Archive 17/01/2023.

Snake Launching Turret: The all in one home defence .pak!

throwawayerino

AUTOMATIC SNAKE DISPENSER

The only true way to fix a mice infestation is by shooting snakes at it! This is a neat little PackageFile I made to showcase this functionality and to experiment with player made objects.

Imgur

  • Radius: Specifies the size.x of the cylinder used for detection
  • CooldownDuration: Time in seconds to wait until next launch. Please don’t try setting it to zero
  • ImpulseForce: The multiplier used when applying impulse to the snakes
  • SnakeRagdollHolder: The Turret shoots ragdoll snakes. This can be a bit taxing on the computer, so you could group them into a node and clean them up periodically.
  • TargetTag: Tag to use when searching for target nodes
  • SnakeTag: Tag to add to each snake when fired

The Turret in action:

It can even handle movement in space (though not precisely):
Imgur

Script Usage:

// Exact path may vary
cache.AddPackageFile("Data/Packages/SnakeTurret.pak");
Node@ turret = scene.CreateChild();
turret.LoadXML(cast<XMLFile>(cache.GetResource("XMLFile", "SnakeTurret/Objects/SnakeTurret.xml")).root);
turret.worldPosition = Vector3::ZERO;

Things to consider:

  • I don’t like how it snaps in place. Might use an attribute animation to fix it
  • Linear/Angular damping on the snakes might be too low.
  • It makes no sound at all. Something to consider.

Download SnakeTurret.pak (0.6MB, CRC32 4654A4A9)
Source code in .zip (0.5MB, CRC32 11AF0DA7)
Mega.nz backup

Everything inside is made by me.

Modanung

Hehe, I think I might add the snake launching variant to my multi-mower concept (lawmower robot + home defence) if you don’t mind. :laughing:
Everytime I go past one of those things I imagine some satirical commercial where it has machine guns popping out. They have names, like Ikea furniture: Rocky is equipped with a catapult, Tommy has typewriters and Fido a beartrap. :slightly_smiling_face: