how do spin thrusters work?

fun0326

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May 18, 2014
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I clicked right clicked and did almost everything else and I cant make them to spin somthing. I tried them in the astroid belt... didnt work tried on the space station and didnt work. How do you use a spin thuster?
 

Douglas_Fresh

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Sep 17, 2013
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I haven't messed around with them too much, but I think they only work in the space station dimension...at least for now. I don't know if they are supposed to or are planned to work anywhere else. But you just place them on the side of your space station and it will start to rotate on it's own. You don't need to turn it on or anything.
 
Aug 8, 2013
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place 1 on each side of your space station and move away :) looks awesome also it will continue spinning while you are in it
 

AcapitalA

Member
Apr 12, 2013
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I tested it on the Overworld and the space station dimension.
On the Overworld it doesn't work. (of course)
If you plant one on the space station it will spin, add more and it will spin faster.
place 1 on each side of your space station and move away :) looks awesome also it will continue spinning while you are in it
Never tried it, going to test it now! :)
 
Jul 13, 2014
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I haven't messed around with them too much, but I think they only work in the space station dimension...at least for now. I don't know if they are supposed to or are planned to work anywhere else. But you just place them on the side of your space station and it will start to rotate on it's own. You don't need to turn it on or anything.
but... for what you use the spin? I tried but they didn't do gravity... so?
 
Jul 13, 2014
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Nothing? It looks cool? I don't know if maybe Micdoodle8 and radfast plan on having at affect gravity in the future, but it didn't right now. Keep in mind though that GC3 is still an unstable beta version and several things that it adds still don't work or don't work fully.
I know it but I thought "why use materials for spin when you can do someother thing?"
but you're right.
PS: I have a chest full with materials, but I don't want use it if I don't really really NEED it(for example I was unsure to use iron for make the second oxygen tank...) Professional deformation:D
 

radfast

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Apr 27, 2014
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Spoiler alert. Don't read this if you want the fun of finding out for yourself
  • Place some spin thrusters on the outer edges of your space station to make it spin
  • If you right-click all of the thrusters with a wrench, they will point the other way and the station will spin the other way
  • More thrusters makes it spin faster - up to a maximum of 4, any more after that will make no difference
  • Choose which number to use according to what feels right to you - there is no right answer
  • If some thrusters point in one spin direction (e.g. clockwise) and the some in the other direction (e.g. counter-clockwise) they will cancel each other out and there will be slow spin or no spin
  • A very large space station, like 100 x 100 blocks or something, will take a very long time to spin up to full speed, so just leave the thrusters doing their thing and come back in 15 minutes
  • An extremely large space station will limit the spin according to what makes 1 g-force in the outermost parts of it, someone can do the mathematics and tell us what size that is
  • The spin is around the centre of gravity of the space station - not around the 'blue block'. So if you build a space station which is off to one side from the origin blue block, the space station will spin correctly around its own centre.
  • For an awesome build, maybe make it so the place where the players spawn in the space station dimension (the blue block) is an airlock, an entry portal, or a point some way outside the space station so the first thing the player sees is the space station from the outside.
  • The centre of gravity will be re-calculated every time you place a spin thruster. So it's best to build first, add spin thrusters at the end.
  • It is possible to make dumb-looking builds by having some blocks unconnected from the space station - the unconnected blocks will spin with the space station as if they were a part of it, actually everything in the dimension will spin if there are spin thrusters. So don't build like that, it spoils the illusion.
  • Spin thrusters might not spin anything if you place them on unconnected blocks, like 1 thruster on 1 part of the space station, another thruster on another (unconnected) part of the space station
  • When the space station is spinning, it's going to be tough to fly by reference to coordinates, I don't recommend using 'F3' to navigate by.
  • The coordinates in-game remain by reference to the original layout of the space station blocks, so for example a block at (1,65,0) will stay at (1,65,0) even when it's spinning.
  • Actually there is a g-force but you need a large space station at full spin before it becomes noticeable. For a small station it is not noticeable probably. Also it does not affect you if you are standing "on" the space station - so if you can walk around normally on the station then it will not affect you; it only affects you if you are touching the space station but not standing on it, like for example if there's a long wall heading outwards and you're sliding along it, the g-force should push you outwards. The g-force will be more the further out you are.
  • We are looking at adding more to the g-force so it makes artificial gravity inside the space station. That's fairly tough, because really the g-force should be outwards not downwards. But Minecraft can only make gravity downwards. OK, we could make the g-force point outwards, but all the blocks you place are still going to be in the normal orientation - like furnaces, enchantment tables, machines and blocks from other mods - so that's going to be a problem.
  • Yes, I know how Star Miner does it. Don't tell me about Star Miner. Star Miner has not solved this problem, if you place a furnace or an enchantment table or blocks from other mods in Star Miner when you have wacky gravity, then you will place the machine on its side. The only really fun thing they did in Star Miner was make trees grow upside down.
  • In the beta right now there are issues with freefall motion not being perfect yet - especially jumping off from the spacestation (it's hard) and landing back on it so you can walk again (most of the time the game does not detect that you are "on the ground" when you are) - players can expect these things to be fixed as the beta progresses, but we have a ton of other stuff to fix too so please be patient
  • There will be some improvement to player motion in freefall. The spinning space station is here to stay, pretty much how it is now.
[/spoiler]
If someone has a genuine problem with this, nausea or anything else, I guess that person shouldn't t use spin thrusters. Maybe go play Pixelmon or something instead. Space is supposed to be dangerous.
 

