Posted May 03, 2018 by st33d
This was tough.
When a ship loses a block it floods itself from the core to see what's still attached. This gets a little more complicated when you factor in the power cells. So I wrote a flawed but serviceable algorithm and went about my day.
But a tractor beam changes everything. Suddenly the flood for connection can leap in all directions. Yet the power transmitted must still be sequential. This required a massive rewrite of how ships hold themselves together. Especially as a tractor beam allows a rock to be a part of your ship.
This also necessitated an editing palette so I could try out the consequences of my labours. You can toggle it with P and try out old blocks and new, and perhaps find bugs old and new as well. Keep me posted.
I've disabled the ray-dar in this build. The tractor beam breaks it. I'm going to try some redesigns to see if I can come up with anything simpler and less intrusive. I feel like having variable zoom would be nice.