Space Station Gravity

A constantly reforming-and-collapsing black hole.

Thinking about how I should design levels for a game has me thinking about space station designs that would support gravity. With our current level of technology the only valid design I can imagine is a spinning station, but I'd prefer to avoid that (I feel like you'd need too big a scale for realistic non-curved levels in a curved environment (think Mass Effect's Citadel)). Thinking about futuristic ways of implementing gravity...and thus...a constantly reforming-and-collapsing black hole.

On a scale from 1-10 how dumb does this sound?

 

I'd say about a 6.

Just go with the spinning station. They don't have to be all that big, and you can always just ignore the curvature if you need to for some reason (though I think it'd be more interesting if you didn't).

 

I want a sort of hub to which all areas are connected. I'd also prefer somewhat reasonable player navigation between the hub and the separate areas, where they aren't just jumping between scenes or even changing gravity axes (I was thinking about putting the entire map in one scene with transportation between different areas).

The only way I see to do this is ME's Citadel style, where the areas are separate but the wheel is the hub and loops back on itself. This seems to necessitate both a really long horizontal map, and that that map loops back on itself...the former seems unappealing from a design standpoint, and the latter seems scary from a programming standpoint.

Are there alternatives I'm missing?

 

Well what sort of game are we talking about? Is this a 2D side-scroller? 3D first/third person? Top-down?

 

Top down. I've been posting it in FF (it's there now).

 

That tells us nothing.
Please provide a link.

By my understanding, you just want simple carousel effect, for each map section, to be able wrap.
https://sorgalla.com/jcarousel/

But that highly depends on your design.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/fee...-2021-new-years-edition.1031194/#post-6677353

A couple GIFs from that thread showing the gameplay and perspective:

Your link doesn't seem related, or if it is I don't see how...

 

I didn't connect dots that you were referring to recent Feedback Friday. Probably too late in the night for me.
Not everyone follows either that thread. So is worth giving reference as well.
Now I can imagine what you mean and about mechanics you may expect.

Regarding black hole, you simply want some sorce of pull. Perhaps in some selected rooms?
You can have simply pull vector toward, when entering the room. And increase pull strength, when closer to source.

With the complexity of your rooms, is that they are irregular in shapes.
It would be easier, if you have them generated procedural. Someone had already mentioned that in one of Feedback Friday.

Do you really need that wrap effect? I think may be unnecessary complexity.
Otherwise you need match rooms form one edge to opposite one. I just mean doors.
However, you could either move rooms when close to one of the edge, from other edge. Then teleport a player when approach / crossing the edge.

But wrapping can be confusing in such scenario. There is little to no reference point, where player is at given case scenario. Unless having minimap?

 

When I refer to gravity I don't mean simulating it in Unity, just as a conceptual source. Trying to answer the question, "how does one generate gravity for a space station?" In the real world seemingly the only answer is "spin/bop/twist it"

 

To me it sound really stupid unless you're talking massive space station.

the problem is gravity works with the inverse square law and you're really close to the center of mass so the gradient is aggressive, the gravitational difference between your feet and your head might be factors apart.

also if your forming and collapsing it (at what frequency?) its just gonna create gravity waves, do think it's gonna work like a strength dimmer? (this is just an assumption, i don't really have any facts to back this up.)

if you wanna go with a mass generating the gravity how about putting it inside a 4D container of sorts to make up the distance, but why not just have a technology that generates gravity if you're going into scifi territory?

either spin or thrust, if you accelerate at 9.81 m/s you're gonna experience the same effect as earth's gravity ASL, but this isn't actually gravity.

btw, on the ISS they just float around, they don't do none of that, when they sleep they basically tangle themselves in a hammock-thingy and if they wanna put something on a table they use velco or magnets.
do you want gravity so the movement will be simply and you don't have to create a complex 0G controller or is it for realism sake (humans need gravity to survive, in 0G we slowly turn to jelly)

 

If it was fast enough the waves wouldn't be very detectable, though good point about the inverse square law and distance. The collapse-and-reformation thing was to keep the gravitational effect from getting to full strength, but it's been a while since physics class and I don't remember full details on how gravitational fields work...

As for why I want it, kind of both. The space station is meant to be used over an extended period of time (it's a research station) so it needs gravity to be realistic, and the gameplay I already have kind of assumes gravity.

