#dark engine

[someblakearts]

Cryo Pod from System Shock 2

Here's a hi-res version of the Cryo Pod from System Shock 2, trying to stay pretty faithful to the original. It’s also made to the exact same scale so that it slots into the level.

It was mainly made to see how much effort re-creating assets would be for my personal SS2 project:

Regarding the model - it’s a bit high-poly for what it is, but originally I wasn’t sure if I was going to use it for pre-rendered assets. I figured I can always bake down some of those polys to the normal map later on if I need to cut it down a bit. It’s also a little bit too weathered for a brand new ship like the Von Braun, but I was hiding my inadequacies as an artist behind grime textures/normals :p

The model was created in 3ds Studio Max and textured in Substance Painter.

You can also view a 3D model by clicking the image below:

System Shock 2 Cryo Pod by blakearts on Sketchfab

[silyabeeodess]

I just wanna say I very much like your headcanons. Appreciate your insights and how you extract a lot of information out of short monster descripitions and crumbs of dialogue and small details on the models.

Although I still haven't gotten around reading the older ones, so I ask: ever written about the Dark Engine?

Thank you so much!! It’s definitely a lot of fun to work on these and explore some in-depth ideas for the game’s lore. :) If you want an easier way to see the older posts, I’ve created a masterpost to categorize them. 

I’ll put some ideas on the Dark Engine below the cut: 

Once Fuse found out that Earth could actually fight back against fusion matter using imaginary energy (IE), while he was still confident that he'd win in the end, he knew he'd have to work a little harder for that victory. The creation of the Dark Engine was one method to further his advantage. It serves as a biotechnological weapon, a "giant, mechanical terrafuser" that pumps out more fusion matter than a normal terrafuser can naturally. It also can emit large amounts of fusion matter in a gaseous form, as evidenced by the haze that surrounds the machine.

While Fuse has had to experiment with tactics in past conquests, such as using fusion seedlings and soil contaminants to damage things like nanotechnology, IE is something that he's rarely faced before that does actually scare him: With it, humans can not only stop the spread of fusion matter, but destroy it. There have been rare cases where he's had to give up on taking over certain planets, but those were stalemates. Prior to reaching Earth, he's never faced someone who can genuinely fight back. As a result, the Dark Engine is pretty new technology. We see this evidenced in the fact that, in later missions of the game, the Dark Engine is still said to be in mid-construction. For all the advantages he has at his disposal, Fuse was not ready to make this machine at the start of the war.

Nevertheless, there are a couple reasons why the construction has gone so swifty. First off is simply the location: Steam Alley is a place that focuses on industrialization, close to energy plants, the ever-innovative Tech Square, and the massive spaceport that is Offworld Plaza. There's also plenty of heavy equipment nearby, like those left behind from the construction of Morbucks Towers. Secondly is the sheer number of fusions with technological know-how that can work on the project. Fuse's army has everything they need available to them and the genius to put those things to use.

Like when we talked about fusion spawns, it’s not a terrafuser alone that causes the spread of fusion matter. Even one with mechanical enhancements like the Dark Engine is still stationary, requiring monsters to spread fusion matter at a rapid pace across a wide area and help defend itself. The mission “Dark Engine Days (Part 1 of 4)” supports this by requiring us to stop fusion monsters in order to slow construction efforts. Attention on enemy combatants means less focus on ensuring that the Dark Engine is running properly--better yet, this constant string of attacks can damage the machine. Sadly, this also means that it is heavily guarded at all times. Fusion Hoss Delgado is one of the biggest threats there.    

The most looming threat though isn’t the monsters or any fusion, but rather the fusion matter gas. Concentrated amounts of it pollute the air and, without the right equipment or a nano with the antidote ability, the body is pretty much guaranteed to be infected by it even though the effects won’t be immediate. We see this potential danger covered in the “Dark Engine Days” and “Bet on Ben” mission arcs. Outside, you might be able to withstand the gas, but inside, you’re practically swimming in a poisonous smog.    

The “Don’t Fear the Reaper” arc reveals that Fuse had every intention of building yet another Dark Engine that would “stretch from Morbucks Towers to the beach.” Fortunately, we players are able to put a stop to it by getting rid of gooby traps and stealing the blueprints; however, it is extremely concerning that Fuse is confident enough to attempt to create a Dark Engine on such a massive scale. The one is Steam Alley is already huge and causes enough problems. Another covering that much more ground could spell doom for Earth.    

