Archive: 11 posts

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I've been playing LBP off and on almost since it was released. I really love what the level creator lets you do, and I like making vehicles, so I've been experimenting with different things for quite some time. High on my list of goals was to create a stable, controllable aircraft capable of untethered flight that could carry multiple sackpersons. There have been many prototypes. Probably over the last year or so I've refined the "technology" I use to the point where I believe I have succeeded about as well as I can hope for, given the tools available. The culmination of my efforts has led to what I call the X-4 Tyrfing Aerial Assault Vehicle. It is a 1 to 3 man craft capable of unrestricted horizontal and vertical movement, stable hover, pin-point landing, and is armed to the teeth with two paintball turrets and a paintball bomb drop ability. (The fact that it ended up with functional paintball turrets is gravy...just getting it to fly the way I wanted was the biggest achievement.) I think it is important to note that it does NOT rely on either peach or orange floaty to achieve it's lift capacity. Those materials are only used sparingly in the stabilization mechanism. All appreciable lift comes from the primary thrusters. (I did experiment with using those materials as the primary lift force, but found that they added significant bulk to the aircraft, among other problems.) This is something that I believe really sets this aircraft apart from other creations, such as the balloon aircraft from the volcano level. Operation There are 3 stations on the aircraft. One for the pilot and two for gunners. The gunner stations do not need to be occupied. An emitter system produces ballast to balance the craft when a gunner station is unoccupied. Boarding the Vehicle This isn't as straightforward as I'd like, but it works. I may change it in the future. For now though...to board the aircraft, jump up in front of it, off center just a bit. If you jump high enough, and if there is nothing obstructing, an emitter will spawn a boarding platform. The platform is made of metal and is attached to the aircraft. It will last for a few seconds and will allow you to board all three stations before de-spawning. The aircraft will be incapable of flight while the boarding platform is present. Pilot Station (middle cockpit) - Piloting: To control the direction of flight, the pilot simply walks right or left. Since the pilot is standing on a roller, this action results in the thrust vector changing to the desired angle. To engage thrust, the pilot simply grabs the cockpit wall. While the pilot may choose to hold for continued thrust, the mere presence of the pilot in the cockpit will engage the primary thrusters, which provide the necessary thrust for the craft to remain airborne. This allows the pilot to devote all attention to moving the aircraft where desired. - Bombing: To drop a series of electric paintball bombs, the pilot holds down on the left analog stick and taps the grab button. This action will trigger the bomb drop sequence. Once triggered, the pilot can let go and continue piloting the aircraft. Gunner Stations (right and left cockpits) - Aiming: To aim the turret, the gunner simply walks right or left. Like the pilot station, the gunners are standing on rollers. These rollers rotate the turrets. Each turret has about a 200 degree firing arc. The arcs overlap beneath the aircraft, so there is some degree of crossfire capability. - Firing: To fire the turret, the gunner simply grabs the cockpit wall. This will unleash electrified paintball doom on any unfortunate sackperson or (paint vulnerable creation). Known Issues - Obstruction of the boarding platform spawn area makes it pretty much impossible to board the aircraft. Try not to land it where obstruction can occur. - The turrets are somewhat vulnerable to hard impacts and have a tendency to break under sudden stress. - While partially protected, anything capable of touching the stabilization discs which occupy the thin layer at the top of the aircraft has the potential to send the aircraft out of control. - It is made of cardboard. That mean anything that explodes on or nearby the aircraft has the potential to cause severe damage to flight-critical systems. At the very least, losing pieces of the aircraft will result in reduced vertical equilibrium, which will result in the pilot needing to apply vectored thrust to compensate. - Camera - I've got the camera zoomed out as far as it will go, but it still is closer than I'd like. It can sometimes be hard to see what's nearby. So, there it is, the user manual for my aircraft. It really isn't all that complex, and once you get the hang of it, it is pretty easy to fly. I would have liked to include the above instructions in the level itself, and I may yet, but for now this is the only place you'll have this level of detail. Anyway, while I find I can produce complex things like the above aircraft, my level creation skills are really not that great. I understand all the pieces, but I just don't have the artistic talent to create levels comparable to the beautiful levels I've seen come from the LBP community. So, if you are a skilled level designer and see potential for an aircraft of this nature, let me know. If you want to check out the craft, I have it in my one and only published level, so it should be pretty easy to find. (PSN: Kong_Angantyr) Here's a link to the X-4 Tyrfing Aerial Assault Vehicle level on LBP.me: http://lbp.me/v/wes80b If you have any questions about the mechanism I used to stabilize the craft, just ask. It may not be completely obvious just by looking at it how it works. Also, I'm working on my trophies, so if you like the aircraft, please heart the level. Thank you!

