Coding general AI.

As promised I've spent most of my time this week
on coding basic gameplay.

[text above each agent displays debug info]

I started out having separate state machines for AI decision making and actions/animation.

Sometimes AI control calls for very rapid switches of states which would also disrupt the animations. Causing them to stutter or jump.

But by setting up Animations to only switch after a short delay I eliminated the problem you get with having AI and actions in the same state.

If a call to switch animation occurs, but rapidly switches back (like stopping for an instant when walking) the switch is ignored.

So I refactored them in to a single finite state system with inheritance helping to structure things like animation and path finding.

[Blocked in!]

AI is pretty basic. They just try to get towards you avoiding squares they've already visited. But it works surprisingly well.

It's easy to get blocked in by the enemy, but you can use the nature of the grid to avoid fighting too many enemies at once.

I don't know how well this system will work once I introduce the other party members. That's going to take some serious testing to see if it's fun or not.

[Big and small agents interact seamlessly]

I added the ability to rotate the camera 90 degrees, this keeps the WASD movement system working well, but allows you to see behind things or get a better view.

Controls are going to be all keyboard based, with a radial menu handling things like item use, switching control of party members, resting, using special abilities etc...

There will probably be a shortcut bar too, so you can map some short cuts to the number keys.

[Water shader]

I did spend some time this week mucking about with shaders again, but there seems to be some kind of bug when rotating the camera. Sigh.

You know, it's funny that shader isn't in the spellchecker dictionary...

You can check out the video that goes with this entry HERE.

Comments

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