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Development update - July 6, 2023 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-06 21:21:10
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Content

Much more AI fixes and improvements this time. 

AI characters are able to almost completely autonomously use elevators and find their way through breakable environment, even use some of breakable movables to break in order to pass through and use others to perform any kind of regular movement in order to reach their goal.

In case of elevators, level designers only need to tell AI which points can have unobvious paths built through them. Essentially just making an AI Pathfinding hint objects that tell which switch to activate and from where and to where AI characters will be able to go thanks to that.

In case of navigating through breakable movales - there is no need to tell AI what and where to shoot, though, to be fair, I'd probably add some kind of movable property which will either allow or prevent intentional shooting through specific movables.


Gameplay

- Fixed bug causing camera to stay in fixed position if level was completed or user stopped playtesting a map in Level Editor;

- Fixed bug causing private sounds related to AI characters to be played for controlled single-player player;

- Fixed bug causing too short vision range for AI;

- Fixed bug causing characters to drop main weapon if their arms were broken yet they were configured to never drop any weapons;

- Fixed audio bug that was causing antigravity loop sound to spike occasionally;

- Implemented sound channel release for sword loop sounds when they are not active or too far from player's camera;

- Fixed issue causing unexpected camera shaking when camera was meant to be fixed at certain position;

- Fixed bug causing characters with 0 hitpoints on spawn to have collision boxes;

- Fixed bug causing AI calculating wall-jumps range according to old vertical velocity rule;

- Fixed bug causing AI to heal their teammates but stop due to seeing enemies yet being unable to attack them;

- Fixed bug causing AI to be frequently unable to perform jump towards platform upwards due to both waypoint being on the ledge;

- Fixed bug causing AI to indefinitely trying to heal teammates that have no maximum hitpoints (for example because teammate has no legs or was bleeding for way too long);

- Made it so AI characters standing on top of each other are able to figure out what to do whenever it happens;

- Fixed issue causing indefinite wall-jump loop whenever player lands on ragdolls for a brief moment;

- Fixed issue causing AI to lose its' location on relatively big pile of bodies;

- Made it so AI characters will skip sword activation sequence if they only want to perform self-boost;

- Fixed issue causing AI to be unable to reach certain far self-boost jump due to aiming slightly incorrectly;

- Made it so AI doesn't perform trace shots during attempts to perform jumps or when holding on a ledge as it causes it to fall;

- Fixed issue causing impossible grenade launcher trace shots to made AI stuck forever;

- Implemented waypoint connection reconstruction whenever elevators or doors are moving;

- Fixed a plenty of bugs which resulted into AI being unable to perform jumps;

- Added AI waypoint connection avoidance logic whenever connection has too many fails;

- Made AI waypoint connection reconstruction partial so it has less performance impact;

- Implemented waypoint creation/destruction for new/removed movables;

- Fixed bug causing wall-jump waypoints to not spawn on movables that were initially overlapping static walls;

- Added AI path generation delaying if waypoints were not spawned by the time AI character has received "GoTo" command;

- Fixed bug causing AI to mindlessly attempt to reach next path waypoint if movable AI was standing on was broken by someone;

- Fixed bug causing AI to believe wall-jumping could have been done onto the opposite side of a thin wall;

- Fixed AI cache bug causing AI to believe it was possible to phase through moving walls occasionally;

- Fixed issue causing AI to be scared of their own sword attacks when performing self-boost jumps (sometimes AI would start trying to dodge them, fall as a result);

- Fixed bug causing AI to believe it was possible for them to fit through 1 Level Editor's grid cell holes;

- Fixed bug causing AI to overjump certain old waypoint connection cases after previous changes;

- Fixed issue causing AI to stuck in place if it receives "GoTo" command in every frame;

- Implemented AI logic related to AI being able to keep track of which walls AI must and should not break when trying to built new path;

- Added logic for AI to wait until nearby waypoints are rebuild enough for AI hint objects to be considered complete (preventing AI from continuing elevator sequence call by performing another elevator sequence call but from the other floor);

- Added logic for exclusion of potentially broken walls when path is built;

- Made it so AI won't perform jumps when there is something breakable on a way;

- Fixed issue causing waypoint connections to be built whenever destination waypoint is part of movable which is meant to be destroyed in order to complete this same waypoint connection;

- Added logic to prevent excessive movement when AI attacks destructible walls yet can easily fall from platform it stands on;

- Added anti-fall logic whenever AI character shoots at something;

- Fixed bug causing AI to stop holding on hand holders whenever it tries to shoot;

- Fixed issue causing AI to not prioritize center of movable which often resulted into AI being unable to hit movable even with recoil control logic;

- Fixed issue causing AI to prioritize fall control over shooting movable he stands on and needs to break in order to progress towards the path;

- Fixed issue causing AI to stuck once it needs to break wall he is standing on;

- Fixed AI cache update bug causing more reasons for AI to believe it is possible to escape elevator room with a wall-jump onto the roof;

