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I'm here today to announce my new project, currently titled (very creatively) FlenixCars!
This is currently part 2 of 3 of my Modular Modding plans (The first being the near-complete food system, and the last a borderlands-style weaponry system). The idea behind Modular Modding is the end product created and used in-game is designed almost entirely by the user.
So, cars.
I've decided to go with a "Gregtechy" approach- making it extremely challenging to get (and run) a car. Building it will be a huge challenge, and then you need to worry about maintenance and fuel.
I'm also going for a vast realism with it, in order to fit my current mods. It will be complex, and driving a car won't be easy!
Let me cover it from three points.
Crafting
Crafting will be done in a very condensed conveyor belt. In all, it'll be a huge Tile Entity, probably 6 or 7 wide and up to 25 long. The size you build will decide the maximum size of the car you can create.
Once you've got your manufactoring line built up, you need to select a car style. This is probably the only point I'll take inspiration from Flan, in that I will have a selection with a cost as opposed to a traditional recipe. You choose what you want from the menu, input the items, and the build process will begin.
Your options, right now, will be:
* - Small hatchback
* - Estate
* - 4x4
* - People Carrier
* - Small Van
* - Large Van
* - Coupe
* - Sedan
* - Luxury
* - Sportscar
* - Minibus
* - Bus
* - Truck (Optional load)
* - Flatbed Truck
* - Recovery Vehicle
Currently there are no plans for an API; but if someone models a vehicle style well enough, I'll add it.
This will decide the default model of your vehicle. The shell of the vehicle will appear on the belt once the resources have been provided, at a cost of power. (Did I forget to mention power? FlenixCities actually already has a IC2-style power system, just nothing uses it yet)
Next, you can choose what to do. You have the vehicle shell (in a dull grey), there are a few requirements but the rest is down to you.
I'd recommend investing in an engine. I've not decided on the details yet, but the way engines will be constructed will have a direct effect on max speed, acceleration, as well as fuel consumption. Better parts will cost more and give better stats. The engine will be the most complex part to build, as you'd imagine. It'll also be a modelled block, so when you've got it all crafted you can stick it in the world as decoration, as well as driving around.
Who knows, maybe it'll get other uses in the world too. Does RotaryCraft have an API?
After the engine, you need something the car can move on. Wheels can be added, with a few choices on tyres depending on what you want to do (For example, an off-roading tyre or snow tyre would give better performance driving off-road or in snow)
The last requirements are the exhaust and electronics. Exhaust simply alters the volume of the car, you can go for a beefy "Cool guy" (I use that sarcastically) exhaust, or a sneaky silent one for that upper-class feeling. You'll also need a battery in the car, but all other electronics are optional.
Speaking of optional, lets discuss upgrades!
- Headlights, making the car emit light around 5 blocks in front of it and improving night-time driving
- Windscreen wipers. When it rains in Minecraft, I'll fade the windscreen to grey; the wipers will clear that grey away again!
- Power Steering, simply letting you steer a bit better
- Stereo for listening to all of Minecraft's great records. Or maybe hook in an OpenBlocks-style radio.
- Dashboard, with this installed you'll get an overlay displaying speed, revs, fuel and a few other useful bits of info
- Brakes. There are some built into the wheel, but you can upgrade them!
- Automatic Gearbox. By default the car is manual, but you can switch to auto with this.
- Sat-Nav. A cool feature I'm planning for the future of FlenixRoads is NPC-driven vehicles, which will read invisible "markers" on a road in order to stay on the road. By installing a sat-nav, your car can follow these markers too.
- Cruise Control. Works hand-in-hand with satnav and keeps your speed constant, instead of slowing down when you release W.
- Central Locking - Lock/Unlock all doors instead of just one.
- Wireless locking - Lock/unlock the car from up to 16 blocks away. Requires central locking.
- Seatbelt - Half the amount of damage you get when you smash into a wall.
Once you've got everything in your car, you have the option to paint it. Each and every panel is painted individually; so you could have a red door, blue bonnet and yellow roof if you really wanted. You can also add some bodywork upgrades at this point, for example lowered bumpers, trims, spoilers or whatever it is those gangsta guys seem to like on Pimp My Ride. (I don't actually like cars all that much...)
After that, stick in a bit of fuel and it's ready to go! On completion, you'll be given two keys. The keys are coded to only work with that car, but duplicates can be created so long as you have at least one. The key is required to unlock the car, which is needed to be able to get in (Assuming no windows are broken). Once inside, the key is used to start it too, or it can be hotwired.
