I'm Building a TARDIS from Doctor Who With Fun IO Features!

[uncle_sheo]

Hello TU!! I’m a longtime lurker, been around for… Ever, practically. You might’ve seen me around before if you play a lot of Zombie Massacre or East Coast arcade lobbies, but I tend to be pretty quiet. This is my first topic post, and I’d like to show you something I’ve been working on off and on for about a year or two now!! A “functional” TARDIS!

I started planning this build when IO was first added to the game, and I think I started putting hte pieces together for the first prototypes a few weeks or months after that.
Here’s some shots of the console room! The transition is pretty seamless in-game, but obviously I couldn’t achieve a real “bigger on the inside” effect.

This catwalk(and room) are a super funky shape because I just kinda felt like it, I guess? I dunno, I wanted rounded edges, but two flat sides to put doors on, so. Here we are!

This is a little workshop in the corner where I make all the panels for the console.

There are other rooms to explore as well, but they’re pretty empty for now. So far I have plans (and space) for a sitting/smoking/trophy room, a library, a pool, a kitchen, and the Eye of Harmony. Lemme know what else I should add!

Here’s a quick tour around the console:

These dials are fun. They’re not hooked up to anything right now, but they’re setup with movers to spin the needles around. Some day I’ll use them to track power or flight progress, or something.

Now I’ll go over a couple of the interactive elements that I’ve finished so far.

The most important system is the power system. On this panel, you can see a (admittedly really sketchy!) readout of how much power is currently stored in the capacitors, ranging from 0% to 100%, as well as the main power switch.

Power will slowly trickle away while the main power is enabled, but will drain faster while in flight(once I get around to making flight work lol). You can also tell the main power is enabled by opening the console’s access hatches, which are now flooded with light.

If the TARDIS runs out of power, it will automatically shutdown. If it shutsdown during flight, it’ll crash! (Y’know, once I finish the flight system, anyway…)

To keep that from happening, you can use this switch over here to enable the recharging circuits, which will slowly recharge the capacitors while enabled!

They also automatically turn off when the capacitors are full or when the TARDIS enters the time vortex, because, uhhh, something, something, time turbulence, something, technobabble, damaging to the relays, or something.

There’s a sonic screwdriver port on this panel over here, as well as a load of currently unused buttons.

Pressing the eject button next to the socket will eject the screwdriver, which is a physics item. It can’t be used for anything else, but it makes a good blunt instrument.

I also made a cute little holographic helper interface, to show people around the TARDIS! Conveniently activated by spamming random function keys on this random keyboard.

I call him the Auto-Uncle.

Finally, I’ve also added a Miniaturization System, which allows me to shrink everyone in the console room at the flip of a switch.

And just in case you forgot your jetpack at home, I added an emergency ladder to help you get back up to switch it back off.

The emergency ladder is always down there, but can only be interacted with while the miniaturization switch is enabled.

Why would I need a miniaturization switch? Mostly just to play with size volumes (they were new!) but also because this is where all the logic gates for my TARDIS live!

And that’s pretty much it! The doors also lock, and I’m working on getting flight working but I’ve been pretty lazy. Personally, I’m not super in love with the overall aesthetics of the console, but it’s as good as I could really make it. The next version will be prettier, I’m sure. I could’ve just used an existing really high quality workshop model of the Baker-era console, but I wanted to use TU items and make my own. Just for fun.

I’d love to hear what you think of the project so far, and what rooms and systems you’d like to see me make next.

Thanks for reading through my monolith! Have a fishy stick!!

[GoopGoop]

I’m surprised nobody has hearted this post. The canvas work is pretty impressive! and the lighting is on point. I was expecting the whole thing just to be workshop models.

[uncle_sheo]

Thank you! I tried not to use any workshop models at all at first, but I ran out of random bullshit to fill the console with pretty fast lol

[SlickWine]

This is awesome! I recreated my TARDIS extension from Garry’s Mod a while back. I must say, you’ve done a brilliant job!

Best TARDIS demat sequence

[uncle_sheo]

Thank you! This is so cool!! The demat loop is what I’m tackling next! I’ll have to post a video once I get mine working. Hopefully it looks as clean as yours!

[uncle_sheo]

FLIGHT LOG:
I started my overly-ambitious flight system last night! Figure I’ll go over the flight system in its own post, since it’s kinda a monster already.