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt in Memes 5

Once more, have a prompt entirely in memes because I'm too lazy to properly write one right now lol.

[nasa]

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.

Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.

If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries. 

Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest! 

An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.

Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.  

Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.  

Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.  

The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027. 

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space! 

[kwillow]

A Cure for Barbarity

The grand old manor of Northcrest provided more luxurious accommodations than most in the rag-tag group of soldiers in the company of the Rising Dawn were accustomed to - if they ignored the peeling wallpaper, smell of mold and the manor's creeping, foul-tempered owner. Unfortunately, Alex couldn't do the latter. She needed to wrangle their prisoner-turned-annoyance wizard Hyden into doing any work at all, and that meant negotiating with his self-appointed apprentice and biggest fan, their host with the least, Baron Theopolis North. Now she had two egotistical, unstable mages to deal with, which was two more than she ever wanted.

She was common, he was the worst kind of arrogant old-blood nobility, she no-nonsense, he excessively prone to nonsense, she hated Hyden, he adored the man beyond all reason. It was inevitable that tensions between the rat and bat would boil over into conflict. True, Alex was a disciplined soldier who knew how to keep a cool head in times of stress, but the mad mage of Northcrest knew how to get under her skin... in more ways than one.

[venusmage]

Redemption plotline step 1: Let Karlach beat him up.

Step 2: Wash him, he’s stinky

[conaghercorp]

who let their runt onto the base. smh

[offbeat03]

Gawd dam 5 days of these expressions suggestions that I did on twt

Some traditional ones too!!!

Here's the expression sheet if anyone wants to do it too ^^

[etherealacademia]

grad student rizz is going on dates with someone from a completely different discipline and just sending them your academic papers, and reading theirs, despite not knowing enough about each other's subject of study to fully grasp the vibe

[bunabi]

finished my work (for now) so I wanted to try a different style

I’ll post the full timelapse of this on you-know-where later this week

[feydpauls]

@asiandramanet event 04 ㅡ love is in the air: top 5 side couples. @asiandramanet jan/feb creator bingo — lgbtq+ rep

[someblakearts]

System Shock 2 in Unreal Engine 5

Tools, tools, tools

Back when I worked in the games industry, I was a tools guy by trade. It was a bit of a mix between developing APIs and toolkits for other developers, designing database frontends and automated scripts to visualise memory usage in a game's world, or reverse engineering obscure file formats to create time-saving gadgets for art creation.

I still tend to do a lot of that now in my spare time to relax and unwind, whether it's figuring out the binary data and protocols that makes up the art and assets from my favourite games, or recreating systems and solutions for the satisfaction of figuring it all out.

A Shock to the System

A while back I spent a week or so writing importer tools, logic systems and some basic functionality to recreate System Shock 2 in Unreal Engine 5. It got to the stage where importing the data from the game was a one-click process - I clicked import and could literally run around the game in UE5 within seconds, story-missions and ship systems all working.

Most of Dark engine's logic is supported but I haven't had the time to implement AI or enemies yet. Quite a bit of 3D art is still a bit sketchy, too. The craziest thing to me is that there are no light entities or baked lightmaps placed in the levels. All the illumination you can feast your eyes on is Lumen's indirect lighting from the emissive textures I'd dropped into the game. It has been a fun little exercise in getting me back into Unreal Engine development and I've learnt a lot of stuff as usual.

Here is a video of me playing all the way up to the ops deck (and then getting lost before I decided to cut the video short - it's actually possible to all the way through the game now). Lots of spoilers in this video, obviously, for those that haven't played the game.

What it is

At it's core, it's just a recreation of the various logic-subsystems in System Shock 2 and an assortment of art that has been crudely bashed into Unreal Engine 5. Pretty much all the textures, materials, meshes and maps are converted over and most of the work remaining is just tying them together with bits of C++ string. I hope you also appreciate that I sprinkled on some motion-blur and depth of field to enhance the gameplay a little. Just kidding - I just didn't get around to turning that off in the prefab Unreal Engine template I regularly use.