- Fixed memory leak related to improper destructible walls cache management;

- Made it so AI won't attack destructible walls it somehow happened to pass through without breaking;

- Fixed bug causing AI to attack previous likely destroyed target the moment he sees new target after some time;

- Fixed bug causing AI to assume alt fire projectiles have properties of weapon's current mode projectiles;

- Fixed bug causing AI to improperly continue waypoint connection navigation after AI happened to jump during attempt to break one of walls;

- Implemented AI logic that prevents AI from shooting through walls that are required to follow the scheduled path;

- Made it so AI doesn't try to perform reflective shots off walls that are required to follow the scheduled path;

- Made it so AI doesn't shoot at movables mid-air;

- Made it so AI would stop attacking with swords/fists whenever no self-boost charge left;

- Fixed bug causing shadowmap to generate shadows on backgrounds that were attached to movables.


Level Editor

- Level Editor camera is no longer getting stuck if some script is trying to move it;

- Added test preview of AI waypoints (not added as a button yet it is implemented);

- Implemented AI hint objects - can be used to tell AI where switch usage could lead them to;

- Fixed map crash related to missing semicolon in complied code between two auto-starting triggers.


Interfaces

- Redesigned loading progress bar;

- Fixed bug causing crash on connection issue in main menu;

- Added "Press Esc to cancel" hint for loading screen as long as operation can be canceled.


Sounds

- Added sound of concrete break;

- Added 4 impact sounds for concrete debris.


Star Defenders 2D

Some small updates, as usually full update log can be found here:
https://github.com/Eric-Gurt/StarDefenders2D/commits/main 

Comments

Anonymous

Splendid! Btw Eric if you haven't noticed yet, would you kindly check the discord DMS? I have sent you some recordings of my voice, I want to volunteer for PB3 voice acting.

Anonymous

Hey Eric! Love seeing the navigation changes to the AI. This is amazing progress and I can't wait to see how they will behave during the campaign and custom missions. I'm curious as to how AI Teammates will function during gameplay. I may have asked this question before sorry if I have haha. But with all these changes to AI I would figure Teammates would be rather effective in combat and maybe even team-oriented. Would love to hear what you have to say about it. Will it be possible to stop AI from using specific elevators or break certain walls? Could be pretty game-breaking if AI will just automatically use elevators or break walls during specific parts of people's custom missions. Will the AI be able to use the environment against the player? Im talking explosive barrels or attempting to push the player into acid/lava etc. Would be pretty epic to see AI kick or toss a barrel at the player or shoot a barrel next to the player in an attempt to kill the player. That's all I got for you today. Keep up the great work as always! Excited to see where the AI will be in future updates.

UnrealCrash
>>112405195

So far AI can only use elevators if map designer let them to via AI pathfinding hint objects. It does mean that level designer could disable and enable these AI pathfinding hint objects with some kind of trigger logic too. I'll add option for walls to be not attackable by AI just for the sake of pathfinding, should be easy to do. Would actually try to make this option also as dynamically configurable as AI pathfinding hints. So far AI aren't attacking explosives near player (yet). Maybe kicking/pushing barrels into their enemies could be cool, but then making it part of specific level logic could be even easier and cheaper for performance to do than simulating trajectories for every single barrel nearby. Most probably I'd not be doing the toss into lava/acid logic for now, it seems like an extremely rare case that'd be likely used only on a custom maps that still could make a custom AI that would be doing that. Unless I'm missing some common use case for now. I'd love to extend AI towards whatever custom maps would become in PB3. I'm a little worried I'm spending too much time with AI for now. There is still important aspects such as teaching them to use anti-gravity fields efficiently for example.

Anonymous
>>112405195

Great to hear Eric! Feel free to focus on whatever you think takes priority what i've seen so far in the last 2 months have been more then i was expecting haha. See you next month!

Anonymous

I noticed from the map editor that games seem to be working on browsers. Is it only during testing or do they work on browsers in general? Will PB2.5 work in a browser or will it be able to function as a standalone program?

UnrealCrash
>>112574769

It does actually use HTML5 for non-game related interfaces (like main menu & loading screen), Level Editor's code editor too (but then Level Editor & Skin Editor are still made without it). It also runs level logic via JavaScript using browser just because it is faster than alternative implementations I've used so far. HTML5 version of main menu isn't really more performant but perhaps it is fast enough and is quicker to develop for. Profile pages and settings screens are made like this too. Game can be run in a browser but I'm not really sure it will be possible by the time game is finished.

Recluse
>>112402197

This is something I would like a try although I don't have any experience, but I do have a good microphone, and hopefully a good voice.

UnrealCrash
>>112402197

Feel free to drop me few voice acting demos using any of existing voice lines, I'll eventually check them on Discord DMs. I'm currently not viewing Discord direct messages because there is way too many people contacting me and I'm not making voice acting yet anyway.