Orion Unity Project

An older project I finally got around to screen capping. Didn't quite get all the buttons or animations mapped, but I got a functioning Character all rigged and moving in Unity. All the character controls, AI and physics setup was done by my mega-hip friend Clayton. 

The Second half of the video features a simple 'track and shoot' turret, as well as a 'chase and orbit' capsule that was the start of our enemy AI.

Additional steps we were working on at the time not current featured, include player weapons, rag-doll physics, and particle effects for the thrusters.

 

Cities: Skylines Grain Elevator Building Mod

So my modding buddy has gotten sucked into Cities: Skylines, and talked me into modeling a grain elevator for him. Its a nice change of pace to have a different set of challenges present in modding Space Engineers, but not at the same time since I finally got my pipeline nailed down. XD

First iteration, after about half an hour. A nice quaint, fun little grain elevator.

Finished the details, unwrapped and textured with LOD stages all about 2 hours later.

And Published. The texture sill feels pretty flat to me, but for the first time making a building, a quick project and a new pipeline I thinks its turned out all right.

Armored Decoy Block

So after our last three mods turned into huge undertakings with large packs ranging from 30-80 individual entities, we found ourselves wanting to tackle something fun, simple, and preferably a single block mod. We tossed around a few gimmicky ideas and identified a remaining unfulfilled need (the mod community is really good at filling these rather quickly).

The Decoy Block in Space Engineers draws fire from enemy ships, allowing you to maneuver fighters or torpedoes, or whatever through their defenses. A common complaint stems from the durability of the decoy, which typically can only take a singe hit. Not terribly useful when up against heavy fire, especially when they also require complicated systems to deploy reliably, and cost materials that can be otherwise spent on armor or weapons.

Not to mention the original model, while a fun shape, still leaves a little something to be desired.

So we came up with an Armored Decoy. While maintaining the exact same functionality, we significantly upgraded the durability by adding a hefty stack of steel plates and other materials to the component list.

The added material cost, weight, and extended build time should add some balance for the trade up.

This one utilities the full range of standard materials available in Space Engineers (no Transparent or Emissive materials today).

By going back and taking a closer look at how some of the vanilla blocks were textured, I got a better understanding on how the in-game color-mask functions, and learned a few tricks on making more convincing color-able textures. (Before I was trying to make make paint chips with the mask, but removing the color information from the diffuse is the way to go apparently)

The art side, from start to finish took me roughly 4 hours.

Grav-Tubes finished

So here are the GravCaps and Transition tube pieces all finished up and in game, and with that I believe we are pretty much done with the GravTubes (pending any bug fixes or popular requests).

 

Currently weighing our options on what to do next.

Expanding the Grav-Tube Mod

Since the Grav-Tubes mod was so well received, we decided it would be fun to make a few additions.

First up we have a solid block, transition piece. Since the game Developers just added Oxygen and pressurized spaces, we needed a piece that wasn't going to vent air. The force field textile is just a place-holder till we can test it out in game.

Geeking out over the possibilities for gravity cannons (a Space Engineers personal favorite super weapon), I came up with GravCaps. It's just a supplementary piece to add onto the tube system and boost the gravity fields strength.

We also have some non gravity generating tube pieces on the way by popular request. All in all were having a blast, and its great to get something working in game (especially something people really seem to like!)

Grav-Tube Published!

So its been up for a few days now and has since been seeing around 2,000 new subscribers a day since.  Super happy with the reception so far!

Last pieces of the GravTube mod.

Just finished up the final 2 blocks. One will be an ejector that pulls items like stone or scrap from the conveyor system, and deposits them in the Terminus block (which is just another gravity generator) that will then fling them out. In conjunction, you have a two block gravity cannon, that can also mesh perfectly with the rest of the GravTube system.

We've got most of the tube block working in game already and will post them after the rest are in and the mod gets published.

Grav Tube Print!

So I have a friend who just got a new 3D printer at his work and needed something to test it out with. Having just heard I've been doing mods for Space Engineers, he asked if he could use one of my block models. Turned out unexpectedly well!

Published Laser Bridge Mod

So we finally wrapped up enough of our Laser Bridge mod to publish it.  Looking to hash out a couple more variants now.

Grav Tubes

Started on our next mod already. Making some gravity tubes for moving people and stuff around. Having a lot of fun with this one and its coming together surprisingly quick. Most of the pieces are just over 1000 polys and there are only 3 elements to the texture file that repeat across the models.

 

Build stages for each block. To make them survival ready, every game block needs to have multiple models in varying stages of completion.

Added some directional arrows to make placement in game easier.

Got some textures added that I'm finally happy with. Playing with the color mask a bit here.

First block in game and fully operational. Feels good! Got some interesting issues with the reflectivity I hadn't anticipated but all in all, I quite happy with it.

Baby Steps

Got the first piece of what we are now officially titling the Laser Bridge in game. Going to tweak the materials a bit before we get the rest in. Fun stuff!

Concepts for the laser construction stages.

What the construction models and color variants look like all laid out. 86 items in total.

Light Bridge Test Run

Really diggin how well the grav-walk and the light bridge mesh together. Being on different levels leads to some interesting challenges/designs. I may have gotten carried away.

 

 

Grav-Walk Complete

Finally got our Gravity Catwalk mod in game. Looks good and works great! Uploaded to the Steam Workshop and already looking forward to our next project.

 

Modding Space Engineers - GravWalk and Light Bridge

So friend and I have gotten into modding Space Engineers a bit more as of late. Aside from re-skins, our first endeavor has been redesigning the standard gravity generator into a catwalk block, with then intention of making the gravity fields more efficient. We called it  The GravWalk. We are very clever.


A single GravWalk Block is 280-340 polygons (depending on the particular railing variant).

 

 

 

  

 

While  the GravWalk is still getting pipe-lined into the game, Ive taken the liberty of making a Light Bridge block set, kind of like the ones found in the Halo Franchise. Both sets still need a bit of work to refine the textures, and the Light Bridge still needs construction stages modeled, as well as all the back end work. One Light Bridge emitter block sits just over 400 polygons though the bridge blocks themselves are only a single poly.

All in all I'm quite happy with how both are turning out, and Ill be sure to post both once they are in-game.