Monthly Archives: April 2015

Wiring and signal processing

Subsurface now has wiring and signal processing mechanics similar to the ones in Space Station 13. For those of you who aren’t familiar with SS13, think redstone in Minecraft. Basically different constructions/items can send various signals through wires to other constructions, and with some logic gates and other components you can built pretty complicated contraptions.

Here’s a clip of connecting a button to a door – I think I’ve managed to make the system a little more intuitive than in SS13:

 

You just have to equip a screwdriver to open the “connection panel” of the item, and then equip a wire and drag it to the connection of your choosing. In this case “signal_out”-connection of the button, which just sends out “1” when someone pushes the button, and “toggle”-connection of the door which toggles the state of the door whenever it receives a signal.

At the moment there aren’t that many components to use in the contraptions, just basic logic gates (and, or, not), but at least the following are to be added soon:

  • “signal comparer”: sends out “1” if it receives a signal matching to some user-determined string
  • “voice processor”: whenever someone says something in the vicinity of the component, it sends out what the person said as a string
  • “speaker”: reads the input it receives out loud (not using a speech synthesizer though, the message just appears in the chat box at the lower right corner of the screen)
  • “wifi component”: sends out the signal it receives through an user-determined a wifi channel – can be used to send data remotely
  • probably something similar to the RegEx components in SS13 in case you need to analyze an incoming signal in a more complicated way
  • obviously something that can be used to do some damage – maybe a detonator which can be connected to whatever explosives you have available

So, what can you do with these? Here’s some ideas:

  • a system which only allows a door between an airlock and the facility to be opened if the airlock is free of water, and prevents either of the doors to be opened if the other door is open
  • a voice prosessor in a command room, which shuts down every door in the facility if it hears someone saying “SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING”, or some secret phrase set by the captain
  • a system which analyzes air quality through the facility and isolates sections that are running low on oxygen
  • shutting down non-vital devices/systems if running low on power
  • functional computers (I’ll be disappointed if we won’t see anyone build a tic-tac-toe game inside Subsurface)
  • a number of detonators and explosives hidden throughout the facility, connected to wifi components and signal comparers allowing the detonators to be activated remotely using some secret phrase – or the moment any of the players says “lol” in the vicinity of a voice processor


Some men women just want to watch the world burn drown

FacebookTwitterTumblrGoogle+Share