In Drovoid ships were initially made of many small squares - this has the advantage of simplicity, both for the player when designing a ship but also for the engine. However, this was quite limiting in terms of the look and feel that could be achieved for the ships. Several players asked whether more variety could be added, and this is exactly what this update provides!
Here are a couple ships using triangular modules. The first is a simple attack ship, that looks quite aggressive!
The second is a rotating defense space station. You can find it in space somewhere outside of the asteroid belt.
If you look carefully you'll notice these (level 5) ships use a new type of module for connecting other modules to the power source (at center). These new modules are both conductive and are a data bus: they transmit both power and information. They allow for more compact ship designs but are available only at level 5 (all of this might change depending on game balance adjustments, of course).
Right now the triangular modules are essentially decorative, and provide only a weak protection. Still, the ships look so much better that you'll want to use them :-) Fortunately they are inexpensive and light weight, so there is no reason to go without.
The modules are available at level 1. The demo is updated:
This update required modifying several parts of the engine (graphics, physics and authoring tool). However in the end the change is relatively small and elegant as the slanted part of each module shape is encoded as a clip plane.
The full version of Drovoid is available in alpha on www.drovoid.com.
Enjoy!