Mechanical Boss - Tales of the Terrarian

[Clara]

Hiya, this is the fourth of a series of threads covering the mechanics in the Tales of the Terrarian 1.3.1 Map

This thread contains spoiler for the ending of the map.

At the end of the map you fight a boss you have never encountered before in Terraria, handmade with blocks and wiring it will attacked you with different traps and you must defeat it by shooting it's weak point, a projectile pressure plate on it's head.

This is what it looks like, without its paint:

When the player is in this area a 5 second timer is active, it is in the bottom left of this image:

The vertical blue wire going through it is connected to the boss, alternating torches to animate it a bit. The green wire turns it off when the boss is defeated. The red wire sends a signal to 2 faulty logic gates right next to it. They both have a 50% chance of sending a signal, so it changes which blocks are active at the right. There are 4 columns and only 1 will be completely inactive at a time, to make it clearer here it is without wire:

The timer also activates the spear traps, so each of the projectile pressure plates have a 25% chance to be activated every 5 seconds, and only one can be activated at a time. Each one is connected to a different attack from the boss, I will go through them one by one, here is attack #1:

It simply fires spiky balls horizontally towards the player, bouncing across the arena which can be a little challenging to avoid.

Attack #2:

It fires spear trap horizontally towards the player, hitting them if the are close and don't jump above them.

Attack #3:

It spawns a spider which attacks the player. The blocks are opened to let it out and then close afterwards, the blue wire is set to activate twice to close the blocks:

The timer will send a second signal closing the blocks and turning itself off.

Attack #4:

A cannon is fired, it does no damage as cannon activated from wiring can not deal damage. It instead is a visual effect, when it lands geysers will spout fire where it lands which will actually cause damage:

There are cascading timers which will wait 1 second before activating the next timer and turning itself off. It will wait 2 seconds before firing the middle geyser which is timed and positioned to shoot fire where the cannonball lands on the ground, just as it hits. After another second 2 more geysers will fire to the right and left, and then 2 more fire another second even further spear out. This is the most deadly attack but it also gives you time to avoid it.

The boss also has a shield, preventing the player from getting too close:

Player sensors will notice when a player is close and activate a wall of spikes so they can not get close or attack the boss, I explained combining player sensors in a bit more detail over in this thread:
http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/combining-player-sensors-tales-of-the-terrarian.43910/

Onto attacking the boss. On its head there is a projectile pressure plate connected to green wire:

Whenever it is hit it will send a message indicating that it has been attacked. It uses a similar randomiser to before to choose 1 out of 4 messages randomly:

The green wire also sends a signal to a counter, a series of faulty logic gates:

There is one activate faulty logic gate indicating the position of the counter, every time a signal is sent the active faulty logic lamp will turn the next one on and itself off. At 25% intervals the counter will send a message indicating the boss is at 25/50/75 % health. Once the counter reaches the end, it activates an explosive inside the boss, destroying it, turns of the timer stopping the attacks, and opens up a path to the ending of the map.

Notice there is also a dart trap at the top, this activates if a player enters the area again after dying. The dart will then rapidly go through the timer until it reaches the end and resets to 0, blocking off the signal which destroys the boss. This resets the boss's health if you die.

It is maybe not as complex as it first seems but I think that it is very fun to fight against, which is what is important for the map. Here is the all the wiring:

 

[The Warlocke]

This was a brilliant piece of work.

It really illustrates what can be done with the new wiring possibilities to create fun and interesting scenarios in adventure worlds. Creating cool traps or puzzles is one thing, but essentially creating a new enemy is on completely different level.

And it was fun to fight.

It put me in mind of some of the Mega Man games, where sometimes the boss is less of a creature or robot and more like a room full of mechanisms trying to kill you.

Nicely done!

 

[Clara]

This was a brilliant piece of work.

It really illustrates what can be done with the new wiring possibilities to create fun and interesting scenarios in adventure worlds. Creating cool traps or puzzles is one thing, but essentially creating a new enemy is on completely different level.

And it was fun to fight.

It put me in mind of some of the Mega Man games, where sometimes the boss is less of a creature or robot and more like a room full of mechanisms trying to kill you.

Nicely done!

Thanks, the wiring really isn't that complex, it's just putting together a bunch of basic concepts in the right places. But you could say that about any large mechanical system. I prefer making stuff like this which tries to be more fun and creative and interactive with the player rather than trying to create the most complex and intricate systems like computers in Terraria. But those kind of super complex systems are impressive and often help discover new ways to do things which can be useful for map makers like myself.

 

[Snickerbobble]

When I got to this boss, none of its attacks worked. The only obstacles were the lava pit and the spike force field, but it seems to work for others which is odd.

I did have a King Slime spawn on me during playing the map in another zone, not sure if it may have triggered some pressure plates somewhere.

I did get to see it in action on Pedguin's stream though, nice work

Just wish it worked for me.

