Dev Update : 0.6.5 Release

The 0.6.5 version of GRA should be available somewhere between Sunday and Monday. I could release it right now, but I am tweaking the new dungeon and debugging a few errors I found adding this stuff. Anyway, here is what's going to happen in this release and the few next ones.

Dev Update : AI going rogue

I've let run the latest development build a whole day in the fastest "real-time" mode available. And here are the results. This post will also explain various major changes which are going to happen in the next versions.

Also, I know there's a few coders reading this blog, so I guess you'd love reading about this "new" path-finding algorithms (read it, seriously) which have the same advantages as the good old A* with a 10x speed factor. That's something I may give a try as my pathfinder algorithm is basically my biggest bottleneck in terms of performances. The second one is especially interesting given how easy it is to implement, but it can't manage a weight for each node (meaning that it's a no-go for GRA but others should find it very very useful). The first one could be a winner, but it requires way more changes in my current code. Don't forget to read the PDF linked by the article as they are the real stuff.

Anyway, let's talk about GRA !

Dev Update : Next Goals

With the first "dungeon" nearly ready for release, even if a few things are still missing in that domain, I think it's time to explain what I am going to do next. As you will see Monday, the dungeon part in 0.6 is purely hard-coded (not moddable), so, as a result the next release will introduce ways to add / customize dungeons using the in-game modding tools. But when I am done with that (which should be relatively trivial as the whole logic behind the dungeon system is more or less ready to be integrated), I am going to explore new areas. Here is a very long post regarding this subject.

GRA Dev Update

The development has resumed, so do the (more or less) regular development posts on this website. I am going to detail in this post the incoming changes and additions regarding in the next versions of GRA, which can mainly be summed up with "destructible terrain", "user interface update" and "combat". 

This is going to be a fairly long post, so before delving into it and probably loosing 99% of the reader-base, I would love to have some comments regarding the current user interface, hotkeys and so on. Basically how the GUI should behave according to you. My current goal is to have something very similar to ToME 4 (great rogue-like, try it, seriously). I am not interested in "bind this action to this key instead of this one" posts as those will be configurable in a near future anyway.  Most menus (shopping, inventory) will stay mouse driven, but original ideas to add and/or errors to avoid are more than welcome.

Design : Artificial Intelligence - Part 2

The first part is available here.

Regarding the improvements made recently to the AI system, I think it's a good time to write another design post explaining how my NPC deal with the environment. Except specified otherwise, it concerns the 0.3.0 version of the game (currently in development). And as usual, this is a design document, containing technical stuff with random ideas thrown in that may or may not be implemented in the long run.

Dev Update: OMG Zombies !

Yeah, zombies! I added a new game-mode to demonstrate the flexibility of my little engine (only 30-50 additional lines of code required to include the option). As you can see in the screenshot above, it's a zombie apocalypse scenario. 5% of the population spawn as zombies. People killed by zombies immediately respawn as another mindless undead. They are very tough, and regenerate health quickly. Your starting pistol is no match against them and you'll have to get a shotgun or rifle quickly as they will definitively conquer the whole city in a few hundred turns. On the bright side, money will be laying pretty much everywhere by that time. Before you ask, no I am not gonna do a Rogue Survivor 2.0, it's just a dumb fun survival scenario. It also allowed me to test the combat routines at a large scale and fix a rather large amount of potential bugs which would have arisen with the 'faction' tree of the roadmap.

But that's not all, many other changes were made.
And I have an approximate release date for the next version.

Dev Update : economics, Items, and AI

Or the weekly development update I nearly forgot to post.

I'm posting a bit less frequently than usual, mostly because the economic part is a bit tricky and takes a fairly large amount of my time without having much to show for in the meantime. However, I made several improvements related to items/effects and the NPC AI. And I fixed most of the bugs reported so far. It will probably take a little less than a month for a release including a working economy, with another release in between.

Dev Update : Police, combat and stuff

So, as you can see in this screenshot, the police forces and a basic combat system have been implemented. Members of the police faction are now patrolling the streets and will chase the player if he does something illegal (like here, assaulting one of them with an automatic rifle). You can also notice in the game log that the combat and the general logging have improved.When selecting or changing your target, a quick description of the NPC is displayed. 

The following part of this article explains the changelog into more details.

Dev Update : AI and a new sector type

I'm done with the "City Center" sector type. It doesn't scale very well when using custom sector dimensions, but it's sufficient for now (sector size will probably be hardcoded in the public release anyway). The first screenshot is a map of such a sector. The central blue region will always contain a park and 4 office buildings. The two green regions will contain service buildings like hospitals, police stations,  restaurants, and the mayor office. The four outer red regions are either housing blocks or large parks. Remaining buildings are randomized. The second screenshot is a game representation of a restaurant. It's rough, and more objects (chairs and such) will be added as soon as I find a good and automated way of putting things into buildings.

Now, about the AI :)

NPC and Factions

First of all, happy X-Mas and happy new year (in case i don't come back until next year) to all of you!

Now, back to business. I'm mostly done with the NPC and the Faction editors. They are not linked to the game's NPC generator yet, but, well, details... The most boring part (from a coding point of view) is done on that matter anyway. Same as weapons and zones, NPC will be generated from the pool of available ones in the database. Faction handling will be a bit different. The civilian and the police factions will always be selected as they are necessary for the game engine. The generic gang faction will be used to generate a given amount of gangs based on the map's size.

Design : Artificial Intelligence

This is a first technical draft on the AI that will be used in this game. This is not a definitive design document, so it's subject to changes during the development. However, it should give you a pretty clear idea of how the NPC will act and how the game will try to simulate a (more or less) coherent city. This document won't cover the combat part.