Week 1 completed! This is what I did.
1 February: Big Ball Cactus
It’s a big ball cactus… By “big,” I mean “three meters tall, half that across, and spines that can kill a man.
When I upgrade it to LOD B, I’m going to spend a while screwing with the spines. Right now they’re pretty uniform because I made one, duplicated it and arranged the copies down one rib of the cactus, then duplicated the set and moved a copy to each of the ridges. I’ll probably also tweak the trunk itself to make it lumpier and make a few different versions for a whole patch of cacti.
On the code side, it needs a couple of colliders (one to make it solid, the other to detect collisions with the spines) and code to damage anything that touches it.
2 February: Big Crystal
That standard-issue hexagonal cross-section crystal you see everywhere. Now you’ve seen it here. I’ll be using these as single obstacles, clusters, just the tips sticking out of walls or whatever, etc. I mainly made this one because they’re so obligatory and easy to use as obstacles and scenery on alien worlds or in caves.
The only code necessary will be a collider so it can’t be walked or shot through.
3 February: Kickass Spear
The picture is just detail of the spearhead; it’s 70cm long at the end of a two meter oak shaft. You do not want to be on the business end of this thing. Trying to include a picture of the full spear as well led to all kinds of annoying formatting issues, so I skipped it. I have no idea if I’ll ever use this anywhere, I just felt like making it.
4 February: Space Dome Cluster
This was inspired by an ancient arcade game. I deliberately didn’t smooth the domes because I liked the angular look. It looks more like a building and less like a basic computer-generated primitive this way.
You can’t tell from this picture, but this thing is pretty big – the smaller domes are 10m in diameter, and the central one is 25m. This thing is a full-sized building. I have no idea what it’s for yet, but it’s something you explore, not handle. Or it’s just an artificial hill if I don’t let the player into it.
This model has a lot of potential for upgrades even while keeping it at LOD A. At the very least, I’ll come up with a set of shutters to open and close over the red parts to make it a little more interesting. I’ll probably add at least one door so the player can get inside, maybe add big garage doors (something like the original Enterprise’s shuttle bay) to one of the small domes to let it hold vehicles, etc. I could also replace some of the facets with windows for alternate ingress points.
Because this model is so big, it could potentially be a level (or several) all by itself. As such, it’s hard to say what code it needs even at this early stage. Obviously I’ll need door and shutter code for the features mentioned above, and possibly code allowing windows to be broken.
5 February: Tower Rough Structure
As you may have guessed, this is a tower. Unlike the domes above, I know exactly what I’m doing with this one. It’s going to house an elevator leading to the upper level of caves/mines in the DMG Sandbox, and possibly see use elsewhere. Or maybe I’ll drop it into an upgraded version of the Rokkit game as a little building you get to destroy.
If I decide to use it outside the sandbox, there will be a lot more surface detail including bas relief decoration, etching reminiscent of circuit boards, a much better looking roof, more detail on the walkway around the upper section, stuff on the roof like antennas, weather instruments, a flag, lights, etc.
Code for this tower will include locks and opening/closing code for the doors, and code to operate the elevator (technically not part of this model, but included in the final, operational version).
6 February:
I decided to upgrade my basic bunker from a while back. This version has a hole in the floor for access to whatever I put under it (caves, a basement, etc.) and barrier walls in front of the main door to provide cover to authorized people trying to get in. I’ll be adding a couple of point-defense turrets later to deal with unauthorized people attempting to do the same. I may also add overhead cover to that area as well.
The bunker will require code for the door, doorway or elevator going down, and the point-defense turrets. It may also end up needing some purely cosmetic code for things like antennas on the roof, an intercom panel, etc.
7 February:
The monolith from a certain classic science fiction series, rendered in a fancy glossy marble texture and placed on a stone platform with stairs. The little pillars at the ends of the railing were done in a glossy granite texture to make them stand out. When I put this in the sandbox or something else, I’ll add little fires to the tops of the pillars.