The little panel on the bottom left is now the main throttle and navigation panel, and my plan is for the six little red buttons to be different locations the TARDIS can travel to. When you select a location, the light closest to that button turns on (and the other two turn off) and turns a color based on that location, and the screen nearby displays a cute little text readout of your destination as well. So far, only the spawn location is programmed. Wanna get the flight system working before I start planning out other destinations, but I plan on trying to work something out to fly to the condo hub, I know that much. That’s why the ice moon is the second button instead of the first.
Oh yeah, and the big button at the bottom will turn the text display on the monitor (but not the little light on the navigation panel) off and on again, in case you want to use that screen for YouTube or something. I do that more often than you’d think.

For the nerds, here’s how the wiring works: I have a counter called something like “Destination Selector Wheel” which ranges from 1 to 6 and is used to keep track of which place the TARDIS is flying to next, and then a series of compare modules are used to determine which location is being targeted. The button just sets the counter, nothing else. The compare module sets the color of the light and turns it on and sets the destination text, and also sets the location for the main engine, more on that later though. I don’t anticipate I’ll ever fill all 6, but you never know! The TARDIS also keeps track of where it is by updating a similar “Last Destination Wheel” counter whenever it lands. I’ll use this for evil later on…

I also got around to installing this fancy new power monitor that I built earlier today. I’m trying to experiment more with funky custom-built canvas block stuff! This angle doesn’t do it much justice, but stop by the condo sometime and see it in person. I think it’s an improvement over the oscilloscope model I was using at least.

You may notice I also added a new clock. Pay no attention to what time it is in that screenshot.

I also setup the all-important sound effects for the dematerialization effect, and setup the logic to make the handbrake and throttle work. Eventually I wanna make dematerialization a much bigger deal inside the TARDIS than just a sound effect, but I’ll worry about that after it can dematerialize at all.
Here’s an update of the TARDIS’ brains so far…

And at this point, I was starting to plan out the way the logic that powered my flight system was going to work, and my brain started to hurt, so I made this scale model to help me plan it all out, and it helped me out quite a bit! It also made me realize a couple problems inherent to the way I thought I was going to do this system, but now I think I’m pretty happy with it.

Here’s a quick demo I recorded of the mini flying:

Tower Unite TARDIS Toy Demat/Remat Demo

The wiring is more or less the same between the main TARDIS and the miniature, just with a vastly simplified takeoff and flight procedure, since it doesn’t have a handbrake or throttle to worry about. I have a “destination wheel” and two compare modules looking for their specific programmed destinations, but all they do is tell the TARDIS where to park when landed. To simplify the entire flight procedure, the mover sits in the “time vortex”, and when I want to dematerialize the TARDIS, I just stop the mover, but that approach lead to a fun bug. I had to add a way to check if the TARDIS was currently flying or not, otherwise you could skip the entire flight by just locking the destination while the TARDIS was already landed. This would immediately cause the TARDIS to jump to the new location, since the mover was already finished moving. There are probably other, better ways to detect that(the mover’s own onEnd trigger for example) but I decided to use a Trigger volume for this, and it’s probably how I’ll end up doing it in the finished TARDIS logic too. The trigger volume sets a canNavigate toggle to true when it detects the TARDIS, which unlocks the two destination buttons, allowing you to select a destination. This does mean the waypoint buttons won’t work at all unless you’re flying, but I’m too lazy to fix that right now, I think. lol

Like in the real system, I use logic gates as often as possible, as opposed to directly using triggers; i.e. instead of having the demat button directly dematerialize the TARDIS, I have the button trigger a timer that takes care of that. The reason I do it this way is so that i can very easily trigger these “functions” in other ways later on, or redesign the input panel later on without disrupting the wiring completely as soon as I delete a button.
If you do a lot of IO stuff, this principle of separating inputs from logic might be obvious to you, but I want to point it out for any newbies who might be reading. Do this. Seriously! It makes a huge difference, especially for big projects like this. I also recommend taking advantage of the snap points for logic gates. If a logic gate works with another logic gate, smack 'em together, snap 'em together, group 'em together, and keep 'em together forever. Keeping your IO separated and your logic gates organized can make a huge difference in keeping a project manageable and fun to work on.

You may also notice my post-it board is filling up more and more… This is where I keep my to-dos. I use a canvas set to poster with a random paper texture I found on the internet to act as post-it notes. Then I just add whatever I need to remember in the comments for the canvas. Works pretty well!

And… That’s it for now, but stay tuned! I want to get this thing moving today! I have big plans for this flight system…

Update from the next day:
The system works! I was able to get the dematerialization loop working and the logic seems mostly sound, I’m still just ironing out some kinks before it’s ready for a proper show-off… for example, I forgot that I’d also have to set the location for the teleporter in the interior doors any time the TARDIS moves… But it turns out that’s not something you can even do with IO, so… Look what I’ve been doing today!

