Auto Turret Behavior

So I have talked about turrets in the past, and in looking through my past posts I realized I didn't have anything written down about them.  The recipe for making one will include at least 1 energy crystal, crafted metal pieces that will include enough for the dimensions of the turret, which will be 12 triblocks, and possibly something else I haven't determined yet.  They will probably look a little like the Daleks from Dr. Who or the laser towers from Zelda with a floating globe that indicates .  When crafted I want to give the creator the option of the scanning range in sets of 45 degrees.  So for example they could set it to scan a 90 degree angle, or they could set it to 360 if they wanted, though it would be less effective as it would take longer to get back to a given point.  Also the larger the scan field, the less radial distance the scan will cover

When attacked the auto turret will automatically fire a shot directly back to where it was shot from, and then it will scan in a 45 degree angle the area from which the shot was fired for approximately 5 seconds.  The change of scanning also increases total distance of possible scanning to the maximum while it searches, but once it resumes it's normal scan the distance will go back to the original amount.

I want these towers to shoot a constant stream of soldier level weapon fire once locked on a target.  A frontal assault on one is just not possible unless a team of least 15 soldiers are all attacking it at once, but I do hope to have a relatively dumb AI so smart players can defeat them if they work it right.  All turrets will have the ability to fire in 360 degrees  as well as directly up and mostly down so getting around behind one is not a guaranteed destruction.

One other thing I will consider is that if a player near a turret does their laser pointer in a specific direction, the turret will briefly scan that area more thoroughly.  This could possibly be a problem though as spies could intentionally point a turret away while enemy players pass through an area, so I'll probably have to set a timer on it and a limit to how often a player could "direct" the turrets attention.

Distress Signals

I have been thinking about what could be done to indicate to other players of one's faction that someone is in distress.  So along with the laser pointer idea, I had a thought that distress signals could be sent by pointing their laser pointer directly up.  So long that a player is not under anything (like in a cave) and they are using the pointing function (which is a double use for placement of blocks and structures as well as quick communication), then if frozen the beam automatically shoots directly up and an alarm will be triggered if they are close enough to a communications structure( basically within the same hexfield as one).  The alarm volume will depend on how many distress calls are being sent at any given time and will be relayed back to the main base.  I envision a large map on one of the walls which will indicate distress signals by a radiating hex, the larger the radiation, the more attention grabbing it will be.  So basically it would provide a player controlled mechanism to quickly indicate incoming attacks.

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This could prove to be very useful in the future. So I thought I would link it here.  It's pretty boring behind the scenes stuff that has to happen.

Semester is almost done and Headgear

Ok I know that I have been rather quiet on this site for some time now.  The nice thing is that my semester is almost done.  I will have completed all of the prerequisites for grad school, and now I am just waiting to see if I will be accepted into the program or not.  Even if I am not accepted I have already learned a ton and I have a good springboard for moving forward with this project.  I will be focusing a lot more over the summer, so expect a lot more in the way of posts, though no guarantees of course.

So one idea I have had was to somewhat copy other FPS games in introducing purely aesthetic headgear for personalization.  In this game I plan on a standard headgear being the antennae, and so at first it could be different configurations of antennae.  If the game proves to be successful, then later on I will be able to commission an artist to make some better looking head items.  This will have to wait until a game model is put together of course.  This will also be another way for the game to get income and/or promote the game.