Diagonal block placement (e.g. thrusters)

Is there any way to place blocks diagonally?

For instance, if I want thrusters pointing at 45 degree angle from the axis of the ship, or if I want interior lights, spotlights and so fort to be mounted at a downwards angle so they light up an area (e.g. a hangar deck).

I tried to mount interior lights on a 45 degree angle block of light armor, but it wouldn't attach itself (at least not on the sloped side).

So is there any way to do this, besides the awkward and silly way of using a rotor, which then requires a reactor 'battery-pack' to even work.

 

Nope, everything is grid aligned.

 

Welcome to the exciting world of voxel-based construction... :wave:

 

All is grid aligned, as said by extraammo, but you can fake it: make the whole hallway on 45°. There is nothing stopping you from putting two grav gens on 90° from each other, and make the walkway of the 45° sloped piece. Now, everything that was straight is under a 45° angle. However, mounting other things inside than lamps will make it look rather funny.

 

So only way to have a spotlight aimed at a hangar deck is by using rotators then... Was hoping that wouldnt be the case though since I hate having so many reactors all over, especially the base/lrg ship ones.

Maybe i'll just cheat and use a small ship with landing pads and attach it to the 45 degree sloped blocks...

Must... Engineer...

 

There is nothing voxel like about the construction actually. It is simply grid aligned.

 

Would just like to have the ability to place some blocks diagonally rather than simply up-down-sideways. With the ability to place something diagonally you increase the different ways you can face, for instance a spotlight, to 30 rather than just 6 directions.

Of course, using rotors gives you different directional angles as well, but until blocks attached to a rotor are part of the base/ship then this isn't really a good solution.

 

Tell that to the devs, every person writing about Space Engineers, and the gaming community in general. Heh.

This game deals in cube-centric building blocks, which is exactly what constitutes calling it a "voxel-based construction" game. The fact that the building blocks are cubical has a side effect of making it "grid aligned."

 

It's a massive misuse of the term unfortunately. The devs don't refer to the ships as voxel like actually.
VRAGE 2.0 is under development and its core feature is volumetricity of the environment. Volumetric objects are structures composed from block-like modules interlocked in a grid. Volumetric objects behave like real physical objects with mass, inertia and velocity. Individual modules have real volume and storage capacity and can be assembled, disassembled, deformed and destroyed.

 

There is not but I totally agree with you that it would be very nice if we could.

I've reached the point in my builds where I want to push the envelope to get some very intricate designs and well, rotors don't work so well for angles.

I feel like I've become a master at building things with the sloped pieces though.

 

I see your quote, and raise you one directly from the Space Engineers website, in the About section:

I tend to agree, that "voxel" has been rather misappropriated over the years (thanks Minecraft!), but it's now considered the "standard" term for a game with cube-centric construction paradigm. Yet another word that has been hijacked by society and warped to mean something slightly different that its original definition. Good times.

 

I just hate that it takes away from true voxel games while creating false expectations for the non-voxel games that get labeled that way.
Anyway, the asteroids are the only thing that uses true voxel structure or data even though they don't use voxel rendering. I really like minecraft but I hate what it has done to a lot of games. Everything is creative and survival, everything is crafting and mining, everything is biomes and mobs, and everything is voxels.
People probably look at graph paper now and go, "It's like minecraft!"

 

Since the OP got answered many times already and the thread derailed anyway ... let me join! :3

I totally agree with the "voxel" definition. Games like Space Engineers and Minecraft are no voxel games at all imo. But iam a little purist there.

That is a real voxel engine in my opinion

Anything else is textured-box-stuff, not that it is bad though.


Also atomontage, an engine iam following for years now and its very sad seeing that little progress in such a promissing branch

 

It's not really a grid, or voxel problem. It's a √2 problem, rooted (pun intended) in basic geometry

If you have a square with a side of A, then the diagonal of that square will be √2 times A (or 1.4142 times A). So if you put a slanted surface, and then try to attach a normal block to it, which has a size of A, it will not extend to the edge of the surface it is attached to in both dimensions. Therefore, if you try to put two cubical pieces of armor next to each other on a slanted surface, they won't connect to each other, unless they are automatically stretched in one dimension, and they won't be cubes anymore.

They could make it work for certain objects only, though. But armor blocks (or any other full-size blocks) attaching at a 45 degree angle to each other would lead to quite a few problems.

 

Voxel = Volume Pixel. Or rather, I should say: Voxel means "Volume Element" like Pixel means "Picture Element".

It is not wrong to call Minecraft or SE a Voxel-based game because Voxels are usually arranged in an array which, to put it in more mundane terms, can often be thought of as a grid. On that note, pixels are almost always arranged on a grid. That said, asteroids can also be thought of as voxel-based because, again, they're using Volume Elements.

It would be correct to say that Minecraft uses the simplest and most straightforward implementation of the idea of Voxels, while other games use a more complicated and robust Voxel system. However, it would incorrect to say that Minecraft is not a voxel based system as much as it would be wrong to say that a rowboat is not a boat. The fact that it's less complicated doesn't disqualify it.

EDIT---

It would be more accurate to say that the ships use a Raster-based Voxel system, while asteroids probably use a Vector-based Voxel system.