Tuesday 14 August 2012

Cheap Fast Infinity Terrain - Space Station Part 2

Changed my mind about how I will lay out my space station.

I am doing away with purpose-built corridors and instead am simply making rooms.  I will separate "rooms" with a corridor-sized space.

This allows more flexibility in room design and simply in the ability to easily re-arrange the board in new patterns of rooms and "corridors".

I do not have any "corridor pieces" per se (like the painted one on the left); this should make layouts more flexible

Using this premise I made a bunch of buildings in my usual 10cm-increment pattern (10x10cm or 10x20cm rooms). Doors as usual at 3cm side by 4cm high; inset 1cm from a wall edge.

20/20 Hindsight:  My experiments with my quasi-Middle Eastern terrain showed me that offsetting the doors is important to maximise the usable space in a room, and to minimize firing lanes and angles. 

Thoughts: There is a 5mm lip from the corridor areas into the room.  I may have to use a strip of foamboard in the corridors in order to make rooms and corridors "level"

I will probably not put any piping on the outside of the "rooms" in order that they can fit neatly together in any pattern.

I also might paint the corridor sections with metallic spray paint and then use a black wash to "grimy" it.  I think metallic might be good to make it seem more "spaceship-y". Failing that grey paint will be option 2.  I'll try to prep and paint some tomorrow.

The problem with the "no corridors" approach is that the rooms look like, well, separate buildings rather than part of a whole. Painting it all metallic, and using a strip of foamboard to "raise" areas between the rooms should sort this out.

I'm getting faster now - I freehand cut all the foamboard and assembled the rooms in under 2 hours while watching the Olympics, despite the fiddly flyscreen-mesh flooring slowing me up. 
Total Elapsed Time:  2hrs 45 minutes

Remember, my "Quick Cheap Terrain" terrain construction challenge is this:
To produce a "unified" terrain board; that is fully modular; costs under $100 to make; and can be completed in 10-12 hours or less (a "weekend") solo.

8 comments:

  1. Very nice. Some thoughts, though:

    Don't use silver or grey. A light, warm beige, something that reflects light well and opens up a room, is going to make an enclosed space like this feel much more livable. Of course, that's going to get dirtied up a lot afterward, chipped and dinged and worn down, but start with something pleasant.

    Second, something on the corridor sides of the rooms would help bring them together. Conduits and piping along the upper edges, control consoles and access panels flush against the edges between doors, that sort of thing would help tie them all together and bring them together.

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  2. Thanks for the ideas. I used a brown-ey colour for the Haqqislam-Middle-Eastern buildings to make them more "organic" and it was a nice colour. Wouldn't a spaceship need to be a bit grim, Aliens-style? The Infinity Nomad ships were ex prison ships, weren't they?

    I agree with the exterior piping etc. I will be using Antenociti doors and panels and furniture, and the interior gets piping (like the room on the bottom left of the shot) and boxes sticking off the walls. I'm just a bit worried that if it is outside, it will cut down on the modularity of the setup (i.e. I can't push rooms directly against each other when I DON'T want a corridor between them. Jury's still out - it WOULD improve things a lot...

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  3. Could you paint stripes on the outside to look like piping, that way, you could still push them together.

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  4. Having colour coded lines on the walls or floors would give good unity to tie it together and also give it a real research facility/hospital vibe... definitely using that suggestion!

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  5. I know this is an older post, but I just discovered it through the magic of TMP's forums. Here are my suggestions:

    The big thing that you can do is choose a single paint scheme and design aesthetic for all of the room exteriors. Buildings are owned by individuals and have more variety in their paint jobs, but one floor of one building? That’s going to have the same paint scheme and the same style signage throughout. Tie the outside of each room together, and it’ll look like one building, even if the interiors have wildly different designs.

    I’d also suggest using scatter terrain within the hallways themselves. Think about the sorts of things that you’d see inside corridors that you wouldn’t see outside on the streets: big potted plants, pictures with frames on the walls, including emergency exit maps, desks for receptionists or security personnel, even a couple of ‘trip hazards’ like buckets and mops or ‘wet floor’ signs would help indicate that we’re inside of a building.

    And don’t forget that not every room needs actual doors. A common area is likely accessed by doorways without open and shut doors. Leave a wide space between rooms, and fill it with couches and tables (with magazines, nobody leaves magazines on tables outside), and potted plants. Or make a cafeteria complete with rickety tables and chairs and vending machines with a small kitchenette piece (fridge, sink, and small counter that you can push against a wall.) Those are great visual clues that will mean nobody will think they are looking at a street scene.

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    1. Warren your feedback is most welcome. This project is still semi complete (it was intended for Infinity which I rage quit a while ago). However just recently I bought some "scatter terrain" - Antenociti's Workshop has some excellent sci fi panels, cabinets - and evens beds and couches.

      So it will be updated again - your ideas were timely and inspirational - thanks!

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  6. Hey evilleMonkeigh,
    I just ordered a bunch of Antenociti's workshop stuff for my own spaceship corridor project. Looking forward to seeing what you do with them.

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    1. Antenociti's stuff is great and well priced - you won't regret it. The only issue is sometimes he is "out of stock" (doesn't he cast his own anyway???) so sometimes you will not be able to get everything you want (I missed out on a control room set I wanted)

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