Driving & Mechanics
Driving away your new car should feel quite natural. For those Java nuts out there, I'm planning to keep driving extremely simple, using just two primary integers for the majority of the controls. A positive acceleration int accelerates, negative brakes (and reverses), Positive steering int turns you right, negative turns you left. These are all capped, depending on the vehicles specifications decided during the crafting phase.
Vehicles will NOT straife like the player does when hitting A and D. Instead, the vehicle will slowly rotate, as long as it is going forwards, to simulate a car actually steering.
Finally, I'll be adding support for pads and USB driving gear later, assuming LWJGL supports them. They'll make controlling a lot easier, because they offter dynamic triggers which you simply can't get on a keyboard. As such, you'll be able to both accelerate and steer quicker when using them, and braking will be near-instant too.
On to detailed mechanics, and this is where I plan to make even further gaps between this and Flans.
- When driving, the vehicle will constantly check it's surroundings. It will be self-aware and know it's own size, and therefore know if it can fit in the space it's in. With flans, if you hit a solid wall, it'll try and drive over it like a 1-high block - That won't happen here. If you hit a solid wall, not only will you instantly stop, but your car AND PLAYER will take some serious damage. If you hit a brick wall at full speed, it'll write off your car and probably kill you.
And, of course, if you hit a glass wall at full speed you'll smash straight through
- Everything will animate. When you open your car, the door will open. It'll close again once you're in. Wheels will turn, and steer. The steering wheel will turn, the windscreen wipers will move, you get the idea.
- The player will be recreated. When you get in, I'll apply an invisibility effect to the real player, with particles disabled. I'll then apply the player's skin to a model inside the car, making it look like there's a player inside. That way, I can make the player do things like hold on to the steering wheel and animate them turning it, and also stop that horrible bug that the entire player rotates when looking around.
If possible, I'll stop 360 degree head rotations too; but I don't know if I can do that without some serious ASM.
- You'll have a set of extra controls available too. YOU are in control of headlights, indicators, windscreen wipers, your car horn and so on.
- Your car can break down. This could be anything from a flat tyre to the engine blowing up, and will be based on mileage and wear & tear. Driving well will make the car last longer; things like off-roading will damage a city-styled tyre, and not changing up gears when you should would do damage to. Consider this like the durability on your pickaxe.
Some things will be fixable at the roadside. You can replace a tyre, assuming you have a spare, but you can't fix your engine if something breaks on there. Queue the recovery truck, which can tow cars to a mechanic and "place" them on the conveyor machine you built on, or some smaller maintenance machines. Failing that, you can push a broken car too.
And that's pretty much as far as I've gotten so far. I'm open to ideas and critisism, but please before commenting remember these very simple points:
1. This is actually a lot simpler than it sounds to achieve, it just takes some thought and basic maths. It'd probably take 2 days of solid work to do (which I don't have spare so it'll be longer), plus model/texture times. So none of that "This is impossible" stuff
2. This is supposed to be hard and complicated. If you think it sounds too EASY to get a car going, I'm interested to hear it!
3. I don't know much about how cars or internal combustion engines actually work. Everything I've got on my planning sheet (which includes a bit more info on recipes, but not much else more than here) is from googling around and constantly fixing my PoS Skoda.
4. You just read to the end of this huge post. Go get yourself a cookie, your treat!
This is currently part 2 of 3 of my Modular Modding plans (The first being the near-complete food system, and the last a borderlands-style weaponry system). The idea behind Modular Modding is the end product created and used in-game is designed almost entirely by the user.
So, cars.
I've decided to go with a "Gregtechy" approach- making it extremely challenging to get (and run) a car. Building it will be a huge challenge, and then you need to worry about maintenance and fuel.
I'm also going for a vast realism with it, in order to fit my current mods. It will be complex, and driving a car won't be easy!
Let me cover it from three points.
Crafting
Crafting will be done in a very condensed conveyor belt. In all, it'll be a huge Tile Entity, probably 6 or 7 wide and up to 25 long. The size you build will decide the maximum size of the car you can create.
Once you've got your manufactoring line built up, you need to select a car style. This is probably the only point I'll take inspiration from Flan, in that I will have a selection with a cost as opposed to a traditional recipe. You choose what you want from the menu, input the items, and the build process will begin.
