reinventing the wheel !=fun, BBS things

B.B.S: Beg, Barrow, Steal

As a professional java programmer I have some simple advice. Don't re-invent the wheel. You guys are planning a depletion energy system for powering structures and ships, yes? Two words: Industrial Craft. That mod brings allot to the table, and is relatively easy to modify. It covers generators, solar panels and nuclear reactors, in addition to power grid basics. If you can I recommend you beg permission to dissect the mod's code and turn it on its head as your own. Its highly effective and dependable.

For ship crafting i wouldn't recommend Zeplin Modding, that coding logic is still young and not fully stable yet. IMO the best way to start off would be doing it SDK planes style and starting with smaller ships. I don't know how far you have advanced into ship logic, but if zeplin style is working for you, more power to you.

Design with an API in mind (bukkit, Forge, etc) it will save you a lot of headache later.

Program before coding. That's the big one. For programmers in your group they will know what i mean, and you guys are embarking a giant ass project so that statement becomes more and more important.

I'm sure i can think of more but i have to get back to work, but will be watching this mods progress with great interest.

Ah, hello! Welcome.

We'll be using the Planes mod's logic for our fighters and bombers and suchlike - ship-handling will be done with our own in-house proprietary code, codename Copernicus.

I also greatly recommend IndustrialCraft 2 for the energy-related systems, and im sure Albalka would let us use it if we showed him a proof of concept of some type.

Shiva wrote:

Ah, hello! Welcome.

We'll be using the Planes mod's logic for our fighters and bombers and suchlike - ship-handling will be done with our own in-house proprietary code, codename Copernicus.

Indeed, the Zepplin's methoid for ships is brillant, but only for smaller craft. Copernicus takes a completely different route and manipulates World Renderers instead of entitys, allowing for far larger ships, amoung other bonuses.

IndustrialCraft has, or will have soon, an API for accessing the energy grid with 3rd party mods. It would be easy to integrate into the game, though of course, it will never be made mandatory.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

IndustrialCraft has, or will have soon, an API for accessing the energy grid with 3rd party mods. It would be easy to integrate into the game, though of course, it will never be made mandatory.

I'm sure he would let you include some of his code for the E-system and nuclear reactor and such, if you ask and give him credit. The worst he can do is say no, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel.

The electric grid API is an abstraction that allows you to use the the IndustrialCraft power framework without needing access to the source code. It's preferable, even, if done properly. The only reason to need The IC2 source would be for adding to or modifying the existing functionality of that mod, which doesn't seem necessary. Also, integrating even part of IC2 would mean making Forge a mandatory element. While that wouldn't be a terrible thing, I would prefer if we could keep our current flexibility until such a time that we decide Forge is necessary.

Just an annoying continuation of the analogy:
When the wheel was first invented, it was made of planks of wood bolted together. Much later, they added spokes to wheels, which dramatically decreased weight while preserving strength. Now, compare that second generation of the wheel to the wheels we have today, made of light weight alloys, complete with a tyre for added grip (also a very important addition), you see that perhaps it is better to re-invent the wheel than to use a more primitive version.

Not to sure if that applies in this context, but I have to mention that every time someone mentions "don't reinvent the wheel".

Dr. Mackeroth wrote:

Just an annoying continuation of the analogy:
When the wheel was first invented, it was made of planks of wood bolted together. Much later, they added spokes to wheels, which dramatically decreased weight while preserving strength. Now, compare that second generation of the wheel to the wheels we have today, made of light weight alloys, complete with a tyre for added grip (also a very important addition), you see that perhaps it is better to re-invent the wheel than to use a more primitive version.

Not to sure if that applies in this context, but I have to mention that every time someone mentions "don't reinvent the wheel".

Thats improving the wheel, reinventing the wheel is to create a design that is allmost exactly the same or has no advantages compared to the allready existing wheel.

The Zeppelin Mod has two major flaws that would make spacecrafts near useless; pitch, and roll.

Copernicus-based space crafts will be capable of pitch and roll.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Copernicus-based space crafts will be capable of pitch and roll.

That's good. But there should be a limit at least for roll so that you can still aim side mounted guns at the ground, but you won't go crazy with motion sickness doing barrel rolls in these behemoth ships. Same with pitch so that you aren't spinning on the horizontal axis. That would look pretty ridiculous.

I was thinking about keeping large ships level while in atmosphere, unless they were crashing. It would make interacting with stuff on the surface like docks a lot less confusing, as well as circumventing the problem of how to transition from artificial gravity to natural gravity in an intuitive way. Small craft like fighters could still barrel roll and dive to their hearts content (probably).

Does that sound reasonable?

Actually, what about having a default orientation in space, too? There's no technical requirement for it, but it may help keep players from getting disoriented. Most space games I've seen have an "up" of some sort for that exact purpose. Ooh, even better, you could have a setting for simple or advanced controls, or autopilot for traveling to registered locations like stations or cities or rendezvousing with a fleet (the advantage of which is that you could cache the drawing of the area you will be arriving at before you get there, making the transition faster and smoother).

