Plans for the Future

I'm always working around with some complex stuff, however simple I may think it is. One of the things I'm most known for though is drones, and figuring out control systems and such for them to function and work together co-operatively.

With the gBrain, I'm basically producing a basis for any drone to think and operate effectively without the inherent need for the player to actually figure it out beforehand. At most they just need a few basic ideas for what the gBrain should encourage the drone to do.

With the holographic arm I've been toying around with, which moves to be close to a target point by rotating it's joints as little as possible, I'm making a basis for you to make chassise with few components that move around with applyTorque applied to ballsockets, meaning you can have more human-sized and simplistic drones.

And very recently I've been looking at different patterns and styles for creating an effective "eye" for a drone to gather information about it's environment through, including a simple light spread method and a more complex focal point-based version mirroring the human eye's function. This means you can add it to a drone and it'll already have a strong idea of what's going on around it.

So the full picture should perhaps come into frame now. I don't expect to make a fully-functional science-fiction AI in Garry's Mod, but if I can eventually put together a little humanoid or whatever robot that I can plug gBrain into with a basic identification process for the holo-arm applyTorque joint system and a pair or so of eyes and have it run along without me needing to interfere with it at all, I'll be a very happy man.

I've made contraptions that almost every gmodder has made, I've made some very neat and sometimes primitive (in hindsight at least) drones, and I've toyed with the basis processes of the gmod physics engine and the real universe.

I think the next step for Garry's Mod contraptions is to make them self-sufficient. It's time we turned over the reigns to the contraptions themselves and took the seat of God in this virtual world. I think it's time we, the players, became the observers more than the builders.

And what's more, I think our ability to do so is right around the corner.