DS9 Devlog

You Can Run Now

A run button, two habitat corridors that finally go somewhere, real panel detail on the hull, and a round of fixes from my latest walk-through.

A long habitat ring corridor with blue-lit door frames numbered 37, wall displays and a red zig-zag carpet running toward a ribbed bulkhead at the far end

Deep Space Nine is big. Walking it at a stately pace was getting a bit much, so today you can run.

Running

Double-tap W (or the up arrow), or hold Shift while you walk, and you move at 1.8 times walking speed. On a phone, push the joystick all the way to its edge. The view widens a little while you run, so it feels quicker without making you queasy. The doors were the tricky part: at walking speed they slide open just in time, but at a run you’d faceplant into them. Now they open earlier when you’re moving fast, so you can sprint down a corridor and through a door without slowing down.

The habitat corridor keeps going

The habitat ring corridor used to have two locked doors at its far ends. Both open now, onto more corridor. One continues the main run, with more bays and section numbers counting up past 36. The other is a side branch. Both end at the closed, ribbed bulkheads you see on the show, the kind that tell you “this is as far as this set goes” in a way that looks like it belongs on a station.

A short corridor stub ending at a ribbed grey bulkhead, with a ladder-like wall panel on the left and a purple-and-blue LCARS display on the right

There was a catch. The side corridors’ ceilings came out almost black, because there was nowhere for light to bounce from in those narrow stubs. I added some hidden surfaces that exist only while the lighting is calculated, to bounce light up into the ceilings, and then disappear. Now they match the main corridor.

The hull got detail

Outside, the hull beyond the docking ring now has panels, vents and ports in the style of the original studio model, and so does the Ops tower on top. Fine detail like this can shimmer and crawl as you move, so I flew past it at high and low speeds and watched for that. It holds still.

The Defiant docked under an upper pylon, with panel and vent detail across the docking ring and pylon behind it

Vic’s, the O’Briens and the Orb

Vic’s lounge picked up some details: the band’s music stands are on stage (dark lacquer with a brass diamond), the tablecloths are round, and there’s a proper footlight trough along the stage edge.

Vic’s Place: three music stands with brass diamonds on the stage under the violet neon sign, a piano at left and lamp-lit round tables in front

My favourite bug of the day was in Vic’s too. Each table lamp threw a soft pool of light on its tablecloth, with a hot pink ring around the edge. The light was simply brighter than the stored lighting could hold, and where it hit that ceiling the colour went wrong. I made the lamp’s own light gentler and hid a separate glow inside the shade, and the ring is gone.

At the O’Briens’, Molly’s cabinet has drawers and doors now, and her own crayon drawing hangs on the wall: a house, a sun and a stick figure. In the Temple, the Orb is now a single hourglass of light, not two balls stacked on top of each other.

On phones

My latest walk-through focused on phones and tablets. The turbolift panel now fits the screen in two columns, the prompt chip doesn’t get cut off, first-time riders get a hint about how lifts work, and the lamp in the lift roof is no longer a blown-out white disc when you hold the phone upright.

You can see what I’m working on right now on the home page.

See you tomorrow.