I've been making really good progress with the game and the updated ship builder to the point where i am very close to launching it in a new version (definitely by end of this month, probably sooner).

First off I'll list the new features:

• Much faster and better coded than previous.
• Robust Joint and Beam modelling such that it can reliably make most Frame shapes and models.
• Relatively Robust armour generation through use of spline surface. Again can do most shapes and geometrys. In any case both are far in excess of the previous ship builder and it does allow for more or less any shape.
• More real and 3d looking ship, internal components are joined together and onto the frames rather than floating, the external components attach onto the armour internally.
• More Engine Designs - Nacelle based designs with both forward and aft thrust along with turreted dual thrusters. The turreted thrusters will orientate towards peak drift vector, targetted acceleration vector and slow down vectors. Ie. they wont initially orientate to react rotation unless they happy to be facing that way anyway.
• Updated textures
• Updated UI, draw a line in 3d to create a beam chain joining up where required.
• 3D printer file output

Of that design I have made a 3d printer friendly output (namely it thickens the armour plates so its not wafer thin and then exports as a standard .stl file). As it stands it prints out the entire model but if this idea proves popular i'll do a airfix style print output model (ie. frames and internal components printed out, armour and external components to be glued on). Hopefully the ship designs that can be made are compelling and interesting enough with the new builder that people want to print them out! Being a stl file people can do what they want with the model as its theirs, all i ask is that you reference how it was made :D.

To get to the finish line these are the activities i need to do..

• Add in VR mode.. This should be relatively easy to do as things like drawing a beam in 3d space are relatively easy. This will just need testing and linking things together.
• Setup export into the game. Again this should be easy in particular as it uses the same component construction starter, the main bit will be getting the damage model into the updated armour shaders. Additionally adding in rotatable thrusters should be easy as the flight model updates each frame anyway, so its just a case of providing logic of (if go forward orientate to the closest vector, if turning point down etc.).
• Paintable components, namely the new engines incase everyone wants it in grey.
• Minor tweaks to the printable model (namely armour thickness is fine but extrusion thickness is too small as you can see from my printout).
• Add in support for hangers (again). This is my least priority since i dont feel bombers are working correctly.

Once the above is done and im happy with what it produces, i'll be marketing things a bit more in line with the build/fight/print it style game trailer as I think its fairly unique selling point being able to print out objects you create in game.