02 Today I Worked On

The Control Room.

The room which you can think of as the command center for your rig. I have always loved the looks of sprawling control panels and screens like you might see on large vessels. I think it would be really fitting for the setting of the game to have a similar sort of thing for the control room. Since I had to redo it anyways because of how the new interaction system works, I thought I might as well spend a bit of time thinking about how I could make the room more interesting. Originally, it was a very large room with lots of empty space with doors on 3 of the 4 walls, and a Pressure Chamber used for long ascents on the fourth, being the east wall. Next to the pressure chamber was equipment that might be used for diving on the left, and storage spaces for suits on the right along with a basin for them to dry above and a set of lockers for a more short term personal storage. 

I decided it should be two rooms. I think a slight separation from the pressure chamber might give you a little bit of comfort, only for there to be a single pane of glass in the center of the wall. It's like the glass wants to tell you it will do something to protect you, but of course in a worst case scenario it would not. I extended the room out over the west side a little bit more, and moved the life boats slightly further over the edge as well. On the west wall, there is a large set of terminals and screens with room for a crew to observe the daily duties. In the center facing towards the pressure chamber to the east is a small desk standing by itself with company communications and the company store visible. It's the perfect spot for a captain to sit back and keep an eye out on everything that is happening.

On the east end of the north wall is a door leading to the Drone Control room and the Tensioner C. Just opposite to the south is a door leading to the main hallway with the the Tensioner D, the lower restrooms, and further east down the hallway the deck elevator. It happens to make a great makeshift fishing spot, too. Two doors lead in and out of the room holding the Pressure Chamber. On the opposite wall, the west side, two doors also lead to a deck with 3 life boats. This would be where everyone makes their attempt at escape in the event of an emergency. 

There are a few duties unique to the control room, and they have to be done in order to make your daily quota and progress. You can't study new fishies without being able to find them first, after all. One of the consoles lets you run what's called Noise Processing. Noise Processing looks for unique sounds among the usual sounds of the sea. Once you get a profile, you can send it to the Signal Triangulator. There, you can use your sonar stations to triangulate the actual location of the fish. After that it's as simple as taking a drone out for a swim to study it!

Two of the stations will probably be unused for now, as I need to sort out the best way to make and use them. Both of them will let the command room get more information from the drones, in different ways. Finally, the last set just shows a live summary of what's going on around the rig. It will include things such as the health of different equipment, the power grid, statuses, as well as cameras. How much information you get is based on what sort of upgrades you've bought or installed. 

I'm always open to ideas or suggestions. I do like the current layout and vision for this room, but I feel like there are ways to improve. Apart from that room, I am also working on improving my skills or lack thereof in creating models and textures for these things. I'm very new to texture painting and just learning about how PBR works right now, so apologies if my initial content doesn't end up being as good as I want it to be. I made around half of what I wanted to today, because properly importing my assets I made into the game ended up having a lot more issues than I had last time. I was also trying to get cameras to sync properly on co-op as well but have not yet figured it out fully. It may be something that I add later on when I have more experience. The same may be the case for the physics props I wanted to have, since while they do sync properly they often like to be haunted and move on their own. But I guess that could be a feature? Probably not! Hopefully the extra length of this was acceptable. This room deserves a little bit extra attention, that's all. Hopefully it ends up being a cozy command center!