MekaWars' harvesters

Today MekaWars moved a further step forward: the pilots can see the environment and the objects around them, in fact the algorithms to manage a radar and a detector device were finally implemented in the simulator.

The radar is useful to detect enemy vehicles and obstacles, like asteroids, while the detector is necessary to find the resources flying freely all around in empty space.

In the screenshot, that depicts the usual schematic 2D top view, you can see asteroids (yellow dots), two fighters (red dots) and two harvesters (green dots). All the other small cyan and orange dots represent two different kind of resources.

In the sample script, the fighters are instructed to avoid asteroids and other vehicles. To accomplish that task they use the radar and move away from the trajectories of the flying obstacles. In the same script (an if-then selection tests the kind of vehicle and chooses which section of the code must be executed), the harvester is programmed to use the detector and find any nearby resources of the requested kind, then directs the engine towards that resource to collect it. In the picture, there are just two harversters that move towards their nearest assigned targets.

The next step? To give the pilots some missiles and torpedos to shoot. Stay tuned!