Looking for modding partner

[Nightinggale]

4 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

@MidoriKami @Nightinggale feedback would be appreciated, mates. We  still don't have modding support for new art and animations, so we can better work out details etc now to save work later.

Sorry, I have had a huge workload put on me lately

The latest image triggered my thinking. It doesn't need to be a real compressor with a piston pump. The pump is in the other end of the pipe where the liquid/gas exits some sort of machinery, usually a pump. This means it would be enough to just have a valve, which opens and closes according to the pressure.

What this means to the image is that it would look sort of like the latest version of the image, but instead of using a "block" piston, it should be a cone or pyramid without the top part, which is then used to plug the hole when it doesn't output.

This means for animation, all it needs is an open and a closed state and not animated open.

 

Speaking of animation, I sure hope you draw with layers and keep it in a format with layers. Snooping around in the game files, it looks like the principle in animations is to have a base layer and then the animation is added as mostly transparent layers on top. When the building is active, it will cycle through the layers and show one at a time, meaning at any time while turned off, it's the base layer and at any time when it's on, it's the base layer and one (cycling) other layer on top. That seems to be the idea, though storage of the graphics is modified to make it optimized for GPU usage. I'm sure Klei will tell more about how to use this later, but for now be aware that layers seems to be important.

On 4/24/2019 at 1:08 PM, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

-One gas input (we might double that?)

-2 gas outputs
-1 Liquid output (might also double that if needed?)
-1 Power input (480W maybe?)

That looks hard to implement using the current game mechanics. It would likely be much simpler to make it consist of two entities placed next to each other like how exosuit docks and checkpoints needs to be placed together.

The game mechanics would then be that it has the open state where it shares the air with the outside world. This will allow free access for dublicants to walk in and out.

The other major state is transfer state. The air is vacuum and it no longer allows dublicants to walk in and out from the outside world. However unlike open, it allows dublicants to walk from airlock to airlock.

Other states would be creating the vacuum, in which the dublicants have to wait.

 

This way the task for each airlock is much simpler. It only has to deal with the gasses from one side, meaning there is no issue regarding "should this gas go left or right". I'm not saying this will be simple to code, but it seems to me like it will avoid a number of coding issues compared to make it just a single building.

On 4/17/2019 at 1:30 PM, Cairath said:

right now we don't have a clear way to add new anims to the game

While completely correct, the naming might make this misleading to people not familiar with the code. "anims" in this context means graphics and not just animations. In other words it's not possible to add still images either. The way some mods adds new graphics to the game is by using unused graphics left in the game and as such they do not actually add graphic even though it looks like they do to the player.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

32 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Sorry, I have had a huge workload put on me lately

 

No problem, just wondering if you forgot about it 

33 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

What this means to the image is that it would look sort of like the latest version of the image, but instead of using a "block" piston, it should be a cone or pyramid without the top part, which is then used to plug the hole when it doesn't output.

 

I can agree with that. I could still put in the top part, as 2D objects really will not add that much work, which brings me to:

34 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

Speaking of animation, I sure hope you draw with layers and keep it in a format with layers.

Basically every part, up to even the shading, has a separate layer! I work in inkscape btw, where even in separate layers you have separate objects. Absolutely no issue at all.

38 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

That looks hard to implement using the current game mechanics. It would likely be much simpler to make it consist of two entities placed next to each other like how exosuit docks and checkpoints needs to be placed together.

 

Not a bad idea. It's ultimately up to you guys to tell me what is feasible and what not, so I can provide. Again, I do what I do best as I have no single clue on the coding side.

42 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

In other words it's not possible to add still images either

Would it perhaps be possible to extract these images? So for instance one building where all its frames are given to me. That would give me an idea about pixels, the amount of frames, the transition rate of frames, etc.