I have posted a thread much like this is one in the general forum but just restating it. I have a feeling that Uber got the idea of metal planets from the combination of the death star and this planet called Cybertron. Cybertron is the fictional home of the Transformers (an awesome Hasbro franchise that all nerds should love) that is basically made of metal and thats right ENERGY (aka that blue stuff you see in the metal planet concept art). I have provided 2 pic of Cybertron and a Metal planet below (not my images): A resemblance right? What makes it even more incredibly similar is the fact that the planet cybertron has ancient weapons of mas destruction built into it which the metal planets WILL HAVE. I feel that they should have some sort of easter egg built into the metal planet's generation code like a robot or something (despite copyright issues) Anyway thats my hypothesis!
Or maybe transformers is for small children and uber got the idea of metal planets from planets being made of metal?
On top of this, metal planets were in the PA's predecessor Total Annihilation. From what I have heard of metal planets in PA, they have more in common with the Death Star in Star Wars than Transformers Cybertron. One is a massive battlestation, the other is the home planet to a race of machines. Given the origin of the machines in PA I would find a comparison to the Death Star more apt.
or throw a borg sphere into the cooking pot for good measure. they probably want o be near enough to allow a few associations and far enough to avoid licensing issues.
I'd suggest "Transformers is for small children, and those people who were small children when it came out in the 80s" if you want to be more accurate Although to be fair, Transformers did the whole "opposed robot factions fighting each other over ideological grounds" well before TA got on the scene. It shares quite a bit of background with PA in that sense Also iampetard has pointed out the most obvious explanation for metal planets in PA; the Core homeworld from TA and its entirely metal construction. In TA metal maps were the money maps, place an extractor anywhere for maximum resource collection, because it is all metal..
Transformers was made to sell toys. To my eternal regret, nobody ever made any TA-licensed micro machines. Although someone did make some really neat papercraft models, I'm too clumsy for that. I'd rather some die-cast peewees.
Your not the first to notice the transformer connection, here is a pic I made before showing a certain similarity to Unicron in his planet form (taken from For Backers Only: Planetary Biome Concepts. But seriously, you can't go wrong taking some inspiration from transformers, sentient machines that fight each other across the universe.
3D printers my friend. Just extract the 3D models direct from TA and print them in plastic yourself If you want a poseable figure, you'll need to edit the source models to include airgaps that turn them into articulated joints (i.e. ball joints) and print it lying down instead of standing, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Since some 3d printer kits are now available for ~$500 they are firmly in the hobby / enthusiast price range. Not cheap, certainly, but nowhere near the $10k+ you could have been paying a few years back.
Oh man, you're right. I'd never thought about this aspect of 3D printing before. This and augmented reality total annihilation, that'll be a childhood dream come true.
I've been keeping an eye out for 3D printers for ages, but I'm a pretty terrible painter so I'd need to get a full color one and those start getting pricey. Hopefully in a few years decent quality color ones will drop to the sub $1000 range... and the whole printing guns thing doesn't get them banned :/.
I've never really looked at colour printing (heh). I've always assumed that ABS or polycarb printers were single input, so was assuming that output would be equivalent to buying direct from Games Workshop or Airfix, and thus need painting. Regarding printing your own guns, there's a lot of scaremongering with precious little fact on at least one side of that argument. Printed plastics are only going to be useful for unstressed parts, and metal sintering (or EBM) printers are still megabucks, so printing in metal is out of hobbyist range. Also, blacksmiths are already perfectly capable of making metal parts and have been for hundreds of years; during WWII the Danish made Sten guns in bicycle shops. Any blacksmith/metalworker worth their salt should be able to put a basic Sten or AK-47 together if you give them the blueprints, that is actually the original intent of the weapon design :shock: I don't think a RepRap really stands up to that comparison; if they do get banned, I'd hope they already banned blacksmithing first :|
The main issue is that you can print the main and only traceable part of a gun in plastic allowing people to get easy access to untraceable semi-auto assault rifles, they may not be very durable but as long as it can get off more than a few shots it's something that is concerning, as is the printing of super high capacity mags. As you've said though it's not like people can't build weapons themselves if they really wanted to, I'm just concerned that governments are going to freak out and overreact by banning personal 3D printers . And that would suck because I would really like to be able to print out my own figurines and other bits and bobs some day . Short documentary on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DconsfGsXyA
I think 3D printing is blown out of proportion. It's not useful for any large scale industrial application, it's just that, a hobbyist toy. It's not going to turn into nanolathing anytime soon. You can print a few interesting shapes in a few flimsy materials on a small scale, congratulations. The whole thing stinks of new age propaganda. It's always zeitgeist idiots talking about this ****.
The cynic in me would suggest that the main forces behind demonising plastics printers are likely those corporations (e.g. Hasbro, Fisher-Price) whose business model is the making and selling of small plastic items. They are smelling a change in the waters that might affect their bottom line Otherwise it would only be the EBM printer market that paranoid government would be worried about. They'd have the backing of all the car manufacturers there, as an EBM printer would also let you print replacement suspension members, brake discs, bolts... any metal parts you like in fact. However EBM printers are still in the tens of thousands (it's a high temperature vacuum process, and thus needs large and power hungry kit), and anyone willing to spend that to get hold of a full auto weapon can just buy a black market one To a point, however the commercial scale stuff is pretty good. Take Arcam AB who sell machines to 3D print prosthetic implants in titanium (e.g. hip replacement), or machines intended for the aerospace industry. It's not all bedroom hobbyists with printers made from pine offcuts and Rasberry Pi's :mrgreen:
As correct as you are about car manufacturers being worried about loss of sales for spare parts; they're chasing after EBM themselves to cut down on manufacturing costs.
For large runs, I was under the impression that standard fabrication techniques were still superior (better cost per unit and time to manufacture per unit). EBM type machines excel when you have unique variations for each part (e.g. custom hip prosthetics) or for prototyping (e.g. concept vehicle creation), rather than anything related to the standard production line. Having said that I have no dealing with the auto trade, so they may well have a good use for EBM manufacturing outside of the design stage. I'd love an EBM machine myself, but I don't have the money spare, or the space at home to be able to use one. I'll have to make do with a MakerBot or RepRap instead
Instead of buying your own 3d printer, you can just order stuff online. Sites like Sculpteo allow you to upload 3d models and have them shipped to you. In color, if you want them to.
interesting... i just noticed the metal planet seems to be attatched to a ring... maybe that's how it holds orbit? (but i could also just be an idiot and it could be the terrain detail)
