Spacecraft Art (Interior & Exterior)

[thombruce]

I'm on the lookout currently for interior sci-fi tilesets and spaceship exteriors (possibly modular) that work well together.

This is very much not the style I was looking for, but is a very nice modular spaceship set aiming for realism: https://www.behance.net/gallery/14146659/Modular-Spaceships

Could totally work though. I think the hab-module is 10x20 metres, judging from example ship measurements, which is sufficient space to work with for interiors. And this sort of design lends itself well to the idea of requiring EVAs to repair damaged parts. Would be great for a very serious spin on the game...

...but I was thinking more sci-fi fantasy. More sci-fi western even - a big inspiration is Firefly and the feel of Serenity's interior as a lived-in space.

I'll add links to options/inspiration here as I go.

[thombruce]

Quite a nice CC0 set: https://jonik9i.itch.io/free-space-station-game-asset Could have a lot of useable pieces.

Most sets unfortunately have that oblique style showing both top and front of tiles. I'm more on the look out for purely top-down, which appears to be rarer.

This is a very small set but more akin to what I'm looking for: https://aske4.itch.io/free-space-station

Can't escape the fact I'll have to do my own art eventually... I've begun to think about it. In particular how I might allow for interiors to be designed that correspond to exterior pieces as well.

[thombruce]

Should we make a start on our own tileset, we should consider beginning with...

Spacecraft

• Walls (straight, corner, T-junction, cross)
• Floors
• Command module
• Windows
• Doors (animated)
• Beds
• Storage lockers
• Table and chairs
• Entertainment (virtual table; see: Interior Activities #5)
• Planters

Animated character sprite?

[thombruce]

Not spacecraft, but I like this tileset for the player character and NPCs. Good variety, and we can modify it both in and outside of the game: https://totuslotus.itch.io/characterpack

[thombruce]

Came across this while looking for inspiration: https://www.deviantart.com/wittermark/art/SpaceCraft-Blueprint-6901588

And this: https://travellerjim.blogspot.com/2010/11/90dt-shuttle-type-aa-tl12.html

The first is a great look for an industrial vessel, like cargo hauling or mining operations (with scoop). The second is pretty good for passenger transport (and I appreciate the grid reference it includes); I could imagine the "missile and sandcaster barrel storage" being a captain's quarters instead.

What I really like about both and why I share them is... the command room of each is at the front. This isn't true of a lot of sci-fi vessels (Enterprise, Millennium Falcon). They also have very little of a "nose" at the front; why do so many sci-fi spacecraft have noses?

Anyway, while the intention may be to have a vertical dimension to ships eventually, I like these as references for while that isn't the case. I figure we should start with 2-dimension designs and graduate to ships with layers later. Given which, it makes a lot of sense to have the command module at the front, since it can't be above/overlooking something else.

One drawback to that second ship... its interior walls are narrow, rather than large blocks. Which I have to agree makes sense and is a better look. I wonder if I can do walls/fences this way...

Rather than having "block" walls and fences, a la Minecraft, could we still have a blocky world where some walls were narrow vectors along the boundaries between tiles rather than being tiles themselves... How would this interfere with planned procedural generation?

What if the walls were 1/8 of a tile wide? Meaning they still are part of one of the tiles, and can be rotated. The player would need to be able to navigate a 7/8 tile gap, perhaps narrower if we decide some walls need to be wider still...

You could alternatively treat the wall as being along the edge of the tile and call this a "fenced tile", meaning that its boundary is uncrossable... but being of infinitesimal width, would a collider work or... ??? Probably.

Worth thinking about. Again, not sure how such an idea would interfere with a proc. gen system - not sure it would if we treat it as a "fenced tile" - but it does change the art style of the game significantly. Even though the world is divided into tiles, suddenly there's a significant degree of illusion that this is not the case.

[thombruce]

Worth noting even if it isn't extremely relevant... Minecraft does also feature blocks that aren't full blocks: Slabs.

Slabs are half-blocks. They can be stacked on top of one another. However... only the same type can be stacked, and when doing so it creates a complete block.

The way Minecraft works, only one block can exist in one location in the grid-space at one time.

I'll reference Minecraft a lot, because it strikes me that this is probably an incredibly efficient way to do things.

Of course... I think Minecraft uses integers? There's nothing to say that we can't too. We just don't yet; positions are floats right now, but we're also not working on any kind of grid yet.

[thombruce]

When we do start working on a grid... assuming we use integers, I want to note that the Z value should not be neglected. Even though we're working in 2D, the Z value (responsible for z-index layering) can also be an integer. We can treat the world as if it were made of blocks, even though those blocks are flat 2-dimensional tiles. This will be relevant for stairs, elevators, ladders, anything that can increase a player or other entity's Z position.