Category: ARK: Survival Evolved Server

Cable Mod Update – Limitations, Math is Fun!, and Frustrations

1Mar2016
ARK: Survival Evolved ServerModding
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Limitations

I successfully limited the range that one anchor can connect to another anchor. Right now I have it set at 4 meters, but that could all change.

I thought it was going to be a headache but the solution grew upon the solution to a previous issue. At one point the algorithm to find the nearest anchor was not working and I found out that when it was looking for the nearest anchor, it was including itself in that search. So, it always pointed to itself as the nearest. As soon as I added the condition that the distance between itself and the nearest must be greater than zero, the problem was solved.

Going off of that I added another condition that the search could not include any anchors could not be greater than 4000 units (roughly 4 meters) away.

But now the limitation to the cable, isn’t a limitation at all!

Math is Fun!

I spent last night working on some math for the cables. I wanted to have the cable hang realistically given it be a set length.

After some research I found that this equation will determine the distance a cable will sag.
maths
d = the sag distance
L = the length of the cable
S = the span between the anchors

the blueprint ended up looking a little convoluted, see?
maths2

The result worked pretty well, but at the extremes it seems that my math isn’t exactly perfect because the length of the cable appears to shorten.
cableSagDemo

Frustrations

Now my frustrations lie in two aspects at the moment.

  1. There are two copies of the cables generated because there are two anchor nodes are both building the cables at the moment, I need to find a way to only have one generated per pair.
  2. I can not for the life of me get the engram to show up in the craftables menu in game. The engram shows up in the engram list and can be learned, but no luck after that.

Thanks for reading!

As always, I would love to hear your feedback!

Cable Mod Update

22Feb2016
ARK: Survival Evolved ServerModding
3 Comments

Real Cable Mod Progress update

I have jumped track from the rails mod (poor pun intended) to work on the cable mod for the time being after seeing how much positive feedback I got on the idea from a comment I made on reddit. There’s nothing visually impressive about the work I have done so far, but here is where I stand.

The Name

I am thinking of using Real Cable Mod as the name for this project, but I am not heartset on it just yet. Any suggestions would be great.

Spine Components

I am working through getting the spline components to be built between the anchors. Right now I have find the closest anchor within and draw a debug arrow between the two.

see the red lines? that’s what I am talking about

I spent a good four hours debugging this and realized that my whole problem was that the blueprint was including itself in the shortest distance calculations, therefore the debug arrows were drawing from the anchor to the same anchor… ugh.

Current Road Map

  • Next step is to draw a spline with the start and end points at each anchor and render a spline mesh over the spline.
  • Then I will have the blueprint add an additional spline point between the two existing and drop it down a short distance getting that hanging look to the cable.
  • After that, it will be to set the tangents of the splines to match the rotation of the anchors.
  • Then creating the actual placeable object for the anchors, ingame feedback that another unconnected anchor is within range.
  • And finally get it all to transmit power.
  • I also want to limit the distance cables can stretch so you can’t have one cable go from one side of the island to the other. The distance right now is going to be 10m but that may change once it gets in game.

Thoughts…

  • I may add
    plug ends to the cables that aren’t directly connected to anything, but that is more of an aesthetic choice.
    I may add a corner piece for going around building corners.
  • Powerline poles to carry cables over distances, with visual ingame feedback that the poles would be close enough to each other for the cables to reach.

I appreciate the time you have taken to read this, please comment if you have anything you would like to add or to let me know I am headed in the complete opposite direction that I should.

ARK mods: Help Wanted!

17Feb2016
AnnouncementsARK: Survival Evolved Server
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Help Wanted

I am fairly competent with modeling and getting the assets into the game what I am not proficient at is texturing.

If you want to help with the mods and can texture 3DS Max assets, please contact me.

If you are interested in continued opportunities, I do have plans to establish a game development studio as a offshoot of my company Mercenary Miniatures and currently I am working on setting up a team of ambitious developers to be part of the team. Working on small projects like mods and small games would help us establish a process that would allow us to expand into producing games that would earn us all a profit. If you are interested in this opportunity let me know when you contact me about this mod.

Thanks,
Mark Halberg

ARK: Survival Evolved mods

17Feb2016
ARK: Survival Evolved ServerGame DevelopmentModding
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Modding

My current obsession is playing ARK: Survival Evolved on a private PVE server with a couple of friends which I plan on opening to the public in the future. I am absolutely captivated by the game’s ability to blend Minecraft’s survival, exploration, resource collection, base building, Pokémon’s ‘Gotta Catch Them All’ mentality, and Tamagotchi’s need to constantly take care of your pets.

I find that the game is everything I wanted from the aforementioned games all rolled into one dino covered package, but I want it to do more. I have a few ideas that I have been working on between my overly excited responses of taming my first bronto and third rex (may the first two rest in peace as I avenged your deaths by killing that low level Dimorphodon that flew circles around you while I was off adventuring.

Rail System and Minecarts

My most ambitious of the current modding projects would be the Rail System and Minecarts.

Is there a resource node heavy area that is near your home that you love to pillage every chance you get? Do you despise your pack dino’s ability to get caught on ever sapling you pass?

Then you need to build a better industrial infrastructure and that is where the rail system comes into play.

The plan is to make the Rail system to be a mid tier engram that would allow semi-established

Storage Cart

Storage Cart

The Storage Cart will use an instanced version of the storage crate from the game (highlighted in blue), mounted on top of a basic rail cart, this will be able to be pushed by hand or moved via the Engine Cart, and have the same storage capabilities as the default storage crate.

The benefits of this would be that players can load many of these up and connect them together and push many carts worth of material back home. These carts would greately improve material collection as well as provide a new dynamic to PVP servers where raids on resource trains could be a viable strategy for disrupting enemy plans.

The possibilities for trade and role playing elements are also possible.

Engine

Engine Cart
The Engine will allow trains of resource carts to be moved without a survivor needing to push them, this will be fueled by gasoline.

The Engine will aid more towards autonomy and efficiency. A survivor could be continually sending resources back to base with another survivor unloading the trains and sending the trains back to their original destination.

Tribes can send resource shipments between each other and role playing could benefit greatly from these types of relationships.

Rails

Rails will be crafted at one of the crafting stations and would be a mesh extruded along a spline that would allow a natural curve and course for the track.
track_01
track_02

Further Plans

  • I further plan to work on a refrigeration cart that would allow the transport of perishables.
  • Adding stopping points to allow for long looping tracks that can have multiple preset destinations

At this time, I do not plan on adding any sort of survivor transportation or allow building on the carts, because face it, that’s what dinos are for.

Power Cables

This mod it due to my disdain for the way the current power cable system looks.

The functionality of power cables is fine, I just think that instead of a metal bar with cables wrapped around it, having cables strung between anchors would look much more appealing.
The power cables would be spline meshes generated when the object is placed, hang realistically depending on the distance between the two anchors.

Here is a concept of what the power cables would look like and I have not started working on this mod just yet.
powerCables

Bait

This mod is not of my own design, this one is based off of some suggestions I have seen around the ARK community.
Simply put this mod would add a craftable item that would draw dinos near. This would help with hunting and taming.
This mod is going to require tweaking of the dino behavior.
This mod has also not been started.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I would love any feedback you could give as these are just as much for me as for the community.