Douglas_Fresh

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Sep 17, 2013
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Spoiler alert. Don't read this if you want the fun of finding out for yourself
  • If you right-click all of the thrusters with a wrench, they will point the other way and the station will spin the other way
Using build version 146. It seems right-clicking thrusters with a wrench doesn't seem to visually change the direction, but it does switch the direction of rotation...most of the time. It seems that it doesn't always calculate the thrusters correctly or something. Using two thrusters it spins one direction (normal). I'll right-click them both and sometimes it changes direction correctly, sometimes it stops (as if only one was turned), and sometimes nothing happens at all. When it doesn't work correctly I delete all thrusters and it usually keeps spinning in the same direction at the same speed. If I reload that map it will be stopped.

Now that I've described that, would this be better suited as a Github issue?
 
Jul 13, 2014
108
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Spoiler alert. Don't read this if you want the fun of finding out for yourself
  • We are looking at adding more to the g-force so it makes artificial gravity inside the space station. That's fairly tough, because really the g-force should be outwards not downwards. But Minecraft can only make gravity downwards. OK, we could make the g-force point outwards, but all the blocks you place are still going to be in the normal orientation - like furnaces, enchantment tables, machines and blocks from other mods - so that's going to be a problem.
  • Yes, I know how Star Miner does it. Don't tell me about Star Miner. Star Miner has not solved this problem, if you place a furnace or an enchantment table or blocks from other mods in Star Miner when you have wacky gravity, then you will place the machine on its side. The only really fun thing they did in Star Miner was make trees grow upside down.
for now, because also the blocks not attacked tho the station rotate, is impossible be sure that is the station to rotate and not the sky... so you can use this to create the gravity downward: only the sky rotate, and in the station the gravity is downward. so, because the blocks aren't really rotating, the vanilla blocks doesn't have the problem. When you solved the problem, you can delete the sky rotation and use your solution... I don't know if this is possible, but if it is, I hope to have helped:)
 

radfast

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Apr 27, 2014
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Using build version 146. It seems right-clicking thrusters with a wrench doesn't seem to visually change the direction, but it does switch the direction of rotation...most of the time. It seems that it doesn't always calculate the thrusters correctly or something. Using two thrusters it spins one direction (normal). I'll right-click them both and sometimes it changes direction correctly, sometimes it stops (as if only one was turned), and sometimes nothing happens at all. When it doesn't work correctly I delete all thrusters and it usually keeps spinning in the same direction at the same speed. If I reload that map it will be stopped.

Now that I've described that, would this be better suited as a Github issue?
Thanks, here is fine. I'll take a look at these issues.
 

radfast

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Apr 27, 2014
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for now, because also the blocks not attacked tho the station rotate, is impossible be sure that is the station to rotate and not the sky... so you can use this to create the gravity downward: only the sky rotate, and in the station the gravity is downward. so, because the blocks aren't really rotating, the vanilla blocks doesn't have the problem. When you solved the problem, you can delete the sky rotation and use your solution... I don't know if this is possible, but if it is, I hope to have helped:)
Gravity downward is easy to create. On space stations we want gravity "outward". That is difficult, because we cannot change the orientation of blocks (think about Enchantment Table, flowers, water + lava, or any machine which has an orientation with let's say electricity cables or pipes on one side).

