/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Hey /diy/nosaurs!
Has anyone heard from battlemechdood? I remember him taking some time off to study for finals but haven't seen any threads in ages. Did I just miss them or has he not posted?
Archives reveal no 'new' threads...
>Pic related screenshot from this video
http://youtu.be/UbK9WXhUVug

>>425498
(for anyone trying to dissect this, the clocks run on seconds--top one is 0.2 seconds, the maximum ROF of the gun, and the bottom is 0.4 seconds. The magazine size of the machinegun is 150 rounds. The thermometer clicks on when the gun begins to overheat.)

(Also it's not a legit circuit diagram... 'wires' are just digital or analog 'hot', assuming everything is grounded appropriately.)

So I quickly realized how complex this stuff can get if you try to make useful systems... this here is circuitry that would turn a semi-automatic rifle into a full-auto machinegun. It would fire it at its maximum rate of fire until it began to overheat, at which point it would throttle the rate of fire down to half speed and engage a coolant system. This circuit also allows you to reload the weapon if the magazine is not full, and it will automatically reload if the gun runs out of ammo.

This is obviously not the prettiest or most well-drawn diagram, but does looking at this immediately make you guys say, "I don't even want to touch this"? Hahaha

>>425431
Hahaha, we'll see. I don't want them to think I'm /completely/ nuts! I already scare them enough as it is!

>>425408
LOL! Holy shit I missed that post! Motherfucking great minds up in here. Thank you so much for the post! I hadn't considered missile behavior/firing arcs/etc.

I seriously didn't manage to see your post; you must have made it while I was writing my post right after yours, and I failed to catch yours when the page updated with mine.

Projectors displaying the in-game action is an excellent idea for a presentation setting; I will definitely go that route for the final. Thanks for the tips!

I am putting together a list of input/output types I want to have in the coding minigame system... I'll post it up here for you to review--sounds like you have a good grasp of what would make this kind of system successful, so your appraisal/input would be awesome. :]

Some sketches of circuit components and a rough mockup of a circuit that would fire two machineguns and a flamethrower for one second, followed by a quick douse of the flamer from a coolant system.

To clarify what I said about the game being tailorable to either a 'gamer' or a 'simmer,' a gamer would only have to do the nitty-gritty circuitry stuff once, possibly using pre-fabricated circuits you can select, and then forget about them for the rest of the game.

A simmer could constantly tweak and improve circuitry between each mission, or what have you.

PARADIGM SHIFT!

Guys.

Guys listen.

My game design accomplice and I have decided to do something crazy.

Anybody ever play Widget Workshop? We're going to essentially combine Widget Workshop with a mech sim.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

Essentially you will be able to install equipment (weapons etc.) onto hardpoints, which you then control using simple (or complex if you choose) 'circuitry' to control what is mounted to the hardpoints. This idea started as a solution for making the game appeal to both 'gamers' and 'simmers,' people who want to just drive around and blow shit up and people who want a nitty-gritty simulator experience. The idea is that if someone wants a regular drive-and-gun experience, they can automate most of the systems in their mech. If someone wants a sim experience, they can wire their systems up with lots of buttons and toggles and inputs and displays, leaving the actual operational decisions up to the pilot.

I know this is a fairly large deviation from what I (and probably most of you) were anticipating in this game, but this is an area in game development that my partner and I have not seen explored.

For example, circuit in pic has a button to fire your machine gun and a toggle for fast or slow rate-of-fire. The toggle switches the fire button input between two 'repeaters' that run the gun at half-speed or full-speed.

At full speed, the gun will presumably overheat. So, a thermometer is hooked up to the gun that detects if it is about to overheat. When the thermometer hits that threshold, it overrides the fast-fire toggle and forces the gun to fire at half-speed, and also kicks in some kinda coolant system.

This is all super rough and up in the air at the moment but I am presently working on a prototype of the system. If all goes well, the emergent property of this system is a game with a distinct feeling of post-apocalyptic jerry-rigging and a control scheme/gameplay that the player has full control over.

>>424267
>>424276
Precisely.

And note that this game takes place on an environmentally stable Earth, so to be honest the mechs probably don't even need a life support function.... hmm.