I’ve now replaced the canvas teleporters I was using as doors with these fancy new(to me) teleport volumes. They’re free, and they don’t have that annoying particle effect. Both good things!

But because I can’t set the location of the teleporter with I/O, that means I have to setup a different volume for every location the TARDIS can land and Hide and Unhide them as the TARDIS exterior moves… At least I don’t have to spend 10k Units on every new door, thank god, but Mac, if you’re out there, please for the love of god, either let me put my teleporter’s bound location on on a mover or let me change the location with IO.

In the meantime, while I’ve been making the engine work, my wife has been decorating some of the back rooms of the TARDIS!

This is going to be a little smoking lounge and trophy room.

I say trophy room, but my barren trophy collection is a testament to the fact that despite hundreds of hours, all I really do in this game is build condos and play ZM.

Just finished testing each circuit in isolation… Nothing left to do now except plug it all in and see if it works together. While I put the finishing touches on this system, here’s a quick sneak peek of what’s done so far! I’ve been hard at work getting the dematerialization and flight systems working!

Power Up, Dematerialization, and Time Vortex Demo

[that_one_capybara]

This is incredible (I’ve also built a TARDIS, but haven’t updated the I/O since early days.) This TARDIS feels functional and real, and your ideas are clever.

If you ever make this a community condo, and you need someone to make Skaro or Gallifrey or whatever, hit me up. (I actually made part of the city from the 7th Doctor story “The Happiness Patrol” for a video project a while back, too.)

[uncle_sheo]

Thank you for your kind words! It’s almost 100% functional for the big reveal, I’m just fighting with the doors haha

Honestly the idea of turning it into a community condo never occurred to me, but I might some day, and I’d definitely welcome the help! In case it isn’t obvious, building is definitely not a strong-suit of mine

My current plan as far as sharing the build goes is to get flight working and then post the condo on the Workshop.

[uncle_sheo]

NIECES, NEPHEWS, AND NEPHLINGS OF ALL BRAND, CREED, AND GENDER, I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE BITCH CAN FLY!!

It’s taken a lot more work than I thought! I ran into a lot of issues trying to implement my small-scale solution at full-scale, mostly just because of how much more complicated the system becomes when there’s an interior to account for, since Mac won’t let me reassign teleporters using IO.

I won’t waste any more time, I know what you’re here for, so here it is! A demo of the full system in action!

Tower Unite TARDIS Full Demo

What do you think?! Cool, right?!?! The exterior also plays cool sounds and lights and stuff, but TU bugs prevent you from hearing the effects unless you’re within range when they start, so you miss the entire remat sound unless you’re following this thing along through the vortex. I’m still working out how best to tackle that issue, but it’s looking like the best way might be to just turn the shell invisible, move it before the sound begins, then start the sound after the mover is finished, and then make the TARDIS visible and turn the doors on a few seconds after that. We’ll see!

I’ve also uploaded my creation to the Workshop in case you wanna break it for yourself! Steam Workshop::A Custom Built, Fully Functional TARDIS! It’s mostly functional, but I’m sure you can manage to break it if you really try hard enough. Post any bugs you find here or on the Workshop!

Here’s an update on the state of the TARDIS’ brain… I’ve color-coded my logic gates based on which “group” of functions they belong to; all the flight circuits are one color, the demat circuits are another, the remat another, etc

If you notice, some of the gates are on a different Z level… I ran out of space in my brain lol. If I organized it a little better that’d probably open up a lot more space though. That’s probably next on my to-do list, maybe right below making demat and remat more exciting.

I think my next step from there is probably going to be programming crash landings. I’ve been setting up a lot of little breadcrumbs for myself to make building the crash-landing subroutine easier later on, so it should go much more quickly than most of the rest of this build.

My plan for crashes is pretty simple… The TARDIS is already capable of tracking where it was last and where it’s headed next, and the TARDIS is also already keeping track of a remaining flight time timer and a canLandSafely toggle. The reason I tracked all this was to make crashes easier to make down the line. I’m going to set it up so that if the handbrake is pulled during flight at all, the TARDIS will crash land. If remaining flight time has finished running, the TARDIS will crash land at the targeted location. If it hasn’t finished running, the TARDIS will crash land at the starting location instead. Messing with the main power during flight will have similar results. I’ll probably also add a way to crash the TARDIS by disengaging the throttle too early, but maybe instead releasing the throttle early will cause a normal, non-explosive rematerialization at the starting location instead. If anyone has any thoughts on this, let me know!