Starship Evo Building System - Coming from that to SE2 feels clunky. Tips on improvements
Starship Evo seems inspired by SE1. Voxel, Mechanical blocks, events and simple programming, voxel building. However this is made by a single dev and they have made considerable innovations to building making it so much faster and more fun. Just making a nice cockpit shape takes me a long time in SE2, but I can do that very fast in Evo.
First thing I notice is that Evo mirrors blocks not just in placement, but if you have an angled sloping from right to left and using symmetry mode it will place a mirrored block sloping left to right on the symmetry side. This is huge and I would say extremely important. This is probably the easiest thing to implement.
In Evo blocks can scale so you if you want a large sloping shape you can just drag it like you would with the Shift for Plane in SE2. It places a single block with altered shape. This is a completely different feature in the core building from SE2, but it makes such a huge difference in time spent making shapes. Not only do you spend less time placing blocks, but it gives you more freedom in making shapes. In SE2 you spend a lot of time swapping between slopes, corner, inverse corner just to make a fairly simple shape. This is a big barrier for most people to overcome. If you have to be frustrated and have to build on a very high level of detail in order to make shapes it will only really appeal to the people who love to design and have a high degree of patience and technical skill.
Since Evo considers the ship one grid no matter if the blocks are connected. This means you can place make steps with square blocks, place angled blocks on them to create an angled surface and if you want angled surface on the backside you can remove the squares and then add inverse angled. In SE2 this would break your grid into multiple. There are workarounds for this, but it's clunky and requires a lot more time.
SE2 would really benefit from a "build mode" where grid separation and gravity for a grid is suspended. I've had several times where my build split and I had to copy paste to put it back together. Which is annoying and then I have grid-separation-anxiety and now make connecting lines outside of my design just to make sure it doesn't happen.
Shift for plane is a better solution in SE2. However I think shift should toggle the plane direction instead of relying on mouse target.
Having different block sizes on the same R button is a bit annoying. I would like Shift-R or something to change from small to large.
I'm super excited about SE2, but I really think the build system in SE2 needs to modernize on some core aspects.
I like this feedback
So far, we have only 1x1 and 1x2 slopes in SE2. Adding more will result in an explosion of additional blocks, especially if you also want all the transition blocks.
There are many popular topics about building worth checking. Search the site for similar ones.
So far, we have only 1x1 and 1x2 slopes in SE2. Adding more will result in an explosion of additional blocks, especially if you also want all the transition blocks.
There are many popular topics about building worth checking. Search the site for similar ones.
I think Keen could take some pointers from the Avorion build system, which allows even more flexibility in terms of block size and shape. You can pull the blocks into any size and proportion you desire, with the smallest possible step being 10 cm. Also, it works with small number of basic shapes to create a lot of flexibility. I'll explain some from the attached screen shot:
1. Type of block Towards the top of the screen shot, you see a field with 11x4 squares plus a row that is only shown half. Those are the materials and block types to select from. Similar function blocks would be grouped into a single icon here, where possible.
2. Shape of block Below, there is a line of nine basic shapes. You create from those, with a very wide range of scaling. Pick one, then drag it into the desired shape. Length to width ratios of 20x1 and more are doable. Which shape is available depends on the block type. For instance, function blocks can usually only be rectangular. So with two or three rows, you could cover a wide range of block shapes.
Once you have chosen a basic block form, you stretch it into the desired shape. Check this ship for instance (not mine!) that makes good use of very shallow ramps: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3783683413
The disadvantage of Avorion is that it has only those basic forms, where SE has function blocks with their unique looks and connection requirements. Here I prefer the SE system.
3. Grid step and size step
You can also set the raster for the size scaling and positioning,
So, how to adapt this to SE?
Put the type of block from 1. in the G menu. Many block types such as armor would be covered by one icon where they have many icons now. Functional blocks also get their own group icon, such as thrusters. Where possible, group them together like a SE category that is designated by a (+), For instance, all atmo thrusters would come under one group icon.
The SE "hot bar" becomes dependent on the block type selection from the G menu as described above.
For armor blocks put the available block shapes from 2. to the hot bar. For function blocks of which there are several subtypes, populate the same space with the variants instead. Such as the different sizes for wheels. Maybe have an additional hot bar for block types, there is some room for variations.
I would limit the grid step and size step from 3. to the block sizes in SE2 though. So, 0.25m, 0.5m or 2.5m.
Sorry for multiple edits, I realized a few things only after posting the first version!
I think Keen could take some pointers from the Avorion build system, which allows even more flexibility in terms of block size and shape. You can pull the blocks into any size and proportion you desire, with the smallest possible step being 10 cm. Also, it works with small number of basic shapes to create a lot of flexibility. I'll explain some from the attached screen shot:
1. Type of block Towards the top of the screen shot, you see a field with 11x4 squares plus a row that is only shown half. Those are the materials and block types to select from. Similar function blocks would be grouped into a single icon here, where possible.
2. Shape of block Below, there is a line of nine basic shapes. You create from those, with a very wide range of scaling. Pick one, then drag it into the desired shape. Length to width ratios of 20x1 and more are doable. Which shape is available depends on the block type. For instance, function blocks can usually only be rectangular. So with two or three rows, you could cover a wide range of block shapes.
Once you have chosen a basic block form, you stretch it into the desired shape. Check this ship for instance (not mine!) that makes good use of very shallow ramps: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3783683413
The disadvantage of Avorion is that it has only those basic forms, where SE has function blocks with their unique looks and connection requirements. Here I prefer the SE system.
3. Grid step and size step
You can also set the raster for the size scaling and positioning,
So, how to adapt this to SE?
Put the type of block from 1. in the G menu. Many block types such as armor would be covered by one icon where they have many icons now. Functional blocks also get their own group icon, such as thrusters. Where possible, group them together like a SE category that is designated by a (+), For instance, all atmo thrusters would come under one group icon.
The SE "hot bar" becomes dependent on the block type selection from the G menu as described above.
For armor blocks put the available block shapes from 2. to the hot bar. For function blocks of which there are several subtypes, populate the same space with the variants instead. Such as the different sizes for wheels. Maybe have an additional hot bar for block types, there is some room for variations.
I would limit the grid step and size step from 3. to the block sizes in SE2 though. So, 0.25m, 0.5m or 2.5m.
Sorry for multiple edits, I realized a few things only after posting the first version!
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