The ship's electrical system is coming along; I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted it to look like from a gameplay perspective, but now that it's come down to brass tacks, actually simulating circuits in a believable way, things aren't quite so simple. Still, though, I think it's looking pretty good.
For a quick bird's eye view: the ship has multiple power sources (two different types of batteries and a fusion reactor, though this may change) which can be tied, at the player's discretion, to any of a number of power buses. Each system in the ship is hardwired to a particular bus; the power sources give electricity to any tied bus; systems on that bus request power from it as needed, and the bus distributes the power. This system is very much influenced by the power distribution system in Rogue System.
Everything in the ship, down to the backlights on the cockpit buttons, can only get power by requesting it from the bus that their system is wired to. So if more power is requested than is available, systems begin to fail. As you start to push the limit you'll first see minor effects such as flickering lights before whole system failures and, eventually, cascading blackouts as interdependent systems drop out.
That's the plan, anyway. I've got the programming architecture worked out, but I'm still in the process of implementing it. I'm also laying a lot of groundwork, like basic UI stuff, which will hopefully make future systems easier to get in place, so I'm pretty happy just taking my time with this.
I expect it to be another 2 weeks before I'm ready to move on from the electrical system first pass, but I'll check in next week with an update.
Until then, it's back to the black. See y'all soon.
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