Your options, right now, will be:
* - Small hatchback
* - Estate
* - 4x4
* - People Carrier
* - Small Van
* - Large Van
* - Coupe
* - Sedan
* - Luxury
* - Sportscar
* - Minibus
* - Bus
* - Truck (Optional load)
* - Flatbed Truck
* - Recovery Vehicle
Currently there are no plans for an API; but if someone models a vehicle style well enough, I'll add it.
This will decide the default model of your vehicle. The shell of the vehicle will appear on the belt once the resources have been provided, at a cost of power. (Did I forget to mention power? FlenixCities actually already has a IC2-style power system, just nothing uses it yet)
Next, you can choose what to do. You have the vehicle shell (in a dull grey), there are a few requirements but the rest is down to you.
I'd recommend investing in an engine. I've not decided on the details yet, but the way engines will be constructed will have a direct effect on max speed, acceleration, as well as fuel consumption. Better parts will cost more and give better stats. The engine will be the most complex part to build, as you'd imagine. It'll also be a modelled block, so when you've got it all crafted you can stick it in the world as decoration, as well as driving around.
Who knows, maybe it'll get other uses in the world too. Does RotaryCraft have an API?
After the engine, you need something the car can move on. Wheels can be added, with a few choices on tyres depending on what you want to do (For example, an off-roading tyre or snow tyre would give better performance driving off-road or in snow)
The last requirements are the exhaust and electronics. Exhaust simply alters the volume of the car, you can go for a beefy "Cool guy" (I use that sarcastically) exhaust, or a sneaky silent one for that upper-class feeling. You'll also need a battery in the car, but all other electronics are optional.
Speaking of optional, lets discuss upgrades!
- Headlights, making the car emit light around 5 blocks in front of it and improving night-time driving
- Windscreen wipers. When it rains in Minecraft, I'll fade the windscreen to grey; the wipers will clear that grey away again!
- Power Steering, simply letting you steer a bit better
- Stereo for listening to all of Minecraft's great records. Or maybe hook in an OpenBlocks-style radio.
- Dashboard, with this installed you'll get an overlay displaying speed, revs, fuel and a few other useful bits of info
- Brakes. There are some built into the wheel, but you can upgrade them!
- Automatic Gearbox. By default the car is manual, but you can switch to auto with this.
- Sat-Nav. A cool feature I'm planning for the future of FlenixRoads is NPC-driven vehicles, which will read invisible "markers" on a road in order to stay on the road. By installing a sat-nav, your car can follow these markers too.
- Cruise Control. Works hand-in-hand with satnav and keeps your speed constant, instead of slowing down when you release W.
- Central Locking - Lock/Unlock all doors instead of just one.
- Wireless locking - Lock/unlock the car from up to 16 blocks away. Requires central locking.
- Seatbelt - Half the amount of damage you get when you smash into a wall.
Once you've got everything in your car, you have the option to paint it. Each and every panel is painted individually; so you could have a red door, blue bonnet and yellow roof if you really wanted. You can also add some bodywork upgrades at this point, for example lowered bumpers, trims, spoilers or whatever it is those gangsta guys seem to like on Pimp My Ride. (I don't actually like cars all that much...)
After that, stick in a bit of fuel and it's ready to go! On completion, you'll be given two keys. The keys are coded to only work with that car, but duplicates can be created so long as you have at least one. The key is required to unlock the car, which is needed to be able to get in (Assuming no windows are broken). Once inside, the key is used to start it too, or it can be hotwired.
Driving & Mechanics
Driving away your new car should feel quite natural. For those Java nuts out there, I'm planning to keep driving extremely simple, using just two primary integers for the majority of the controls. A positive acceleration int accelerates, negative brakes (and reverses), Positive steering int turns you right, negative turns you left. These are all capped, depending on the vehicles specifications decided during the crafting phase.
Vehicles will NOT straife like the player does when hitting A and D. Instead, the vehicle will slowly rotate, as long as it is going forwards, to simulate a car actually steering.
Finally, I'll be adding support for pads and USB driving gear later, assuming LWJGL supports them. They'll make controlling a lot easier, because they offter dynamic triggers which you simply can't get on a keyboard. As such, you'll be able to both accelerate and steer quicker when using them, and braking will be near-instant too.
On to detailed mechanics, and this is where I plan to make even further gaps between this and Flans.
- When driving, the vehicle will constantly check it's surroundings. It will be self-aware and know it's own size, and therefore know if it can fit in the space it's in. With flans, if you hit a solid wall, it'll try and drive over it like a 1-high block - That won't happen here. If you hit a solid wall, not only will you instantly stop, but your car AND PLAYER will take some serious damage. If you hit a brick wall at full speed, it'll write off your car and probably kill you.
