Survival Voxel Creation

[The Big Brzezinski]

I'd like to be able to place terrain voxels using stone and ore in survival mode. This would allow the construction of non-grid voxel structures.

The tools would work like a limited version of voxel hands. Stone depositers would be installed on a grid and connected by conveyors, much like drills. When activated, the depositers would project a voxel terrain image of the shape (cube, sphere, cylinder, etc) and color selected by the player. When the player triggers the depositers, they would fill in the projected voxel shapes using carried stone. A hand tool version might also be availible. Server settings would determine whether depositers could place shapes only on existing voxels, anywhere outside natural gravity, or anywhere regardless of gravity.

Such tools would allow players to build a wide variety of static structures requiring no physics calculation. A simple stone wall would server as cheap defense against wolves. Roads could be built across rough terrain to allow safer and faster land travel. An earth-sheltered base would provide an easily repaired defense against meteors and concealment from hostile players. One could deposit valuable ore over a warhead to lure and attack enemy miners. Underground and hollow asteroid bases would be much easier to excavate and rebuild. Landing pads that don't melt under engine thrust could be laid out, or even whole airfields.

It would take some work to get implemented, but I believe voxel terrain contruction would add a tonne of depth to the game.

[Torriador]

Not a bad idea, but as you stated it woud definately take a bit of work to be implemented.

I can imagine something like a projector block showing a blueprint of the terrain to be generated, much like you described, then have a connector/ejector spit out stone into/onto a collector/storage type block.
Then when the amount of stone in storage is equal to the calculated volume of the voxel projection, the collection block disappears, and gets replaced with the completed voxel shape.

That would make good use of the excess stone from mining, or give an expanded use to gravel.

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by Torriador:

it woud definately take a bit of work to be implemented.

Maybe it could be implemented real simple? Like you drop stone or ore to ground and instead of it disappearing when the world stack gets full it gets "absorbed" into the ground and the terrain rises a bit? I think they already have in map design tools in the VRAGE engine to flatten and rise terrain so there should already be something useful for this.

Would actually give a realistic look to your mining operations if you start accumulating "tailings" from all that waste stone you eject or drop away.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Maybe a new tool, fill your inv with stone and the tool "pipes" out the stone using only a small voxel hand brush. You can pick the shape but not increase the size, and pick form common floor textures. They could do a ship version with a bigger brush :)

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

Maybe a new tool, fill your inv with stone and the tool "pipes" out the stone using only a small voxel hand brush. You can pick the shape but not increase the size, and pick form common floor textures. They could do a ship version with a bigger brush :)

Or multiple ship brushes, arranged into a desired shape, fed with stone from a drilling array. Make a paving machine, tunneler, flying bridge builder, lots of stuff.