MyRobot Development Part 57

Video shows the summary, text shows the technical!

This week:

• Desert Landmarks

• Desert Mechanics

Desert Landmarks

So why am I spending this entire week on the map? Well because that is the fastest way for me to get to working on the story. For there to be a story, there must be places to go to, people to talk to, things to find. Hence the dire need to finish the biomes as quickly as possible, and this week I finished the desert biome.

There are now safe zones which are barricaded with sharp logs. Story wise these bases were made by a tribe of cute desert robots. But more on that later. The pieces are there for when I come back to implement them.

There are some tombs with traps and deadly pitfalls for you and your robot to traverse with amazing loot at the end.

Desert Mechanics

The desert is pretty darn big and mostly consists of downhill and uphill sand dunes. it can be overwhelming trying to go from A to B. To address this issue I added wind turbo pads at random but useful locations throughout. This is so that if you find yourself in a ditch or lost without direction, you can just follow these pads to get back to top speed and find your way back.

Another mechanic is the sort of timed survival; you have to hurry before the night comes because the bull worms chase you, and you have to hurry before the day because the sun boils your robot.

To balance these two mechanics, there are now safe zones in the desert that prevent bull worms from going through. And during the day, clothing now blocks the sun from your robot. There are 16 different body parts to cover your robot with; gloves, hats, dresses, etc. Each body part covered adds 30% to the time it takes for your robot to malfunction from too much desert sunlight, starting with a base timer of 30 seconds.

So for example: having a hat and a dress covers head, hips, torso, and both thighs. That's 5 body parts covered = 150% extra time = 75 seconds in the sun before overheating. The day cycles are set to 4 minutes of daytime so every clothing piece counts!

So now the desert is done! WOOO forest biome is next! We are approaching the first release of the MyRobot game already next month. Still plenty to do but it's gonna be very fun hooking up the AI to the desert and forest biomes.

Stay tuned!