>>424293
Ahaha, thanks! :]

>>424323
Thanks; yeah I'm trying to figure out an intuitive power-patching system... I don't want any of the 'minigames' to be too complicated. I really like the quick-reload mechanics in, was it Gears of War? That kind of stuff. Nothing like the hacking in Dues Ex or whatever... while fun, I don't want to pull the player from combat like that.

>>424325
Still trying to work out how/if I'm going to do melee combat. Right now your arms are bristling with weaponry that can be blown off, so punching someone with your relatively fragile weapons doesn't seem like a good idea.

What I may do is allow you to install a single large melee weapon on an arm, such as a spike/chainsaw/morningstar/battering ram on one arm, and have that arm dedicated to pimp slappin other mechs.

Stressing out over how polished I want this shit to be before I release another vid, haha. Here's a screencap of what I've been putting together.

Vid soon I promise. :]

>>423968
The assumption is that your core components would be very heavily recessed into the bowels of your mech, but point taken... I'll see about having batteries for each component. (That actually agrees with my power-patching system I had devised in the first place, haha.)

>>423984
I fucking LOVE minigames! I wrote down your suggestions... if you can think of fun actual mechanics for the minigames I'd love to hear 'em.

>>424087
Cheers, will do!

>>424092
LOL. It would get real dank, real fast...


captcha: fuldrox unbreathing

thanks for the nightmare fuel, captcha...

>>423869
Good call, thanks; I'll slap some in there.

Here's a rough concept for the power systems of the mech.

>>422730
Good call... perhaps I'll put this back in. I've decided to make the scale more or less that of the Battletech universe, so a bloodied cockpit would be easy to make out.

>>422737
Looks awesome! Link to your build thread if you get one goin!

>>423149
Just started up coding again today. Working on systems. May have a vid up tonight!

>>423163
Been looking at Torque... after this project I'll try my hand at it. Thanks!

>>423405
Cheers man, haha. I'll hit you up!

>>423688
Hey thanks! New content coming soon, I promise... been super lazy on the first weekend of spring break, but now that the week has started I feel obligated to do some actual work.

Currently putting together the power systems... going to have a diesel engine, reactor, and capacitor. Coding up a current draw system (each weapon/system will have a certain amperage it requires to function, which will deplete the capacitor, which is charged by the reactor.)

The 'lore' behind the function of the mechs is as follows (since I want to have both an internal combustion engine and a reactor, even though a reactor supposedly would make an engine obsolete):

In this world, which is a mildly-rebuilt post-apocalyptic earth (about a century ahead of doomsday), complex electrical systems are more difficult to service than kinetic/mechanical systems. So, most machinery runs on combustion engines.

However, electrical weaponry (such as lasers and plasma cannons) that survived doomsday or have been rebuilt by specialists require heaps of electrical power, so most mechs sport a miniaturized cold fission reactor to power computers and frickin laser beams.

The idea is that since strictly-electrical systems have few to no moving parts, they require less maintenance than mechanical systems such as joints and such (a gross generalization, I know.)

So, mech engineers rely on combustion engines as much as possible for moving parts, as electrical motors require relatively special equipment to service and repair.

Sorry for the lack of updates; took a short hiatus from it so I could do well on the rest of my finals. Should have some more fun stuff up within a day or two.

>>420532

>>420468
It's a third gen true quad core i5 overclocked to 4.6 if that makes up for how shitty it looks!

>>420468
The thermal properties of the cardboard are... aw fuck it

>>420450
Hahaha, I was in the process of building/tuning it. Here it is now.

>>420451
In the old build thread someone suggested just having a piece of flexible transparent plastic that covers the phone and closes with velcro or something.

I am considering adding metal bars around it, sorta like a roll cage.

>>420425
Dude that's awesome! Nicely macguyver'd, haha

>>420415
lol'd

>>420403

>>420378
Thanks! Girlfriend was suggesting I install boxes for snacks...

>>420396
I have a big red button on the main console for shutdown override that will double as emergency shutdown if you hold it. It's not quite as cool as the buttons in your pic, but it is pretty big and lights up.

Here ya go. I'll monitor this thread if ya have any questions. :]

Good luck!

http://archive.installgentoo.net/diy/thread/336587

Hey look, it's my wristlet!

I made a thread about it with process pics... I'll try to find it on the archives.

Soundproofing foam installed; it sounds super crisp and clean in there now. The deadening cut down on the hollow reverberation dramatically and the foam killed most of the echo. Stoked.

>>420172
LOL. Brofist.