Thrust...thrust I didn't think of. I wonder if you could have a station within the gravity well of a planet or sun, and exerting constant thrust to maintain its orthogonal position, and the combination of the two would create a normal gravitational effect?

 

you mean basically hover above a point(on what ever body) with the station thruster instead of being in an actual orbit? yes that would create a uniform force on the station in the opposite direction of the thrust(assuming rigidbodies with not flexible joints, blah blah blah), I wonder if it'll have any other implications beside the energy consumption for the propulsion.

 

OK. So how the gravity may affect your game?
Are you planning some gravitational mechanics?
It doesn't fit to me, to be honest. Unless you have something already planned.
Why is gravity important in this context?

 

Yeah, that's it. Obviously it's a lot of energy usage but "nuclear finally works and we have lots of energy" isn't unreasonable for a sci-fi setting.

This space station is meant for research, meaning people are living there for years, hence they need gravity for the human body to function properly. Additionally, the way my game plays now doesn't fit a zero-g environment, and I don't necessarily want it to.

These mean the space station needs to be designed in a way that produces gravity, while also allowing for the level design I'm interested in (a fully connected world with a hub).

 

Yeah that's a totally other thing from what is discussed, just thought it's worth a mention.

You know, if you have the resources to get a 0G controller (time to create or money to buy) you could use that for EVA activity in "normal" gameplay and also allow the station to have some failure regarding gravity (could also do air lock failure and stuff), but I don't know what's the actual game apart from it taking place in a space station

 

That's a good idea. I'll add it to the list. I'm still trying to nail down the main gameplay loop (part of which requires some level design, which is why I made this thread). Thanks.

 

OK. So with a top-down view, it seems to me all you need is to make the world wrap around in one axis, right? That's a very common thing in older video games; Asteroids wrapped around in two. Should be no big deal. And the story explanation for it is simple: the space station is shaped like a torus, and spinning to produce artificial gravity.

 

Well the other thing I think I mentioned was that I'm interested in a hub area, to which all other areas are connected. I don't see how that could work with a torus, though it would work with something like the Citadel.

 

I say just don't mention it and use gravity. It's a widely accepted scifi trope that they somehow figured out how to do this in the future. Gravity on any Star Trek or Star Wars spaceship/station doesn't make sense either.
It's worse if you explain it imho.

 

If you're using a black hole for gravity you still need the station to be curved. The only difference is that the gravity would pull into the center of the curvature, rather than pushing out as you'd get from spinning. Either way, the curvature will depend on the size of the station, not the amount of gravity.

Consider: If you have a long, flat surface and a gravity source sitting just under the middle of it, what directions are things at the end being pulled in?

That aside...

Is the station traveling? Because that's a way that you'd get legitimate inertia for almost a whole journey. Accelerate for the first half of the journey, flip over and apply the same force to deccelerate for the second half, and the only bits where there's no "gravity" are at either end and when you're flipping over in the middle. Note that this requires acceleration, not stable motion.

 

Doesn't propulsion also require the expulsion of mass? At least as far as we know, that is. Equal and opposite reaction. The propulsion has to be acting on something, and a space station doesn't have an atmosphere to push against.

But again, that's a common sci-fi trope: we just figured out some way around that some time in the future.

 

Thanks for the responses. I might be obsessing over something insignificant.

 

Star Trek has gotten by with little more of an explanation than a few references to "gravity plating", and they have done ok. Star Wars I don't believe even addresses gravity in canon. I think you're overthinking it. People have generally accepted sci fi needs gravity in space so it can be relatable to us earth living humans, without knowing how it actually works.

But my argument against blackhole gravity from a realism angle:

Spoiler

A problem with gravity from an external source, like a blackhole, is the gravity would act against the station and everyone inside the station. So everyone inside the station would be weightless relative to the station. Even if a space station was orbiting just beyond the event horizon of a black hole, the occupants of the station would still be weightless relative to the station, even though the gravitational forces they are subjected to are orders of magnitude higher than on the surface of earth.

This is the same thing we see in earth's orbit on the ISS. The astronauts inside the ISS are being pulled rather significantly by earth's gravity, but so is the ISS by the same amount. So the astronauts are weightless relative to the ISS, even though they actually are in full freefall due to earth's gravity (they just have an extreme enough lateral velocity to fall around the earth indefinitely, instead of straight down into it).