Tool-wise, it's a mishmash of different things working together:

There's an asset converter that organises the art into an Unreal-Engine-compatible pipeline. It's a mix of Python scripting, mind numbingly dull NodeJS and 3dsmaxscript that juggles data. It recreates all the animated (and inanimate) textures as Unreal materials, meshifies and models the map of the ship, and processes the objects and items into file formats that can be read by the engine.

A DB to Unreal converter takes in DarkDBs and spits out JSON that Unreal Engine and my other tools can understand and then brings it into the Engine. This is the secret sauce that takes all the levels and logic from the original game and recreates it in the Unreal-Dark-hybrid-of-an-engine. It places the logical boundaries for rooms and traps, lays down all the objects (and sets their properties) and keys in those parameters to materialise the missions and set up the story gameplay.

Another tool also weeds through the JSON thats been spat out previously and weaves it into complex databases in Unreal Engine. This arranges all the audio logs, mission texts and more into organised collections that can be referenced and relayed through the UI.

The last part is the Unreal Engine integration. This is the actual recreation of much of the Dark Engine in UE, ranging all the way from the PDA that powers the player's journey through the game, to the traps, buttons and systems that bring the Von Braun to life. It has save-game systems to store the state of objects, inventories and all your stats, levels and progress. This is all C++ and is built in a (hopefully) modular way that I can build on easily should the project progress.

Where it's at

As I mentioned, the levels themselves are a one-click import process. Most of Dark engine's logic, quirks and all, is implemented now (level persistence and transitions, links, traps, triggers, questvars, stats and levelling, inventory, signals/responses, PDA, hacking, etc.) but I still haven't got around to any kid of AI yet. I haven't bought much in the way of animation in from the original game yet, either, as I need to work out the best way to do it. I need to pull together the separate systems and fix little bugs here and there and iron it out with a little testing at some point.

Lighting-wise, this is all just Lumen and emissive textures. I don't think it'll ever not impress me how big of a step forward this is in terms of realistic lighting. No baking of lightmaps, no manually placing lighting. It's all just emissive materials, global/indirect illumination and bounce lighting. It gets a little overly dark here and there (a mixture of emissive textures not quite capturing the original baked lighting, and a limitation in Lumen right now for cached surfaces on complex meshes, aka the level) so could probably benefit with a manual pass at some point, but 'ain't nobody got time for that for a spare-time project.

The unreal editor showcasing some of the systems and levels.

Where it's going

I kind of need to figure out exactly what I'm doing with this project and where to stop. My initial goal was just to have an explorable version of the Von Braun in Unreal Engine 5 to sharpen my game dev skills and stop them from going rusty, but it's gotten a bit further than that now. I'm also thinking of doing something much more in-depth video/blog-wise in some way - let me know in the comments if that's something you'd be interested in and what kind of stuff you'd want to see/hear about.

The DB to JSON tool that churns out System Shock 2 game data as readable info

Anyway - I began to expand out with the project and recreate assets and art to integrate into Unreal Engine 5. I'll add more as I get more written up.

[wh40kartwork]

by Anastasiya Landasseln

[existing-is-a-chore]

[nasa]

Our Roman Space Telescope’s Dish is Complete!

NASA engineers recently completed tests of the high-gain antenna for our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observatory has some truly stellar plans once it launches by May 2027. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter – two invisible components that helped shape our universe and may determine its ultimate fate. The mission will also search for and image planets outside our solar system and explore all kinds of other cosmic topics.

However, it wouldn’t be able to send any of the data it will gather back to Earth without its antenna. Pictured above in a test chamber, this dish will provide the primary communication link between the Roman spacecraft and the ground. It will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand wide temperature fluctuations. It’s very hot and cold in space – Roman will experience a temperature range of minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius)!

The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) – about as much as a dachshund. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.

At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a flood of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations on Earth. The dish is designed to point extremely accurately at Earth, all while both Earth and the spacecraft are moving through space.

Engineers tested the antenna to make sure it will withstand the spacecraft’s launch and operate as expected in the extreme environment of space. The team also measured the antenna’s performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber. Every surface in the test chamber is covered in pyramidal foam pieces that minimize interfering reflections during testing. Next, the team will attach the antenna to the articulating boom assembly, and then electrically integrate it with Roman’s Radio Frequency Communications System.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[alphacomicsvol2]

Star Wars: X-Wing - Rogue Squadron #28 (Masquerade #1 of 4) Cover Art by John Nadeau