Modding Discussion Large Colony Ship

The trees are located in the vanilla files "\plants\trees"
Example: The giantflower tree is 12 tiles tall without foliage.

On the note of the ship -
Is this in intentional?

If I feel as though the square corners should be rounded off like the rest of the command module.

 

I'm still working on it, I have an idea for that area but still not sure if I am going to go with that or something else.

Also thanks for letting me know where in the assets to look as I was going brain dead from working on this ship so late last night, I think 20 tiles should be plenty big enough to grow trees in but I think I may add another 5 tiles to the height of the farming modules as insurance.

 

Well for Frackin Universe you won't need dirt on the habitats. Due to the hydroponic tubes and trays.

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If you look at the last image I posted, the large area that has the parallax with the black area right under it is where the user will be able to build there colony and the three smaller rooms up top are for farming, the first large habitat section will be unlocked at tier 5 and the three rooms that make up the first farming module will be unlocked at tier six. Now that said I understand that FU has the hydroponics trays but I want to first get the main mod done without FU support. Once I finish what I have planned out I will see about adding in some special parts of the ship for FU, such as being able to tie the main engine that will be in the engineering section to the FU power network along with having custom batteries built into the ship.
My thoughts for this is that a large ship would have massive power output capabilities, and I would like to have the main generator be upgradeable to be more efficient and use more fuels with a higher power output for use in FU.

Also on a side note, I plan on having custom shops that can be unlocked in the black corridor under the build area for the habitat module. these shops will include variants of the ones found in the colony but also several unique shops such as racial shops for buying vanity items or furniture along with shops for buying blueprints at an inflated price or as a reward for trading in certain items as an alternative to finding them in game. I also want to have a bar/pub for buying food and drink items as well. With the space that you will have by combining all the space from tiers 5-8 and possibly tiers 9 and 10 with the tier9 mod support, there will be lots of options for designing the colony portion of the ship.

I have a lot of plans for what I would like to have in the mod but it will take time to implement and I will be counting on those who have offered to help with the coding side of things when it comes time.

 

Oh.. Well that's a bugger I followed this just for the ship layout. Guess when it's finished in going to have to unpack and remove any (ship integrations) not native to the vanilla game or FU when you get around to it as I personally don't want custom shops and things like that workshops full of mods for this and most people already use the good ones like the 'pixel goods store' which adds a wall console for racial decor and FU integration decor, it has two shops the ship locker style and a big conveyor style for colony but just an aesthetic change.

I'm not sure what your talking about power wise though. If your planning on a custom power battery thing when you do the FU version I'm probably just going to remove that and use the room space for FUs generators.

Edit:
I wasn't saying you don't need dirt, I'm aware the FU ship comes later on I was just saying you won't need dirt for the FU version.

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Yikes - the mod isn't even finished and you've already decided it's not worth it? Why not wait until it's at least released and give it a try. You might like the feng shui of this getup.

 

Where did I say I didn't like the ship?
I said I wasn't going to keep any additional shops or clutter objects. I think it's personal choice tbh. I choose to not add any item or shop which isn't standalone for compatibility reasons.

If I have an issue on my server I want to be able to debug which mod or item a mod is from to fix it. If the this mod does dirty edits or anything I'll have to fix just for my sanity.

I like the ship, but up until now I didn't see anything about adding new recipes or shops integrated too the ship which is a nice idea but from a modders/coders perspective are better off as an addon module rather than built into the base.

I'm sure a few others would be turned off like me and won't use the ship just because it changes more than just the player ship. This is a huge problem depending how he eventually goes about the racial shop recipes and things.

I won't go over the exact coding practices here so I'll be blunt, if the ship ends up adding any custom objects to the game which are not usable without this mod installed I'm not using it sorry.

It's not the shops which bother me those I preusme are tied to use on the ship only and I hope are just existing recipes organised into a ship console or something which would be clean compatibility wise as if the mod was removed you won't have to clean your character file to keep playing.

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So for today I have worked a bit more on the habitat module background, this time I added all kinds of details to the black area under the parallax that will be filled in with dirt, as the for the black area under that I added in the basic templates for the shops.