So in the outer spinning parts of the space station - where there should be artificial gravity - the choices are:

1. have unrealistic physics so that gravity is always downward, even though in real life it should be outward

2. rotate the player but leave the blocks where they are - so have the walls of rooms in the space station be the "floor" for the player - in the player's eyes, if the player is standing upright, all the blocks (Enchantment Table, flower, water etc) are in the wall and on their sides, so for example the enchanted book will be floating to the left or right side of the sideways-on Enchantment Table.

3. like 2, but rotate the rendering of all the blocks 90 degrees so that they all "look" correct

4. the solution we have chosen for now: if the player is in freefall (not on the floor) the player feels a G-force outwards, if the player's feet are on the floor then the player can walk around normally. dropped items should feel the G-force. flying mobs should feel the G-force.


Solution 1 is easy to implement, but doesn't interact well with the freefall physics - so a player in freefall does not experience downward gravity, there would be a huge disconnect between flying in freefall and landing on a block.

Solution 2 sucks - it's a fun visual gimmick but would not be pleasant to play on a long-term basis, you're not going to spend hours building a space base with machinery etc with all the blocks turned on their sides. (Note solution 2 is the approach which the Japanese mod Star Miner has gone for, they implement it pretty nicely but it's still basically a gimmick - they compensate for that a little with their 'upside-down' growing trees which are nice but they can't make a sideways / upside-down version of every block in the game.)

Solution 3 would make way more problems than it solves, because there will be a disconnect at every chunk boundary (a block which looks like it is next to another block, is actually in a totally different spot because of the rotatio). And every block which is directional - think electric wiring, gas pipes, everything in BuildCraft - will either be connected up wrong compared with the way it looks visually, or again there will have to be severe disconnects at chunk boundaries

Solution 4 is a pretty good solution I think, although in the current BETA the player controls for landing on blocks and jumping off again are not working correctly so it's hard to move right - this will be improved
 
Jul 13, 2014
108
4
18
Gravity downward is easy to create. On space stations we want gravity "outward". That is difficult, because we cannot change the orientation of blocks (think about Enchantment Table, flowers, water + lava, or any machine which has an orientation with let's say electricity cables or pipes on one side).

So in the outer spinning parts of the space station - where there should be artificial gravity - the choices are:

1. have unrealistic physics so that gravity is always downward, even though in real life it should be outward

2. rotate the player but leave the blocks where they are - so have the walls of rooms in the space station be the "floor" for the player - in the player's eyes, if the player is standing upright, all the blocks (Enchantment Table, flower, water etc) are in the wall and on their sides, so for example the enchanted book will be floating to the left or right side of the sideways-on Enchantment Table.

3. like 2, but rotate the rendering of all the blocks 90 degrees so that they all "look" correct

4. the solution we have chosen for now: if the player is in freefall (not on the floor) the player feels a G-force outwards, if the player's feet are on the floor then the player can walk around normally. dropped items should feel the G-force. flying mobs should feel the G-force.


Solution 1 is easy to implement, but doesn't interact well with the freefall physics - so a player in freefall does not experience downward gravity, there would be a huge disconnect between flying in freefall and landing on a block.

Solution 2 sucks - it's a fun visual gimmick but would not be pleasant to play on a long-term basis, you're not going to spend hours building a space base with machinery etc with all the blocks turned on their sides. (Note solution 2 is the approach which the Japanese mod Star Miner has gone for, they implement it pretty nicely but it's still basically a gimmick - they compensate for that a little with their 'upside-down' growing trees which are nice but they can't make a sideways / upside-down version of every block in the game.)

Solution 3 would make way more problems than it solves, because there will be a disconnect at every chunk boundary (a block which looks like it is next to another block, is actually in a totally different spot because of the rotatio). And every block which is directional - think electric wiring, gas pipes, everything in BuildCraft - will either be connected up wrong compared with the way it looks visually, or again there will have to be severe disconnects at chunk boundaries

Solution 4 is a pretty good solution I think, although in the current BETA the player controls for landing on blocks and jumping off again are not working correctly so it's hard to move right - this will be improved
why we want gravity outward? for me is the same... but why choose gravity outward, when so move is harder than without gravity?Please forgive me, Maybe I didn't understand... I was intending the sky rotate around the x axis and not the blocks, so you can think the station and you are rotating and not the sky... please don't kill me if I did not understand...
 

radfast

Member
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Apr 27, 2014
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Everyone, just a heads up that there is a new version 3.0.0.155 out. It fixes a couple of the problems with space station movement so now you should be able to move about on space stations in the way that we intended. A bug with the sky spinning backwards has also been fixed.

(There's still a bug with right-clicking the spin thrusters, it does nothing, we'll get that fixed soon.)
 

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