How things are built, specifically.
Even within the sections below, the construction processes may vary depending on the object type. For example the construction recipes for a metal wall will be different from a wood wall or rock wall.
Current recipes may not be final.
Have a material and a tool in hands
Apply tool to material
Select an option in the menu
Wait for build to complete
Drag the frame of the object to the desired place (optional)
Attach the object to the grid by applying a tool to it
Apply materials and tools to complete the object
For furniture building it's even more simple, as most furniture works even without being fastened or bolted to a tile, not to mention that some furniture is built right away, without the need to make a frame for it first.
Airlocks are built like most machines, starting with a frame which is bolted to the ground, then materials and components are added.
Airlocks can be merged together up to 3 tiles long. They need to merge in the construction phase. Once the door is completed it wont be able to merge with others and will prevent other door skeletons from being bolted next to it.
Example: To build a 2 tile door, you'll need to build 2 door skeletons side by side, wrench them both and they will connect, then you can finish building the airlock.
Crew members should have the ability to alter, fix and or dismantle the structure of the station, that's where the Construction system comes in.
Which means that any person should be able to create or interact with walls and floor and ceiling of the station, should they have right materials and tools. The mane philosophy is allowing the player to affect the structure with a simple click of a mouse.
Rules of connectables apply.
Stations are like onions. They have layers.
The bottom layer is Plenum; the base structural layer. All the other layers are built upon this one. The plenum layer can have a few different models here like lattice and catwalk, but the main one is the plenum. This main model much like the layer it shares a name with is the core of the station's structure. Many things can be built on top and within the plenum.
The plenum has room for 3 layers of atmos pipes and 1 layer for the large disposal pipe.
Immediately on top of the plenum layer is the wires layer (this may get lowered slightly down into the plenum)((we may triple this up at some point like /tg/). There's 2 main types of wires at the moment. Wires and Cables. Cables are basically the heavy duty wires.
Above cables there is 1 layer for floor tile, 1 for atmos pipes, a couple for furniture, a few for floor overlays, and 1 for walls. On wall, there are 3 layers of wallmounts (times 4, 1 for each cardinal direction). [[[add more recent image below]]]
Floors are a layer made to support furniture, walls, and even the captain's fat ass.
Walls are pretty self-explanatory: it limits the room, seals and insulates the rooms from the sides and supports ceiling:
NOT IN THE CURRENT ROADMAP but it's fun to conceptualize the idea of possible z-layers for the station itself.
In many cases in SS13, when a machine is destroyed it reverts back to being a machine frame and drops all its components. In other cases the machine vanishes entirely, this is a not consistent and not acceptable for us. We need something more immersive and I'm going to take some inspiration from CDDA.
In CCDA when an object is destroyed it checks the list of items used to construct it and drops a % (with some rng) of these items. So if a wall was built with 6 wood planks and 12 nails, it may drop 2-4 planks of wood and 4-10 nails when destroyed.
I think in most cases we should NOT revert back to the previous construction state for destruction (except for like walls), we should instead use damage states and then finally destroy the primary object and leave behind some components like CDDA. To expand on the idea I think we should also drop physical debris relating to a % of the missing (destroyed) components. So in SS3D if we have something built with 4 pieces of sheet glass, when destroyed it may drop 1-2 glass sheets, and 1-2 glass shards. We can add-in particle effects when the object changes states to destroyed and then again when it gets destroyed.
In SS13 (TG) there are glass shard objects. These are dropped when a window or other glass object is broken. I want to expand this trait to all materials, so there is a damaged/broken variant of steel, wood, cloth, cardboard, uranium, diamond (maybe not this one), etc.
Yes, these objects will just be tossed down the disposals by the janitor most of the time, but they also may have more uses based on these ideas: - Trash PilesITEMS - Makeshift Tools/WeaponsITEMS (NEW) (glass shards are already used in some makeshift recipes, why not other damaged material variants like a 'metal chunk') - Actual Recycling?OTHER
Using tools (like a welder/screwdriver) to fix objects back from a damaged state. Also ghetto repairs like using tape/glue to cover a cracked vending machine. If that stage of damage accounts for 20% of the vending machine's health, then doing a ghetto repair on this stage would only attribute half of that (10%) but would still make the machine functional.
Blueprint idea (not the same blueprints that the CE has): select an area and all the tiles/fixtures in the area will be saved to a file on your real-world computer.
You can load that file into a blueprint projector, which will make a hologram of the saved tiles/pipes/wires/machines/etc.
'Smart RCD' will automatically deploy the correct floor/wall/pipe/wire when used on a hologram, provided it has the materials. This way you can save builds you spend a while on and deploy them more rapidly in other rounds Furniture and machines still have to be built by hand though Maybe the chief engineer's office has a premade blueprint for each department, to make rebuilding easier Admemes could have a special blueprint projector that autobuilds the whole blueprint.
Requires:
The construction process for walls/windows may vary depending on their type. And these current recipes may not be final.
In any case, the wall starts with a metal wall girder. It's like a frame for a wall to be filled with metal or glass to be completed. It can be made on a spot, if player character has metal rods or what have they in one hand and a tool for connecting them in the other. Applying a tool to the materials (dictated by the crafting recipe or a choice in the opened menu for building) results in creating a physical, always upright metal girder in front of the player.
It can be dragged or pushed to be relocated to a different location. It is even connectable, meaning it can attach to nearby objects of the same type (other walls). In order to be connected to the other walls, it needs to be bolted to a tile, adjacent to the other object of the same type. Player just needs to drag the girder to the nearest wall, place it near the center of the needed tile and bolt it using a wrench.
From that point onward it can be upgraded to an actual wall or window. This is recommended because a girder isn't pressurized and wont hold in your atmosphere, or stop fire from spreading, etc.
Reinforcement and other forms of modifications should also be built on the same principle.
Like all objects in this game, many walls have unique properties. Natural rocks walls are easily destroyed via many tools in the game, yet cannot be built rebuilt.
There is a variety of things one can make with a welder and some metal rods. From floor girders to wall girders to a machine frame. So, when the materials and tools allow for several options of constructions, the player must be presented with choice. This will be done via construction menu:
This menu should include a list of possible structures according to the materials/tools available. The list should include a name and picture of each object.
Clicking on an object in the list should provide more information on the object like description, required materials and tools for construction as well as deconstruction.
Also, the structure's model with applied holographic shader will be displayed, attached to the closest adjacent tile to where player is standing and facing. Green shader for when the tile is free and red if it's not. Player character should be able to move while choosing the construction tile and the shadered model location should be updated according to the rules above. Player should also be able to rotate the structure if necessary, and also to quickly disable construction mode in case of an emergency. And, obviously, when location is available, player should be able to confirm the chosen location.
Once the location is chosen, the character should play a crafting animation, resources should be expanded and a bunch of smoke and particles should be played to obscure the change from empty space to the freshly built structure.
