Another week, another pile of assets.
12 February: Modular Control Panel
This, as should be obvious, is a modular control panel. It is of Alliance/Void Pirate origin rather than alien. I made it as a backplane and multiple plug-in modules of various shapes and sizes. As someone who builds industrial automation and control systems, this isn’t that far from how we do things in the real world. Almost everything we use is made to be relatively interchangeable, at least inside the box. I just extrapolated a bit from there and decided Alliance industry would also sometimes make control panels that could be stuck together like blocks externally as well. This system also fits well with the pirates’ approach to maintenance.
Because each of my blocks are independent entities, there’s no reason I couldn’t just take a small square (or whatever other part), outfit it with a simple switch, and use it as such without the backplane either.
There’s no reason I couldn’t make larger backplanes, either. I’ve personally worked on much larger systems. One of my first jobs in the industry involved building susbsytems for railroad cars. The finished product was literally a little building that would eventually installed on a railroad car. You could walk around inside it – it was cramped (I’m a big guy, so I didn’t spend a lot of time in there; we had shorter and skinnier guys in the shop who did all of that stuff), but you could go inside for maintenance while the train was moving once it got out in the field.
Some components like PLCs (in simple terms, ruggedized computers made to survive the harsh conditions found in factories, foundries, etc.) are already modular to this degree – you buy the rack, usually with a power supply built in, CPU module, and several I/O modules. These modules literally snap into place, and the I/O boards can be unscrewed easily for wiring or maintenance. The rack’s power supply is rated to power a full rack of modules, and there are racks of different sizes in the same flavor of PLC so if you only need to control something simple you get a 4-module, but if you’re doing something with a lot more I/O, you just buy a bigger rack and the modules you need. You can also install pretty much whatever module you need in whichever slot as long as said module exists for the PLC. This setup was an enormous leap in industrial automation.
13 February: Arcthrower and Flamethrower Emitters
Just what they sound like – arcthrower and flamethrower emitters. These are intended as fixed area-denial weapons to block or otherwise impede progress, whether it’s impeding the player or some other agent like the zombie traps in Ravenholm. The arcthrower shoots an electric arc like a lightning bolt, the flamethrower is a flamethrower. The next step for each is to make an appropriate particle system to show the arc or flames, then code the effect on whatever walks through.
The emitters are built as just emitters so they can be attached to any surface rather than requiring a big block or other support structure behind them. In both cases, they don’t necessarily require anything immediately behind them, just cables or piping. For illustration purposes, I stuck larger versions to a couple of stone blocks.
14 February: Decorative Objects
Two purely decorative objects to look fancy.
The first is an angular purple crystal bell jar for displaying some object. I threw a patterned cube into it just to have something there.
Then I made a gold and red enamel “trophy.” The less said about it the better.
15 February: Drips
These are basic droplets dripping from the ceiling. They’re purely cosmetic scenery – I probably won’t even put colliders on them to keep frame rate from bogging. The new standup is in there for nominal scale. Obviously these can be resized at will in a finished product.
16 February: Fusion Torus
Exactly what it sounds like, a fusion generator. Fusion is a mature technology in most of the Alliance and other starfaring species, so this represents something about as exotic to them as a diesel backup generator. This specific generator has the look of something made by the Alliance, so it was probably installed by the Void Pirates rather than being something they would have found, refueled, and rigged an interface onto for their power needs. An alien one would use different textures and the number of ribs would be divisible by six.
I based the look on actual Tokamak reactors I found online.
17 February: Alien Storage Box
It’s a box. For storage. By aliens. This is mainly for use as decoration to clutter up a room and make it more interesting. I may do another version broken open so it can be made destroyable.
18 February: Alien Lights
Fancy lamp poles made by aliens. Their hexagonal design philosophy is on full display here, with the stand having a hexagonal cross section as well as the rings being hexagons. The light comes from the crystal on top.
