Adding more life to the game (aka seagulls and turtles)

Instruments of Destruction takes place on small islands, mostly for technical reasons. I've been thinking about adding something to the islands since 2020, but didn't find the time to do it until now. That something is the animal you see/hear on basically any island or near most large bodies of water: Seagulls. Islands without birds seem lifeless, which they literally are (sorry plants).

Seagulls aren't the only new lifeform, as sea turtles are also now chilling on beaches. Both new ambient creatures are generated/placed procedurally when you start playing, so you won't see them in build mode. I may still tweak how they behave/react, but they are pretty interactive right now. There's a set number per island, and that can be adjusted in the map editor (along with a couple beach parameters relating to turtle locations). There can be up to 400 total creatures, though nothing comes close to that currently.

Though these creatures have no real impact on gameplay currently, that may change with some bonus missions in the future. And even without a true gameplay impact, the game/world feels a bit empty when I load up an island that doesn't have any spawning (especially seagulls).

In terms of things that will definitely make a gameplay impact, lets take a quick look at the full changelist:

Changed how the Kraken works in a few ways
- Damage to tentacles no longer matters, only hits to head
- 1 hit = enraged, 2 hits = game over
- Change a bunch of details and UI elements to fit new design
Added new turret entity and better support for destroyable objects
- Not currently used, but can be placed in Sandbox/Editor
Added new ambient animals (seagulls and turtles) with automatic placement
- Turtles spawn on the shore in groups
- Seagulls spawn on (mostly) edges of structures
- Control spawning count and beach limits in editor
Added a damage flash to parts and objects
Added Bonus Vehicles to the Vehicle select menu (old vehicles from previous missions)
Made a potential fix to logic part issues, particularly with toggle parts
- Also fixed issues with toggle parts and dropship, as seen in Mission 8
Fixed a few other minor issues

The big things to note:

The Kraken works a bit differently, with it now being a two-hits-to-die system. It moves a bit slower, the tentacles no longer matter for damage, and when it hits a structure with it's head, the structure falls down. The rage meter is replaced with a "danger level" that shows how close the Kraken is to something it can take damage from (either an explosive or large structure).

There's a new enemy turret and improvements to the entity destruction system to support it. This isn't used on any campaign missions yet, but it will be (you can place them in Sandbox mode to try them out). More turrets and other enemies will be coming soon. Now that I've got one working, the rest should be a bit easier/faster.

Bonus Vehicles resurrects a bunch of the older vehicles that were available previously. Note that this list will change in the future, so if you want any of the vehicles in particular, you may want to load-and-save them locally.

I also fixed an issue with Mission 8's vehicle (Dragonfly) that was caused by the helicopter drop. It may have also fixed the issue with toggle logic sometimes breaking, but that's a more difficult one for me to test/confirm.

UPCOMING WORK: ANOTHER SLIGHT DETOUR

Many people have asked for mouse controls over the past 1.5 years, and until recently I didn't see a good enough reason to worry about it. Controlling physics-based vehicles with a mouse is tricky, as vehicles have rotational inertia, and mouse controls are a weird kind of analog control (compared to a joystick/trigger). Plus other vehicle building games (like Besiege) don't have mouse controls.

But with the recent new campaign, the difference in controls between a gamepad and keyboard-only is more noticeable. Quite a few vehicles in the campaign, particularly those where you need to use/aim a weapon, control much better with a gamepad than keyboard. So I need to do something about that. I don't know exactly how things will work, but I'll add some kind of mouse support for controlling parts.

My initial thought is to let you assign the mouse to override four buttons (such as the arrow keys), and use an analog value for each axis that can go well past 1, but also centers itself over time. You'd have control over a couple speed values for each axis, and it'd be easy to invert the axis/speed. These values would be saved with the vehicles, and it'd be easy/quick to change. Perhaps there would be something for marking the Y-axis as auto-invert (so it could be inverted by player's options if desired).

But I'll have to try it out and see. Along with the mouse-control thing, the other major task for the next update is adding more turrets/enemies. I'll probably look more closely at adding more objective types as well. I'm anxious to get back to making/improving a bunch of missions/vehicles. There will likely be one more (significant) update before the end of the year with the enemies/mouse controls, but new missions are unlikely to arrive before early January.