 

[Clara]

When I got to this boss, none of its attacks worked. The only obstacles were the lava pit and the spike force field, but it seems to work for others which is odd.

I did have a King Slime spawn on me during playing the map in another zone, not sure if it may have triggered some pressure plates somewhere.

I did get to see it in action on Pedguin's stream though, nice work

Just wish it worked for me.

King Slime is because an area is too near the edge of a map, moved it for the next update.

A shame the boss wasn't working well, the wiring is a bit awkward as it tries to ensure the timer is on, as it turns itself off if you leave/join a world, but even that system evidently failed for you.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Terraria's first truely mechanical "mechanical boss"!! A formidable opponent, it took out @Fury, in part by bowling him over with it's awesome design, I think. Lol! (fight starts at 9m18s):

This is a really impressive construction. Especially since you were working in isolation from the rest of the world, with never before seen components.

The canon with synchronized geyser splash is brilliant boss fight theater with functionality. I think it would be very easy for map creators to accidentally make challenges like this too hard, underestimating the difficulty of novel sequences and such. So having nice, big bright pyrotechnics going off in sequence for visual cues is great.

The spear prongs are nice in this way too, seeing how you have to dodge them one way or another. It's a little tricker to see where the spiders and spikey balls are coming from, though (unless you know what to look for). Both still very cool, but that's the kind of place where one might try to add a bit more fanfare and foreshadowing. Some immediate visual feed-back upon brain-target hits, perhaps. The 'force field', too, is a little tricky to figure out in the heat of battle (what it is). But it's always easy to start over-analysing details (for me, anyway ), and boss battles are meant to be a little scary and confusing to start with, I think.

Also impressive is that you made a couple 4 outcome (equal odds) randomiser circuits, purely so the boss's attacks are non-cyclical and unpredictable, more convincing.

[...] The red wire sends a signal to 2 faulty logic gates right next to it. They both have a 50% chance of sending a signal, so it changes which blocks are active at the right. There are 4 columns and only 1 will be completely inactive at a time

Nice little improvised selection mechanisms. Of course, splitting outcome options in half twice makes it simplest to give even odds (across the 4 possibilities). Of course, members of the group have since come up with a way to do this just with gates, in this thread, with this setup by @DicemanX:

With such branching it's possible to create 2^N output lines (N is any integer). The challenge is in creating a randomizer that gives equal probabilities for non 2^N output lines, such as the 52 I need in my case.

Who also showed a mechanism to re-roll the process upon randomly selecting a dead-end (non)option, but having to resort to using hoiktronics, still.

You've got a sequential counter in there too, for representing the boss's health, with a reset mechanism. Were you tempted to have it display a traditional health bar, below the boss? (Instead, or in addition to the announcements/taunts.)

Anyway. This is quite the peice of interactive mechanism-art: 3 to 4 decent threads worth of mechanisms you've through up here. So thanks again @Baih! I hope we will have more threads that work on boss, map and puzzle mechanics, here on T-MEC, in future.

 

[crawlr]

THE ROBOT IS AWESOME

 

[Fury]

it took out @Fury, in part by bowling him over with it's awesome design, I think. Lol!

Ha, yes it did. I was too busy staring at its majesty in wonder, trying to see how it was made, to focus on, pshh, staying alive... Then, I wanted to jump into the newly-formed "cockpit" and didn't realize the spikes were going to rematerialize lol!

Really great design. All of it. It had enough attacks to randomize between to keep the player (me) guessing (plus the conveyor floor) but, yes, those synchronized geyser cannon explosions were my favorite part. Really really cool. I got serious hints of Wonder Boy in Monster World, Metroid, Megaman and Metal Slug. Great stuff.
I have several different boss designs in mind right now that I have to get around to starting on.

 

[Clara]

Nice little improvised selection mechanisms. Of course, splitting outcome options in half twice makes it simplest to give even odds (across the 4 possibilities). Of course, members of the group have since come up with a way to do this just with gates, in this thread, with this setup by @DicemanX:

Yeah I think in a few places Noel made a set up similar to that, using spear traps does the job just as well in this situation so I just went with the way I thought of first, if I spent time trying to make the mechanisms and map to a perfect level of concision and efficiency I'd still be building it.

You've got a sequential counter in there too, for representing the boss's health, with a reset mechanism. Were you tempted to have it display a traditional health bar, below the boss? (Instead, or in addition to the announcements/taunts.)

Didn't really consider a health bar, it would be that it would be quite tedious to wire that up, looking back it would have been something really cool though.

Anyway. This is quite the peice of interactive mechanism-art: 3 to 4 decent threads worth of mechanisms you've through up here. So thanks again @Baih! I hope we will have more threads that work on boss, map and puzzle mechanics, here on T-MEC, in future.

Thank you, well I don't too much planned for the near future mechanically, a large system I want to complete if I get time and no internet while on holiday soon.