Difference between revisions of "Beehive"

Revision as of 12:26, 21 September 2007

Possibly one of the best damn weapon ideas out there. This one is essentially a Mine, only better. Doubly better.

Your worm places it just like a mine, running away afterwards giggling as usual. But this is no ordinary mine, it's a Bee Box. Rather than exploding when a passer-by passes by (as they do), it releases a swarm of angry bees, which proceed to attack the offending worm, causing a steady loss of health until the worm dies or leaves the area. The turn isn't lost in this attack. As radiation, the bees only attacks worms which move.

But wait, that's not the whole story. The bees aren't just a threat to worms that move too close, they could attack anyone. If their hive is disturbed by the explosion from a weapon, the swarm will attack the worm that used that weapon. The closer the explosion to the hive, the angrier the bees, the more ferocious the attack and the more health lost. Finally, if the hive is destroyed (the only way it can be removed from the game), the bees go mental, with a tremendous attack on the perpetrator (and heavy loss of health) before disappearing.

Another issue is how the bees navigate the landscape. They shouldn't be treated as separate beings, as it would take up processing power to calculate the path for each bee. Instead, the swarm's movements should be represented by a single body, an "invisible pigeon" if you will. Each bee then swarms about this single body and moves with it. If the swarm cannot reach the victim, it will return to the hive after several seconds of trying.

Animating this weapon should be fairly simple. The swarm of bees need be no more than orange and black pixels. The beehive itself can remain static.

The Beehive makes the ultimate guarding weapon. With a standard mine, the enemy could activate it and then stand back, or shoot it out of the way, but with the Beehive it's a different story altogether. Virtually impenetrable, unless you're willing to lose health points. But wait, there is a solution to the problem: the Protective Suit.

The unlikely use of bees as a weapon gives it all the more reason to be included in the game, and the thought of a worm trying to swipe away bees as they try to sting him could provide some comical animation.