“Give it a gun barrel with lots of sciency bits on it” I explained to Mr Jim in painstaking detail. “And a turrety bit that rotates and comes out of the floor” I elaborated. Mr Jim snarled and muttered and made some pencil sketches. “You’ll be wanting knobs on it I expect”. “Yes!” I agreed enthusiastically “lots of knobs and some lights too.”
Of course I had to make it detect the player without draining the cpu, make it rotate and lock on and stick some sound effects on it, but Mr Jim had done the heavy lifting and our vicious sentry droid was born. Not terribly bright, but persistent. And he can work with his chums to cover an area, which should be handy.
His robotic counterpart, who patrols the corridors is also taking shape – a shiny floating insect like thing which has to navigate the world without falling off bridges, bumping into the furniture and generally making a fool of itself. Of course he might be centuries old hence the occasional glitch – hurrah! an in-story explanation for crap AI. I’ll file that under handy excuses.