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

I was thinking about keeping large ships level while in atmosphere, unless they were crashing. It would make interacting with stuff on the surface like docks a lot less confusing, as well as circumventing the problem of how to transition from artificial gravity to natural gravity in an intuitive way. Small craft like fighters could still barrel roll and dive to their hearts content (probably).

Does that sound reasonable?

Actually, what about having a default orientation in space, too? There's no technical requirement for it, but it may help keep players from getting disoriented. Most space games I've seen have an "up" of some sort for that exact purpose. Ooh, even better, you could have a setting for simple or advanced controls, or autopilot for traveling to registered locations like stations or cities or rendezvousing with a fleet (the advantage of which is that you could cache the drawing of the area you will be arriving at before you get there, making the transition faster and smoother).

Would that mean that guns mounted on the belly of the ship would be useless in space, and side mounted guns would be useless on the surface? I guess it seems like an ok trade-off.

In space you don't need to stay aligned to any particular axis, I was just proposing it to keep people from getting disoriented. If you wanted to do a barrel roll in an imperial star destroyer to aim your anti-ground lasers at a passing ship, I guess you could. Docking alignment is the only real issue, but I suppose if it were automated (via designated docking mounts or something) that wouldn't be a problem.

But yeah, upside down capital ships at low altitude probably won't happen. Unless it looks really cool, in which case I'll consider it.

Just imagine...

"Permission to buzz the tower."
"Permission denied, Maverick. The pattern is full."
"Oh s***, Mav. What are you doing?"
Imperial Star Destroyer, upside down, buzzes the tower at mach 10... flattening the tower.
"Oops."

tonyri wrote:

Would that mean that guns mounted on the belly of the ship would be useless in space, and side mounted guns would be useless on the surface? I guess it seems like an ok trade-off.

Tony, I don't see any reason for a capital ship like an Imperial Star Destroyer or a Covenant supercarrier to enter the atmosphere of a planet in a heated combat situation anyway. If you want to wipe a city off the face of the planet, there's such a thing as orbital bombardment. Just roll a few degrees to give the site your full broadside, mark your target, and turn the place into glass and rubble. If you want to invade, that's why there are dropships, fighters, and bombers. Fighters clear the airspace, bombers clear the area for the dropships to land, and the freshly-deployed ground troops take the planet in your name. Besides, would you really want to put an incredibly expensive capital ship within the optimal firing range of an ion cannon that could turn your weapon of mass destruction into a falling scrapyard?

EDIT: I do see the utility in smaller ships, like assault ships, corvettes and light frigates, entering the atmosphere to provide heavier support. There's nothing better than having a seemingly-indestructable ship hovering over a less advanced civilization's central government building to make them realize that resistance is futile.

EDIT 2: As for an API, unless there's plans to make Copernicus compatible with Forge, I foresee some major mod conflict troubleshooting in the very near future...

As for ships staying upright in a planet, I vote a strong no. As for the gravity problem, the methoid throughwhich gravity is made on a ship would have to be known to address the problem, but it's been shown before that changing the direction of the player's gravity is somewhat easy.

lordhood117 wrote:

As for an API, unless there's plans to make Copernicus compatible with Forge, I foresee some major mod conflict troubleshooting in the very near future...

Oh it's going to be a nightmare.

That is, of course, unless SpaceToad, Eloram, and Alblaka jump in to get everything straightened out, but that's probably one of the world's biggest if's right now.

Forge is open source, which is already a big help. But it's the responsibility of this mod to make itself forge-compatible, not vice versa.

I can't imagine it would be too bad, if the mod-makers are fine with it you could always just include the forge hooks that the api requires, instead of all of them.

When SpaceToad and Eloram eventually see an early version of this, I HIGHLY doubt they'll say no.

Hi i just joined i like the concept

a mod of this magnitude does need to reinvent the wheel and i figure also the fire while at it i read it i had cool i read further i started doubting i think this is gonna work but how it's gonna work i have no clue i guess that when the support ends you gotta make your own

i also had an idea of making Buildcraft part of the construction process or at least use some ideas of it because unless you mod entire Factory's spewing out parts and from parts larger parts etc etc

But i guess checking out the neighbourhood for mods yea can use is wise


Greetings Voron

*oftop*
i find this forum a tad confusing

It's a free forum, do you expect it to be like the multi-thousand dollar Minecraft Forum?

Voron wrote:

Hi i just joined i like the concept

a mod of this magnitude does need to reinvent the wheel and i figure also the fire while at it i read it i had cool i read further i started doubting i think this is gonna work but how it's gonna work i have no clue i guess that when the support ends you gotta make your own

i also had an idea of making Buildcraft part of the construction process or at least use some ideas of it because unless you mod entire Factory's spewing out parts and from parts larger parts etc etc

But i guess checking out the neighbourhood for mods yea can use is wise


Greetings Voron

*oftop*
i find this forum a tad confusing

First of all, nice Engrish, and second of all there are no plans for BC to be used AFAIK