Posts

Showing posts from April, 2015

Wrapping up the basic A.I for standard enemies

Tonight I put in the last segments of code for the basic enemy A.I. It needs a coat of polish and some tweaking, but it's all there. I reckon at some point this week I'll be moving on to the rest of the game. Happy days! It's late, so I'm going to wrap it up for tonight. If possible, tomorrow I want to quickly summarise some of the new ideas for the game, and make a proper blog post about the state of everything. However, I'm in work tomorrow, so I must get some sleep. Chao! - Rob

Complete failure, followed by success

Well, I certainly had an eventful weekend. Let me provide a little context. I have been making the game, up until this point, using Game Maker 8. I recently upgraded to Studio, but this version is different in many ways. It brings a lot of new and very useful features, so an upgrade seemed beneficial. And, it could import old files. Seemed like a win-win. Because Studio operates in project folders, I opted to prototype the new revised AI using GM8 as it was faster to iterate. Unfortunately, when I imported the prototype into Studio, it broke. As in, inexplicably. In the end, I scrapped it and started again.. again. This was disheartening to say the least. However, since around 7pm I've been working tirelessly to rebuild it in Studio, and I have succeeded. A positive to this is that - in building it three times now - I've ended up with a smoother version. I've been stress testing it and I've struggled to find any twitches or bugs. It's been a set-back, but no

Update on the AI

Things are going pretty well, if I'm honest! All of the features are in place, and just need polishing really. In a few tests the AI would jump state rather jaggedly and it looked odd, in others it wouldn't switch. In simple terms, sometimes it'd walk straight past the player. Little things that just need tweaking to get them working properly. Like oiling the mechanism, in a way. So what does this mean? It means the biggest, arguably most complex part of the game is in place. Hooray! It means the rebuild of Downfall, Inc  is moving at a decent speed. Now, given that all the code is still there and the art is still available, the rebuilt should shoot forward at lightening speed now. I'm excited! And it's late. Night :) - Rob

An update on the.. update? AI

I just wanted to quickly check in and update the blog on the current rebuild of the enemy behaviour (or, if we must, AI - although it's not nearly that clever). In an idle state, an enemy will jitter or roam around. Once alerted, they will search the map for the player. If they spot the player, they will aim and fire, reloading when empty. If the player leaves their sight, they will chase after, to try and regain visual. If they can't, they go back to roaming. If they hear a gunshot or a similar startling sound, they will turn to look at it, then investigate. Similarly, if a projectile goes past them, they will turn to look, but they wont investigate the source. And lastly, stun-lock is in so they can be stunned by damage or a stun grenade, temporarily incapacitating them. Basically, the enemy behaviour is almost reassembled bar a few features. It's coming along nicely! - Rob

April Update

These past two months have been a bit of a blur for me, I've moved job and house and relocated away from where I used to live. It's been hard adjusting but I'm slowly getting there. I've had neither the time or energy to do anything meaningful on the game since I started. I upgraded the software I use to make it, and now all the duct tape is peeling off. In short, the game hasn't transitioned well. Rather than be disheartened or upset I've taken it as a cue to do some spring cleaning on the game, namely neatening up the code and making it more open. I'm currently taking it apart and reassembling it in the new system, which is actually going fairly well. I've started with the NPC behaviours (bit too 'dumb' to be called AI, if you ask me) as that is the most complex and difficult part of the game for me. It's progressing well, I'm just adding in the more complex functions like searching for the player and reacting to noises. Once this i