An idea for statues!

Everyone loves a nice statue. Now with everyone making this and that on qubicle constructor it makes perfect sense to be able to upload any models you create to the ‘database’. That way you can make your own statues, or if you want a nice statue of a horse or whatever, you can search ‘horse’ and see everyone’s creations and their ratings.

I would love if when statues are made, a big slab of stone or marble is carried to the site and placed there. The your stone mason comes along with his chisel and ladder and works his way down voxel by voxel chipping away. That way the amount of time is relevant to the size and I think it will look awesome.

Sound good?

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if you mean there is a generic animation taking the statue from a generic block, to the finished creation, then yes… otherwise, this would be virtually impossible to implement (from the developers side)… :wink:

i do love the idea of folks creating static content (props, etc.) that we can add to the game… i dont know that i necessarily need to see the statue being built… but having my stone mason “craft it” and drop the miniature in the requisite location, for my worker to then pickup and place where i designate… would work for me! :slight_smile:

Better just build your own module!

What I meant is that I know most furniture and what not will made as a mini version in the stockpile and then placed by a worker. When it gets placed, it turns full size. Now I dont want that happening with statues. I think they should be constructed where they will be placed. So workers drop off a big slab of stone and the stonemason or whatever shapes it on the spot. I think it would cool to see it being shaped block by block.

right… while that would be neat to see, as i said, i think that would be overly difficult to program… if you think about it, they have to have an animation running that roughly approximates a unit “shaping” the statue block by block… now, a generic animation might work…

so, the unit carries a miniature “generic” slab to the location, it gets plopped down, and poof! becomes a larger generic slab… then the mason can come over, and start generically chiseling away… he circles 2-3 times, swings his hammer here and there, and we get a thirb poof! where we see the final statue… :slight_smile:

I meant a generic animation but I was hoping because the statue is made out of voxels he could work his way down. So say the top row of the statue has a 5x5 square in the middle. He would be generically chiselling, but block by block the stone would disappear leaving only the 5x5. Then the next row down and it would do the same leaving only what’s staying as the statue. The only problem I could see is that everything is going to be rendered in polgons and not as voxels so that could cause a problem. But if the statue was rendered as voxels until completion and then once complete it could be rendered as polygons then it shouldn’t hamper performance.

it could be somewhat similiar to the building of houses i presume

Yes! But instead of putting blocks there, you take them away from a big block. I don’t know why I didn’t think to put it that simple before.

I don’t think it would be virtually impossible. Maybe a bit of work but not at all impossible, it’s voxel based so it should be easy for the stone mason to see where he needs to chip away.

Houses don’t need a generic animation either.

i hate to belabor the point, but we’re talking about two pretty significantly different things here… the house construction will be comprised of floors, posts, walls, doors, roofs, etc. they will come in varying sizes and styles, but they will all be existing “designs” that the units will slap together (and that the game logic is aware of)…

if i create some elaborate statue, it doesnt seem possible, without having the structure’s design already “known” in code, that the units would be able to literally chip away and build the completed model…

then again, i could be entirely wrong here! :smiley:

Voxels could be considered a base construction mate, which would make some really elaborate structures quite easy to program.

PS: (i have not the slightest knowledge of programming though XD)

I hate to contradict you but although you will be able to build houses from existing blueprints you will also be able to build them yourself using elements (voxels) from a Build Menu as shown in the video.

Although different the Statue building is similar enough to deconstructing a house and can be scripted. An I would imagine that you will be able to deconstruct houses as well.
There might be a minimum size for a statue to be able to sculpt it but I don’t see it any more difficult than building houses and castles, etc…

please, contradict all you want! :slight_smile:

you may be right, in which case, i look forward to seeing someone mod this into the game…

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I have seen and been part of a modding community for around 9 years and I know what sort of things people can do given a moddable game.
If you need some examples… someone made a working computer using minecraft and I have seen a full scripting language scripted in a mod.
The first task will be to establish a group with common goals and that’s probably the hardest part. People tend to disagree and get stuck on details before anything gets done but there are a lot of talented people around prepared to give their time.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but it seems to me that it would be fairly simply to have the crafter take a slab of material and place it down then have him do a chisel animation about the thing, not actually affecting it in any way and while that is going on the slab would have a build animation playing where it has voxels fly of block by block until the statue is finished thereby giving it the appearance of having been chiseled out on the spot.

Please everyone correct me if I’m missing the point,but the only difficulty with statues I can see is having exactly what you want - but then that can be solved by creating your own etc.

[urlhttp://stonehearth.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/city.jpg]This image[/url] for example shows two statues. Surely all you would have to do, as people have already said, is get that giant slab in place, and then it’s a reverse construction. Remove the blocks that aren’t supposed to be there, keep the rest that are.

This is exactly what I meant. We can make our own in qubicle or their can be a shared database that everyone uploads their statue creations to and they can be downloaded and rated. Or maybe a thread on here with statues created by us, then any good ones can be put into the core game. That way they don’t have to design loads themselves, we get a large variety and you don’t need animation skills to make them. It’s a win-win for everyone.

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Well, he’s right. You’ll be able to design your own houses on the spot, you don’t need them hardcoded. You’ll also be able to make your own blueprints, so statues shouldn’t be any harder.

It would be really easy even; Iterate over the stone slab: If the block shouldn’t be there > remove; else > go to next block.
Seeing what they did with buildings this should definitely be possible.

I really love this idea if sharing the statues that you create with other players. Maybe to get them into the game you could teach your stonemason a blueprint (the qubicle file). If its a fairly complex statue(there would be some algorithm to give it a rating perhaps) then your stonemason would need to be a higher level or tier to learn it, maybe even a specialist in carving statues. That way to get a really cool statue in your town you’d have to put some work in. Taking it one step farther with the sharing perhaps there could be an ingame sort of market place that you can access if you’re online and can search for statues that way and they’d be rated etc. Then you hire another players stonemason to come to your town and construct that statue. I know that this would probably be a much later feature but it would bring a bigger sense of community to the game I think.

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When i think of statures i think of the ones show at the start of the kickstarter video. That is what i see as a statue
The big question to answer is how will those be built.

method 1
if they are build the same as the houses then there will be a few pathing issues with scaffolding that I can think of. building from the base where the stature gets wider and smaller and parts such as the arms would be hanging while bits above are built.

method 2
if they were made as and item before hand, or crafted onsite from stone and then some basic building animation with a few static images to show progress. not that cool but very functional. also fits quite well with being able to mod custom statues. “Think of the modders! Please will someone think of the modders” codos if u get the reference.

method 3
Another way one might implement a cool stature building to enable a good pathfinding, construction, and look totaly awesome would be a mix of both methods listed above. First every block of the statue is filled in with stone bit by bit. so if the stature is contained in a 5*5 and 9 high (block is one floor block as reference), 225 stone would be placed out to make a really big cube.at this stage the normal building method is used.
Then a mason or some stone worker would start chiseling out the statue one z layer at a time, at this point they have a basic animation of them banging a hammer due to limitations / we want the game before Christmas next year . when that z level is done all the detail at that level is dispayed and they mason moves down one level. (maybe the reverse?)

The last method looks cool, SHOULD (maybe) be easier to code and custom statue designs are simple to create and add. yes, the last method is expensive and wastes alot of stone. But a LARGE stone statue should be expensive, while a small 112 is no big deal at all.

What do u think?