2011-01-07 00:09:00 Author: Angantyr Posts: 18

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I think it is important to note that it does NOT rely on either peach or orange floaty to achieve it's lift capacity. Those materials are only used sparingly in the stabilization mechanism. All appreciable lift comes from the primary thrusters. (I did experiment with using those materials as the primary lift force, but found that they added significant bulk to the aircraft, among other problems.) This is something that I believe really sets this aircraft apart from other creations, such as the balloon aircraft from the volcano level. This is quite impressive given the small tolerances involved in stabilising flying vehicles with rockets. I've tried many things but a dab of too much power from any one rocket leads to instant-spin and death, so your system must be pretty sophisticated unless you're relying on the vehicle being finely balanced...? If you have any questions about the mechanism I used to stabilize the craft, just ask. It may not be completely obvious just by looking at it how it works. Ok, I'll bite. How does it work?

2011-01-08 01:49:00 Author: Ayneh Posts: 2454

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I know what you are saying about the small tolerances. Many of my early prototypes suffered from that problem, which, at the time, I partially corrected with orange floaty. Still, it never quite did the trick. The problem with rockets attached firmly to the aircraft is that as soon as there is any tilt, the force vector gains an undesired horizontal component, which can have all kinds of unwanted effects, such as horizontal acceleration and instability. Of course, there's always the dreaded flip, where the aircraft ends up oriented upside-down, with it's lift rockets forcing it quickly down to the ground, with no hope of righting the craft. The key then, is to prevent the rockets from falling out of vertical alignment. If that is done, then rockets dedicated to maintaining lift will never apply their considerable thrust in the horizontal direction. So, the rockets must get their orientation from some sort of assembly that always stays vertical. That's not too hard...just make an object that has one half made of orange floaty and the other half made of some sort of normal material (I've found that Dissolve material works well as the counter). Such an object will always point up, so long as it is not subjected to external impacts or imbalanced drag forces. If a rocket can be attached to the midpoint of such an object, then the rocket will always point up. That is exactly what we do. First, attacfor h a 2x2 rocket to your aircraft with a bolt right through the center of the rocket. The rocket is now free to spin in any direction. Since we want that direction to always be up, we attach orange floaty to the top and dissolve material on the bottom. Now, no matter how much the aircraft tilts, the lift rockets will always be pointing straight up. Adjust the thrust so that the rocket only provides enough lift to counteract the force of gravity. By doing this you completely negate the need for orange floaty as your lifting force. If you place this pivoting rocket assembly above the center of gravity of the aircraft, it will tend to keep your aircraft right-side-up...very much like orange floaty does. However, you have far greater control over the amount of lift, and the rocket assembly, while it is somewhat bulky, still takes up less room than the amount of orange floaty that would be required to achieve the same lifting force. (Also, you can turn the rockets off when you don't want the lift.) Now, I don't mean to say that fine tuning the above assembly is easy. It took me a long time to finally settle on the method I used, and I had many failures before I found success. However, once tweaked in all the right places, the assembly does exactly what it needs to do, and we achieve stable flight. So, that's great and all, but what about directional control? We can't use the lift rockets because they are 100% dedicated to lifting the aircraft. My solution was to put my sackboy on top of a roller. The roller touches another roller attached to a rocket engine, which is itself attached to the aircraft with a single bolt, much like our lift rockets. By confining sackboy to the top of the roller, we have a little treadmill action going on. When sackboy runs right, it ultimately rotates the rocket clockwise. When he runs left, counter-clockwise. This gives us full vectored thrust. By making the material around sackboy grab-able, we can give sackboy control over the rocket. to pilot, he simply runs right or left to turn the rocket to the desired orientation, then grabs to turn it on. If we make the roller he runs on grab-able as well, we can give sackboy the ability to fire off a secondary action, whatever that may be. The end result is a very flyable aircraft, which can touch down gently with near pin-point precision. ...Just in time for LBP2, which I have a feeling will completely trivialize all of this.

2011-01-08 07:12:00 Author: Angantyr Posts: 18

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I'll have to give this a try sometime because good quality aircraft in this game are very few and far between.

