General-RADIX wrote:I think it looks good so far!
As for suggestions, would the
unused ship graphic from the first game be of any help?
The
Marathon isn't listed on there, but Niklas Jansson has a
page on ship design that might be useful.
Thanks! Niklas' work is great, I think he actually put together a poster illustration for Marathon, and the ship itself was in it. Will probably be taking a look at that!
Pfhorrest wrote:The thing I think you're thinking is a satellite dish in the original sprite is actually the Bussard ramjet. It's not a dish sticking out of the potato-shape; it's a recess like the back end of a rocket. That's where the thrust comes out, or possibly where the interstellar hydrogen is funneled in.
Also, I think you've got the scale off a bit in this sketch. Deimos is 15km long. Those towers you have labelled "G4 Sunbathing" would be kilometers tall. (In contrast, the largest building on Earth today is not even 1km tall, and most of the next-largest ones are barely over half a kilometer). Buildings, even large buildings, would look very small on the scale of the Marathon. Picture a city as seen from above; actually, back of the envelope, the Marathon would have a cross-sectional area that would blot out most of New York City.
We don't know anything about human artificial gravity in the Marathon universe, so I would take the safe assumption that down on Marathon levels is toward the center of the Marathon (even though it's mass shouldn't make for nearly enough gravity as we experience in game). Given that some levels, like Arrival, seem to look out sideways into space, it would seem that structures are likely built into the irregularities of Deimos' surface; a window looking out from near the top of a large cliff, with the drastic curvature of such a small planetoid, would give a pretty unobstructed view of space, without requiring that the window be facing up (away from the center) and thus some kind of weird artificial gravity be in play.
Thanks for all the input, it's exactly what I was looking for! Sometimes I forget about aspects such as scale, especially when trying to figure out the general shape/design of things, so thanks for bringing that up, it helps a ton. In order to get things like the sunbathing station in there, I'll probably have to do detail shots, aside from the general exterior.
Oh, and had another question for everyone; seeing as though I want to get fairly in-depth with this project, including text descriptions and functions for the various parts of the ship, how would one explain the pattern buffers? I know they're just save points, but would like to include them somewhere in the project. Does it save the genetic code and place in time of its user, reconfiguring and rebuilding the user and his/her physical attributes upon death? If there's a way to come up with a more plausible-sounding description of them, I'd love to do that.
When the time comes, when the project is all finished (going to try and put together a pitch bible/book,) I want to put all you guys in the 'Thanks' section for helping me out, your input is invaluable to me!