Dev update

No screenshot today. Just a quick note about how things are going.

Right now, my task tracker says that I’m 57% of the way to the Milestone 6 build. There’s a bunch of exciting new stuff in the build, most notably the character models and animations that I’ve spoken about in some previous posts. I’ve also done a complete rewrite on the pathfinding, so that characters don’t want through buildings any more; they now walk around. The pathfinding is also substantially cheaper, now, which is a bit of a relief (since it was much too expensive before, for the number of entities that I was planning to have using it)

The new pathfinding system is not quite complete yet; while characters are now avoiding walking through buildings, they’re once again perfectly happy to walk over mountains, up and down cliffs, etc. I’ll need to re-implement the code which stopped them from doing that.

While I’m not yet drawing entrances on buildings, the buildings’ simulation does now have static entrances on each building. Characters now use those entrances to enter and leave the buildings. So PCs will actually walk inside an Inn before logging out (when possible), they’ll leave graveyards via their designated entrance, etc. Even questing areas have a designated entrance, and PCs will use that entrance to go in and out. And the characters’ general behaviour around buildings is much improved; no more walking past their destination and then coming back.

Once the pathfinding is sorted out, I should be in pretty good shape for finishing up the milestone; it’s definitely by far the hardest one of the tasks I’ve laid for myself.