2011-01-09 18:15:00 Author: ADS_LEGEND Posts: 140

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...Just in time for LBP2, which I have a feeling will completely trivialize all of this. I don't think LBP2 will make your vehicle outdated. There are gyroscope tools and stuff but a purely mechanical system like yours may be better, I don't know. The new logic tools are powerful but there are some things you can't seem to replicate using them, like a piston with a magnetic key and switch on either end set to speed so you get a smooth increase or decrease in signal strength. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write all that out, I found it really interesting. <3

2011-01-10 06:41:00 Author: Ayneh Posts: 2454

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Hi Amgantyr. GREAT idea, wow, I wish I had seen your ship a few months ago before I spent 20 odd hours mucking around with my space ship. I went WAAAAY to complicated with mine, with all manor of jets that kick in depending what angle the ship is to 'TRY' and keep it fairly level(You'll have to play my level 'House of the flying diggers' to check it out, AND it's right at the end...if you are interested, there is a quick short cut to get to it.Grab the coin from the cash machine, fly with it above the bridge, then let go, go to the 'digger wars' entrance, grab, RED, WHITE, BLUE, THEN HOLD GREEN BARREL FOR A FEW SECONDS. Grab the yellow triangle in the digger wars area, and it will take you to the end, jump left where the sign says, and you can play around) Amazing piece of simple engineering, 5 stars and heart!

2011-01-13 15:32:00 Author: Shade_seeker Posts: 328

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I was very impressed! It's incredibly easy to steer, just point and you're off! Just one question. What do the creature brains do? 5 stars and Heart!

2011-01-13 23:52:00 Author: dragonember Posts: 607

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Thanks for the feedback guys! (...and the stars and hearts!) About the brains...I guess I didn't go into that, did I? Basically, since it is a 3 man craft...but needs to be able to fly with just a pilot, a pilot and 1 gunner, or pilot with 2 gunners, I needed a way to balance the ship in all scenarios. Early on, I kinda figured I'd need to use emitters to emit a "dummy weight", which weighed exactly the same as 1 sackperson, so that, if a gunner station was unoccupied, the weight would spawn to maintain balance. However, there wasn't a good way to get rid of the weight when a sackperson wanted to man that station. I thought of using dissolve as the weight...which would have been easy for a sackperson to remove, but it pretty much had to be metal due to the space available. Metal meant that that strategy wouldn't work. So, I decided to attach a creature brain...that way when a sackperson jumped in the gunner station, the brain would pop and the ballast weight would disappear. I'm not crazy about the solution, but I guess it works well enough. I've been toying around with the idea of making a new ship, but with LBP2 so close, I'm gonna wait and see what can be done with the new tools. If I understand things correctly, we'll be able to turn off gravity. With no gravity to have to fight against, I think we're gonna see some pretty cool stuff...I'm definitely looking forward to it!

2011-01-14 07:12:00 Author: Angantyr Posts: 18

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Just played this, and it's by far the best aircraft I've ever seen in LBP. Great job! 5 stars

2011-01-20 16:33:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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Thank you! So, I've been playing around with the create mode in LBP2 and I'm completely blown away by the tools we have available this time around. So much stuff that was either difficult or convoluted to achieve is now incredibly simple. There are so many new tools that really simplify the creation of vehicles of all kinds: gyroscopes (of a few different types even), movers, rotators, material tweakers, gravity tweakers--the list goes on. All of these combined make creating stable, flying vehicles an elementary exercise. After a little while playing around with the Controlinator and other tools on release day, I had a small, ugly, solid chunk of metal that could pretty much do everything that the X-4 Tyrfing can do, but better and with a single sackperson to control it all. The X-4 Tyrfing's shape and form is a direct result of having to hold the mechanical components that enable it to fly and behave the way it does. With the Controlinator and other LBP2 components, the form that my next flying vehicle will take will be determined by the things it will be able to do...NOT by things required just to get it to fly. I'm really excited about the possibilities. I already have a ton of ideas...I just don't know which of them I'm going to pursue first. However, I can tell you with certainty that there will be an X-5.

2011-01-20 20:56:00 Author: Angantyr Posts: 18

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Thank you! So, I've been playing around with the create mode in LBP2 and I'm completely blown away by the tools we have available this time around. So much stuff that was either difficult or convoluted to achieve is now incredibly simple. There are so many new tools that really simplify the creation of vehicles of all kinds: gyroscopes (of a few different types even), movers, rotators, material tweakers, gravity tweakers--the list goes on. All of these combined make creating stable, flying vehicles an elementary exercise. After a little while playing around with the Controlinator and other tools on release day, I had a small, ugly, solid chunk of metal that could pretty much do everything that the X-4 Tyrfing can do, but better and with a single sackperson to control it all. The X-4 Tyrfing's shape and form is a direct result of having to hold the mechanical components that enable it to fly and behave the way it does. With the Controlinator and other LBP2 components, the form that my next flying vehicle will take will be determined by the things it will be able to do...NOT by things required just to get it to fly. I'm really excited about the possibilities. I already have a ton of ideas...I just don't know which of them I'm going to pursue first. However, I can tell you with certainty that there will be an X-5. Well I'm definitely looking forward to it xD Really can't wait to get my hands on LBP2 tomorrow haha. Looking forward to seeing more of your work

2011-01-20 23:49:00 Author: DrunkMiffy Posts: 2758

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