent reinforcing. This would be something nice and visual as well as being simple to add to the model. A simple 0 to 3 band system would be something that could easily be determined at a glance.

[Kofthefens]

Other than exaggerating the power one can get from steam, nothing outrageous. Saying that forges are run on steam, is one not-entirely-real thing. Mine cart physics might be a bit oversimplified. For the most part though, it will stay near reality.

Edit: I just checked the Googledoc and I see what you mean with the robots. It was updated since I last saw it. Anyway it looks like we are going to want to go with the base robot that gets addons. Just some thoughts on how to do this using one specific thing I see in the doc:

The steam tank determines how much strength the robot has.

With this we would have the base robot have a steam tank, of course material would affect how much pressure it could store and thus a simple color change could be used for that but for upgrading a single material type we could have metal bands around the tank to represent reinforcing. This would be something nice and visual as well as being simple to add to the model. A simple 0 to 3 band system would be something that could easily be determined at a glance.

Good idea.

[dreadmullet]

I made a number of very basic models for the mock-up I was making in Blender. (The mock-up didn't turn out too well... I won't share it unless someone insists.) I have a robot, a minecart, minecart tracks, and wood supports. That reminds me of something else:

We need a way to share files for the project. I think someone mentioned Dropbox, but I don't know much about it. For now, I can share them over Mediafire if you want.

As for hard/soft sci-fi, I was thinking maybe 50% hard sci-fi. Steampunk isn't very realistic to begin with, however I think there should be at least some plausibility to the robots' look.

[Kofthefens]

Mediafire is fine by me. I won't have time to work on it until Friday, so no need to rush.

[Araph]

Spoiler: Yet another attempt at dirt (click to show/hide)

Bleh. I hope this one is closer, albeit not perfect. I think the seams are better, but the texture itself is worse. Would it be possible to see that texture applied to voxels? It'd be nice to be able to see what it looks like in what there is of the actual game.

[dreadmullet]

Perfect tiling! Not one seam in sight.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Scelly9]

That is VERY nice.

[malloc]

2. Malloc- I'm going to be working on pathing soon. I'm not really sure what the code for your voxels looks like, so could you give me an idea of how to tell if a robot is colliding with one?

For now each voxels is represented very lowlevel by a 32bit integer, which represents what state the voxel is in. I have only used the first 5 bits for now.
If no bits are set, it's an empty cell.
If the first bit is set, then it's a solid.
If one of the next four bits are set( Values 2 to 16 ), the voxel represents a slope.
Where each individual bit represents one of four slopes, basically 2(x+1,z+1) 4(x+1,z-1) 8(x-1,z+1) 16( x-1, z-1).
That means if the slope value is 24 then 8 and 16 are set, and the slope will go x-1 to x+1. If the value is 6 it will go from x+1 to x-1 and so on.

A object should obviously not be able to exist inside a solid, nor a slope. It should also start falling if it is in a cell where there is no solid or slope beneath. If the object moves into a slope, then it should move one voxel up, assuming that there is free space there.

I didn't have a lot of time yesterday, so I didn't do enough work to show really. I did however do some refactoring of code to be much more consistent, it also exposed some corner cases where the mesh generator would fail which I then fixed. There is still a few rare cases where it will fail to generate the right geometry. It's an ongoing process and I think it's good enough to, start on the more meaty game related stuff today.

[DrPoo]

Alright updating OP, exams next week so i cant help right now.
God my heart is in my throat.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Yeah, Exams here as well. Good luck with them.

[Araph]

Perfect tiling! Not one seam in sight.

That is VERY nice.

One request for the game as a whole: I note that in the document on Google, it says that some metals and alloys are better or worse than others. I'd like to keep the relative strength as close to reality as possible. I don't care about any deviations from reality with steam power, but metallurgy is a little more important to me.