For your Full Thrusty pleasure:
http://home.comcast.net/~kudby/ring5.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kudby/ring1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kudby/ring4.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kudby/ring2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kudby/ring3.jpg
This was my attempt at making a Ringworld/Halo for the tabletop. It has
no real value except as scenery, much like any custom planet. It was made
using the inner hoop of a wooden 4" embroidery hoop, available at Michaels
craft store for around $2.
I started by texturing the inner side of the ring with spackle (the paste used
to patch holes in drywall). I tried to have a good variety of mountains,
ridges, and flat spaces for water. Two coats of white primer followed once the
spackle was dry. I used solid colors for the
base -- dark blue, dark brown, etc. Then Iightened the paint by cutting
it with white and did successive layers of drybrushing. The forests were made
using a stipple method, while the bodies of water were lightly drybrushed with
white to give them some depth. I finished by
drybrushing the peaks of the highest mountains/ridges with white to make
snowy peaks.
The whole ring got a coat of Dull-Cote, then I glued on a strip of
printed circuit plastic sheeting I liberated from inside an old Dell
keyboard. I figured that a lot of renderings of Ringworld/Halo showed
all kinds of industrial greeblies on the outside of the ring, so I used the
printed circuit sheeting to make an effect of that nature.
The ship in the picture is Brigade Models' Dortmund-class battlecruiser,
included for comparison. Sorry that the photography is gawdawful -- I
think my Kodak digicam is on its last legs.
Thanks,
> On 2/19/06, Andreas Udby <javelin98@lycos.com> wrote:
Cool, it's a baby Ringworld! (given the supposed scale of the original, and
the supposed scale of FT ships, that is!)
Craft stores have all the cool stuff for scenery building.
> Brian Burger wrote:
Nice!
> Cool, it's a baby Ringworld! (given the supposed scale of the
Well, considering that we don't put suns and planets in the
correct scale on the table either it should be ok:-)
Yeah, well, considering the construction in the novel had a diameter of 2 AU's
and a width of 997,000 miles, doing a proportional one would have consisted of
just making a hoop of 1mm thick wire around a yellow marble and calling it a
day! I was just aiming for something that looked cool on the table. And I know
my son can't wait to fly a ship through the middle of the thing...
Thanks, Andreas
> > Cool, it's a baby Ringworld! (given the supposed scale of the
Well, another take on this is that it doesn't have to be a Niven-esque
ringworld. It could be like Halo - huge, but repacing a planet in orbit
around the sun, rather than being a ring defining the orbit. In any case, the
one that you've built is awesome and should definitely be used in your space
games!
:)
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, Andreas Udby wrote:
> Yeah, well, considering the construction in the novel had a diameter
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default
.asp?SRC=lycos10
> _______________________________________________
> Well, another take on this is that it doesn't have to be a Niven-
Make the ring about 1,850,000km in diameter, and the rotation
required to produce a pseudo-gravity of 1g would be one revolution
per Earth day, and an inclined, edge-on-to-the-sun orientation would
produce a fairly natural day-night cycle. This little construction
project would have a diameter roughly 13 times that of Jupiter, and you'd
"only" need to make the ring about 15Km wide substantially to exceed the total
land surface of the Earth...
Ooops, that should have been a *radius* of 1,850,000 km, so the diameter would
be about 26 times that of Jupiter.
Best regards, Robert Bryett rbryett@mail.com
[quoted original message omitted]
> Robert N Bryett wrote:
> Make the ring about 1,850,000km in diameter, and the rotation
If you're building on that scale, then make the width 15,000km. That's
still more than paper-thin compared to the radius, but it's still a
sizeable fraction of Earth's equator. I'd think the 15km version would be
claustrophobic, This scale would be more like one of Iain Banks' Orbitals from
the Culture series.
Well, my take on all of this goes about the same as my take I had on planets
when I used them.
Ships can be on a bigger scale than planets, asteroids and other celestial
objects because they're simulating a blown-up sensor picture that you
see on a viewscreen anyway, whereas the ship itself only occupies a tiny dot
in the
middle of the model on the table/floor. Whereas asteroids and/or
planets can occupy the entire area and don't need scaling on a Mk. I Eyeball's
HUD. If the middle of the ship passes anywhere within the asteroid or planet's
radius, it's probably dead.
This allows you to use anything from basketballs to round stool cushions as
planets while you use Micro Machines or GZG miniatures as ships, and lava
rocks or other stones as asteroids, and you don't have to worry about
comparative scale.
Hence, the Halo they've got there works just fine for me.
My own $0.03 (two cents plus inflation)
E
[quoted original message omitted]
That is really cool!
I'm no vac-head, but I want to fly ships through it too! Scale debates
aside, that is some really nice work.
> For your Full Thrusty pleasure:
> using the inner hoop of a wooden 4" embroidery hoop, available at