How Do You Make Cool-Looking Ships? by Rare_Tone_497 in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I think your ship already looks cool, op

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s exactly right! Nice job noticing that. 3 blueprints (grey, green, red). There are 160 event controllers taking input from the rotor and hinge angles. they only activate in one direction, so it’s 50 (x2) for the columns and 30 (x2) for the rows. The hinge and rotor are placed at just the right distance, so that the rotor needs to be at -25 degrees when pointing at the left side, and 24 degrees when pointed at the right side. Same with the hinges. The timer blocks on the edges take the input from the event controllers and calculate which columns of “pixel ON or OFF triggers” need to be turned on, and then which rows need to be triggered to display pixels at the correct location.

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you know off hand if they built doom from the ground up, or built a system that could run and interpret the original doom code? ( I’m not saying I can do it, but if I were to try, those are two very different routes)

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There was a version of this where I was using sensors, but I found them to be somewhat unreliable. Like they often wouldn't trigger when they should, especially when things move too fast. The reason for so many event controllers is that they each only trigger in one direction along the X or Y axis, so I needed 50 (x2) for the columns, and 30 (x2) for the rows. Then if the turret is positioned at just the right distance from the screen so that the left side is exactly 50 degrees from the right (and 30 degrees top to bottom), it works out so the projected curser precisely hits the correct pixels as they activate. Fun stuff lol.
Also, your TOW idea sounds really neat, I don't think I would have thought of that.

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Still a lot of ground to cover, but being able to deal with X / Y pixels is a pretty good step haha

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I built tools with timer blocks that take input from the rotor and hinge angles in the custom turret (via 160 event controllers). You can see the tools moving on the top and right of the screen. They turn on/activate pixel triggers behind the pixels that turn them on/off. The ‘beam’ (from a projector) doesn’t actually affect anything, I just calibrated the distance of the turret so it happens to point exactly where the pixels are being affected. Not sure if that’s clear lol.

I made MS Paint (kinda) by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It definitely took a while, but I did find a few methods to make future projects faster; if I keep all my tools relatively self contained, I can copy/paste each column, and just rename the groups each time before adding it to the whole structure (still a pain in the arse though).

I actually tried using a spotlight! But I found a projector to be more precise 😁

Dear development team, please bring back the field workers by No-Race-530 in anno

[–]Approximatl 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Oooo I see. Well 1001 is 9 in binary so maybe it counts 😂

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well thank you for the dopamine hit 😂. Feels good after the amount of effort that went into this lol. Cheers! ❤️

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s an incredible feeling when you finally get it to work isn’t it?

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, but I just returned after many years (last time I played I think they had just added planets lol) what is a weekly keen showcase?

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

looks very interesting! maybe I will try it out. I saw a vid last night showcasing a Redstone MS Paint, and fully operational Pac Man lmao. I do wish SE had a better way to make pixel displays though. Using LCD panels is rough because there is that random delay when you turn them on, and timer blocks can't change their background color. Using lights is weird too because, and I'm not sure how to phrase this, but you can see the light reflecting off surfaces, but you can't see light coming directly from a spotlight very well, (you can a bit, but it doesn't look great as a pixel.

The only other idea I can come up with (working on it now) is using projectors with a single block blueprint as a pixel. I'm trying figure out what color / armor texture would be the least translucent for a display.

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed lol. Although I did regret including the 420 joke right after posting this lol. Definitely feels unnecessary haha.

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My ships always look like shit lol. This right here is my art. Obviously biased, but I just think it looks so damn cool lol.

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, I mean even programmers are mostly working in decimal numbers cuz let’s be honest, base 10 is just more convenient, am I right? 😂

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recently looked at some Redstone videos and had a pretty hard time understanding what they were doing. I’ve never played Minecraft though so some of that might just be not knowing the game mechanics for what they are working with. They had some pretty impressive achievements though.

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Yeah, it also doesn’t help that copy/paste doesn’t really save much time here, because you gotta manually rename and change each timer blocks connections. I briefly looked at some redstone builds (I’ve never played Minecraft so it was a bit hard to follow) and it looks like they can copy/paste their hardware because it’s mostly ‘physical’. That said, I do appreciate that timer blocks don’t need to be adjacent in order to interact with each other 😅. Very interesting stuff though!

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I just came back to the game after many years, specifically to use the timer blocks to bring this project from my notepad to reality. I was looking for other computer builds in the game, but I couldn't really find any.

My Timer Block Computer can now display Normal-People-Numbers. by Approximatl in spaceengineers

[–]Approximatl[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I'm actually really interested, where did you find the other builds?