As for Ledhead's concern, the shops will basically be custom shops that give an alternative to obtaining vanilla outfits, items, and furniture without having to deal with the RNG in finding them. As for unlocking the shops they will be tied to universe progression and use pixels/ vanilla objects to unlock/upgrade so there isn't direct access to them.
That said for shops and the custom furniture I want to add to the different rooms, I plan on adding that in after the main points of the ship are finished out and the mod as a whole will be available in two flavors, a "Lite" version that is just the basic layout with the custom captains chair, fuel hatch and tech station, and a "Full" version that has all the extra stuff in it.

 

It's well thought out then. I did only say what I said as it could have been a deal breaker for a lot of others depending on how it was done.

On a other note, this things huge saw it against the Polaris and just wow. What plans do you have for navigation of the decks and ship in general? Try to avoid the novakid train style tacking on modules for tiers as that's a major pain in the rear for players to navigate it's all straight with no alternative paths. May I suggest for the other tiers stacking those intop of the habitat module as this can then linked to the central shift for creating an easy rail system to stop at each deck .

Alternative you could add more than one ship teleporter named accordingly to deck so players can teleport directly too the further away modules.


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I may go with the teleporter idea as I wanted to originally do some kind of elevator system to move vertically but after working on the ship for the last few weeks I have started to get an idea on how massive the ship really is.

 

So I have spent part of the day reworking the mock up of the captains chair and this is what I have come up with so far.

I am a lot happier with how the captains chair is looking compared to the quick mock up I did a while back.


As Always Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

 

I can see that one day you're going to set the world record for the biggest mod ship sometime. Keep it up, I like the design and the plans.

 

Thanks, I have something special in mind for the tier9 mod but that's going to be kept under wraps till I get the base ship finished

 

I don't normally post here, and outside of a server-side 'fixed starting world mod', I absolutely refuse mods in my game. Yet this, this (vanilla compatible lite version anyway)... will be the first! Simply because this is one freakin awesome ship design and I love it so far. Can't wait!

 

A slight alternative to that implementation is to just use platform materials directly. Being inspired by that mod in the first place, I was about to put out a door that does this.

Code:

"openMaterialSpaces" : [
    [
      [ 0, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 1, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 2,  1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 3, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 4, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 5, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 6, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ],
    [
      [ 7, 1 ],
      "lunarbaseplatform"
    ]
  ],

Where as the platform hatch mod is using "metamaterialbjectplatform" and drawing in the platform, I just added the actual platform I wanted. They're real tiles, but go away the moment you close the door - replaced with "metamaterial:door" and an image. They're back the moment you re-open the door.

Whichever way you decide to go, you may find that useful to copy/paste and change the space coordinates to fit your object.

And if you want to go fancier on the animations(more profiles) or other things, you might check out the added stuff you can now do with the automatic doors code(even of you don't want the doors to be automatic). The doors from my blocks/objects mod would be a good example of what's possible, but I also did write up a guide on Steam for mod makers that you can find on the Automatic Doors page discussions. One thing you probably want to add is this line

"platformDoors" : true,

because that will make sure the scan center is the real center, rather than just below the hatch/door. If by chance you want features for your hatch that aren't already present, let me or lornlynx know.

--edit/addition--

Oh also I recommend passing all your PNG files through PNG Gauntlet. It really helps the shipworlds load faster.

There's no record smashing to do, because the shipworld size is sadly very limited. It is a problem for mega-shipworld makers like me, him, and greenRAM. Although mine is a shipyard/station, rather than a mega-ship. GreenRAM maxed the world out too - more like a world than a ship. I was going to make ship vehicles to fly outside until the reality of the size hit me and now I can't see it as a worthy endeavor. So I'm just filling in what I have with mega farming domes, warehouses, large sections etc.

Unless of course I figure out some wizardry to break the limits(back in Enraged Koala I had a solution that doesn't work now). Or Chucklefish makes shipworld generation customizable.

 

What are the limitations of the ship world size in terms of pixel dimensions? I am close to a point where I want to start play testing I need to start figuring out if and how I am going to slice up the larger tiered ship images.

 

@Kinsem Are you still working on this project?? I cant be the only one hoping this comes out still, it looks SO awesome, and considering the work you put in, it would kinda suck if you did just stop. I'm crossing my fingers, youve done excellent so far, even though its been almost a year..

 

Sorry for the delay in the project but just a small update, due to real life getting in the way I had to put the project on hold but I am no starting to get the time once more to work on this project again. That said, the last major starbound update has added in some new objects that will help with some of my original ideas I had.