Milestone 2 & Conveyors & Lasers

[Jonathan Strawn]

Do we have to have working conveyors for Milestone 2? They aren't among the TODOs included in the project(since we create them from scratch), but I'm not sure.

And, more to the point, how is a conveyor different from a pusher? Is it just a different priority?

And, thirdly, does anyone have a tip for how to handle the "laser beam" that our laserTiles & robots shoot? I'm thinking that we iterate through the tiles from point of origin to the first obstacle or robot or edge of the board in the appropriate direction. The laser will then terminate, and, if it terminates on a robot, cause damage(or is it 1 hit kill?). Is this basically right? I was thinking a separate laserBeam class might be a nice way to do that.

-jon strawn

[Joseph Collard]

> Do we have to have working conveyors for Milestone 2? They aren't among the TODOs included in the project(since we create them from scratch), but I'm not sure.

Yes you must have working Conveyors. They are among the TODOs. Please
look in the ToDo.java file that came with the project. You should assume
anywhere that says "Create" means to also implement working versions of
them.

> And, more to the point, how is a conveyor different from a pusher? Is it just a different priority?

Conveyor has different priority (they occur before pushers). Also, they
are not capable of pushing Robots. For example, if you have a Conveyor
that pushes a Robot onto a BasicTile the Robot should not be pushed out
of the way when another Robot is pushed towards it. Instead, the
Conveyor should become "Jammed". However, a PusherTile is capable of
pushing any number of Robots. One other things, Some Conveyors not only
push a Robot but also rotate a Robot when it is Pushed by that conveyor.
Finally, you will have to implement an ExpressConveyor which causes
multiple RallyEvents to be created.

> And, thirdly, does anyone have a tip for how to handle the "laser beam" that our laserTiles& robots shoot? I'm thinking that we iterate through the tiles from point of origin to the first obstacle or robot or edge of the board in the appropriate direction. The laser will then terminate, and, if it terminates on a robot, cause damage(or is it 1 hit kill?). Is this basically right? I was thinking a separate laserBeam class might be a nice way to do that.
This is correct. If you implement this well, you can use it for both the
LaserTile and the Robot.

> -jon strawn

Best of Luck!

Joe