05/14/2010
‘Turbo! Pack’ Development Diary 9: ‘Tanks a Lot’
– Sam Dickinson, Designer
The Bridge Builder was a tricky proposition, because it had to be able to move around easily, but also create a bridge that the tank could cross (and the tank is a pretty weighty engine of destruction). Also, the gaps had to be big enough that the tank couldn’t just roll across them, and so the actual bridge emitting bit was getting a bit big and unwieldy. So we made bridge sections that cleverly expanded immediately after emitting. Not only is it useful, but it looks cool too!
We found that you can have fun emitting bridge sections while swinging the bridge emitting arm around. We also found that the bridge sections can get in the way, and that you can just emit lots on one gap to easily bridge it, so we limited number of bridge sections that can be emitted to one at a time.
The tank was good fun, but we decided that what we also wanted something that actually fires missiles. Technically (here comes the science bit), the tank fires projectiles, which aren’t self propelled, and we want missiles, that zoom towards their target rather than arcing towards them like a grenade (okay, not very scientific).
Making these guys actually go in the right direction was quite a challenge. Have a go yourself and you’ll see that quite a few factors come into play: what it’s made of, the angle it’s launched at, exactly where the rocket is attached, the power of the rocket, and the position of any explosives attached to them. Lots of fine tuning (and the invention of the microbomb) later, and it was done. Lovely.