 

I'm thinking the living area of an O'Neill cylinder could be laid out internally as an octagon instead of curved, with angled bridges connecting each of the 8 sides. That's probably how we would do it in real life, since building structures on a curved surface is incredibly difficult.

 

I wouldn't call it necessarily difficult. Sure there is bit more math and more mechanical aspect involved.
But for large scale space structures, it would be more than anything very inefficient.
Typically transporting curved elements, would take more space in cargo bay, than any other flat counterpart.

Well there is major question to ask here, as you not doing scientific game really? So not need to keep to science to be strict. In the end, you got some living blobs, growing in the space station. How scientific is that, if nothing more than a fantasy

There are tons of games taking place in space and ignoring even mentioning about gravity. All are ok with settled environment.

Sure you can write lore, if you desire, which will include gravity explanation in game.
But from the point of gameplay view, unless you can turn on / off gravity and affect what is leaving on the station, there is no really point diving into it, of how gravity function ingame.

Mind, in 2D topdown game, is hard to visualize low / lack of gravity. You could of course "disable" friction and let things to float, if that matters and wanting going that route.

However, I think you got more important challenges to deal with at this point.
For the most, fun factor. You got some good ground there however. So keep building on it.

What you could also do, regarding gravity in a game, is the mission to ensuring, gravity generator, or something, don't blow, or shut down for whatever reason. And your objective is to protect / fix it. When fail, blow things up and game over. No need for additional mechanics, related to gravity

 

The lore side of it is important to me, since I'm planning for this game to kind-of-sort-of be part of a series I'm working towards (one might call it "loose canon," aha). And the blobs aren't intended to just be blobs in the end - that's just the representation while I'm working on gameplay.

But yeah, I recognize this isn't something I should get hung up on.

 

I'm not sure why this matters?

The station and the hole need to somehow be a fixed distance from one another, otherwise it just wouldn't work anyway. Eg: the station be a ring built around the black hole in the center. So while the station and its occupants have the same gravity acting on them, the resulting acceleration is different, and that acceleration is what sticks things to each other.

The reason that astronauts on the ISS float in relation to the ISS is not that they have the same gravity, it's that they both have the same total acceleration. Note that I have the same gravity as the chair I am sitting on, and the floor below it, and so on with very gradual changes down the the ground and the core of the Earth. The reason I stick to my chair is that I am accelerating towards the core of the Earth, and there's solid stuff between me and it, and a roughly equal amount of solid stuff on the other side of that center of gravity being accelerated in the opposite direction.

 

That's true if you're orbiting a black hole(just like any other body), what the OP said (in the OP atleast) is what if the black hole is a part of the station, sort like what is shown in the tardis on the "journey to the center of the tardis" episode (where clara falls in) i imagine

 

That’s not how black holes work, sorry.

Matter gives off the same amount of gravity regardless of if it’s a black hole or not.

Also, a black hole with only 1G is not nearly enough to be sustainable.

We make tiny black holes in particle accelerators by forcing atoms close enough together that the convergence of their gravitational waves is enough to create one temporarily, but at no point do they gain gravity.

If our sun were to suddenly become a black hole we would still have the exact same orbit.

Black holes aren’t some giant space vacuum like some movies and tv would lead you to believe.

 

I was under the impression everyone here gets that, the reason it's a black hole is to basically save space, a black hole has the best packing density(edit: efficiency), hehe

but yeah, worth a mention.

 

Confession time: I forgot. In my original response to you actually, where I mentioned that it had been a while since physics class, where I was talking about pulsing a "gravitational wave," yeah...I was, ahem, Not_Sure about that.

But overall, I've come to realize that the black hole idea, ahem, sucks.

Right now I'm just handwaving the gravity thing, and proceeding with a regular circle-ish shape for my hub level.

 

I think you’re over thinking it.

Just use treknobable.

 

I don't think @EternalAmbiguity was going for a ring world. But everything you're saying is correct of course. I don't believe anything I said is incorrect though, just that what I said is limited to cases where the station and occupants are experiencing the same forces.

 

Constant 1g acceleration in a loop between two stargates

but seriously just use a cheesy gravity generator or equip everyone with magboots.

 

I always liked the term “gravity pump“ because it’s such a crazy complicated thing mashed with an extremely simplistic tool. Which is hysterical to me.