And, of course, if you hit a glass wall at full speed you'll smash straight through
- Everything will animate. When you open your car, the door will open. It'll close again once you're in. Wheels will turn, and steer. The steering wheel will turn, the windscreen wipers will move, you get the idea.
- The player will be recreated. When you get in, I'll apply an invisibility effect to the real player, with particles disabled. I'll then apply the player's skin to a model inside the car, making it look like there's a player inside. That way, I can make the player do things like hold on to the steering wheel and animate them turning it, and also stop that horrible bug that the entire player rotates when looking around.
If possible, I'll stop 360 degree head rotations too; but I don't know if I can do that without some serious ASM.
- You'll have a set of extra controls available too. YOU are in control of headlights, indicators, windscreen wipers, your car horn and so on.
- Your car can break down. This could be anything from a flat tyre to the engine blowing up, and will be based on mileage and wear & tear. Driving well will make the car last longer; things like off-roading will damage a city-styled tyre, and not changing up gears when you should would do damage to. Consider this like the durability on your pickaxe.
Some things will be fixable at the roadside. You can replace a tyre, assuming you have a spare, but you can't fix your engine if something breaks on there. Queue the recovery truck, which can tow cars to a mechanic and "place" them on the conveyor machine you built on, or some smaller maintenance machines. Failing that, you can push a broken car too.
And that's pretty much as far as I've gotten so far. I'm open to ideas and critisism, but please before commenting remember these very simple points:
1. This is actually a lot simpler than it sounds to achieve, it just takes some thought and basic maths. It'd probably take 2 days of solid work to do (which I don't have spare so it'll be longer), plus model/texture times. So none of that "This is impossible" stuff
2. This is supposed to be hard and complicated. If you think it sounds too EASY to get a car going, I'm interested to hear it!
3. I don't know much about how cars or internal combustion engines actually work. Everything I've got on my planning sheet (which includes a bit more info on recipes, but not much else more than here) is from googling around and constantly fixing my PoS Skoda.
4. You just read to the end of this huge post. Go get yourself a cookie, your treat!
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10
I installed Techne for this reason, time to make a bus!
/me likes this thread.
We'll, what I do is just import the java file, but yeah, I'll get you one. The car is also... A little small. But I'm sure you can resize it to your hearts content!
i made a model of the 4X4: Note: it doesn't contain doors or anything like that, you create those as you wish.http://www.mediafire.com/download/apohmo4kqdedyto/Model_4X4.java
And here is the texture. note: its the unpainted body. http://www.mediafire.com/view/myfiles/#jsoz25mzrsfh69w the resolution is 128X128. i know i didn't have to do this, but i did anyway. have fun! oh, you should also add customizable doors too. like ones that swing out, ones that swing up, or just one option to not have doors at all.
~TheMightyWaffle
And here is the texture. note: its the unpainted body. http://www.mediafire.com/view/myfiles/#jsoz25mzrsfh69w the resolution is 128X128. i know i didn't have to do this, but i did anyway. have fun! oh, you should also add customizable doors too. like ones that swing out, ones that swing up, or just one option to not have doors at all.
~TheMightyWaffle
Awesome dude; can you send me the .tcn file though? Much easier to do finalized tweaks to make sure I can use it properly while it's still in technic format
Thanks
Thanks
Holy wall of text Batman!
But seriously, you do a fantastic job.
But seriously, you do a fantastic job.
i might be able to create some models for you with techne, if you want me too. ill just make the base vehicle, and you can design the upgrades.
my god flenix, your mods keep getting better and better! i cant wait until this is finished. i have all your other mods, and if there is an update and the block ID's clash, i delete the other one. keep up the Amazing work!
~TheMightyWaffle
edit: i might be able to make models with techne if you want, but you don't have to say yes. they might not be the best either. (but that doesnt mean they will be horrible )
~TheMightyWaffle
edit: i might be able to make models with techne if you want, but you don't have to say yes. they might not be the best either. (but that doesnt mean they will be horrible )
Great idea, i would like to help with making some models
(im not the best texturer but i can try )
But i want to know a few things, how long/wide will a sports car be? And how
long/wide will the sedan be?
-GTzombiekiller
(im not the best texturer but i can try )
But i want to know a few things, how long/wide will a sports car be? And how
long/wide will the sedan be?
-GTzombiekiller
