Full Active Sensor Data! (Patreon)

Back in 2021 I introduced the Active Sensor Suite, and before that described how the desire paths are generated as part of the info it provides. At the time all of the Active Sensor data was generated automatically based on formulas, which makes sense as a good chunk of the world is procedurally generated to begin with, but what about all the prefabs and handcrafted maps (or bits thereof)? Since reorganization of the near-term release schedule, a few projects put off for some time now have been assigned to Beta 12 (a benefit of switching to somewhat less massive releases...), including final completion of the great A.S.S.!

As described back then, this entails going through all of Cogmind's prefab data and manually identifying points of various importance and setting those values for the desire path system to pick up on and merge with the rest. The system's original main purpose was of course to aid the player by helping guide Cogmind towards areas more likely to be "of interest," usually because there's something useful there like interactive machines or an exit, for example. The manually-placed points for the most part continue to serve that purpose, although in some cases they may also be assigned in other ways as a form of in-theme environmental storytelling. After all, the paths are meant to represent where robots have been repeatedly active for a while.

So not all of the data will always be incredibly helpful, or even helpful at all, but we also need it for completion's sake.

And now it's all complete :)

Here you can see an example of a manually placed point at the Transfer Station near the exit of Extension, the '4' with a pink background:

There are already generated points of interest for the exits themselves, but being a machine drawn directly in the prefab itself, for the Transfer Station it made sense to add an explicit point of interest. The 4 is pretty high level so it will be a strong signal for the path linking, which makes sense if you've been there and seen what's going on ;)

The new Garrisons have a lot of prefabs, so those got new built-in paths which generally link things like relays, RIF, terminals and exits:

Another map-between-maps, Waste, just has the types of path layouts you'd expect... Not super helpful, but completion!

Caves are the most complicated of the maps, because unlike others they are not always completely controlled by a single faction, so the dumb linking system can form links where you might not expect them. That situation isn't too common, though, and could be theoretically explained by other means where it does happen, so I didn't go as far as creating multiple faction-specific layers of connection for perfect realism (which would've taken even longer xD).

Some fun dynamic linking does occur in the caves, like this W outpost I ran across that happens to be linked to some nearby  derelict forces on lookout duty:

As another example, this 0b10 base got linked to a nearby outpost:

It at least helps that 0b10 and derelict outposts cannot appear in the same cave sections, so those could never be linked by this system.

[THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST CONTAINS MID-GAME SPOILER MAPS]

In a few cases I added more points via code, rather than prefabs, in order to give them more flexibility and so they could be realistic in ways that tying them purely to prefabs or static objects wouldn't be able to achieve.

For example Zion is a pretty chaotic place where there's a lot of activity not necessarily centered around any given prefab, and on being there you'd expect that there to be desire paths all over the place, so there is a random assortment dropped in near machinery aside from those specified by encounter prefabs:

Warlord's base is sufficiently serviced by its prefabs (in combination with their interactive terminals, which are automatically linked as they are in other maps):

I thought that map was pretty interesting in how it's an especially deep, almost linear base with the "throne room" clearly situated in the inner-most area.

Another sample map, this one the Hub branch from 0b10:

Active Sensors always did a pretty good job of handling non-branch areas, so this update was focused on enabling the full benefit across all maps, in including branches where the majority of prefabs are used.

A few prefabs from main maps were also linked in where relevant, of course.

(Now that it's done, the desire path visualization feature will also be coming to Wizard Mode next release.)

I'm glad to have all that out of the way, and likewise there are a few other longstanding medium-sized projects to attend to before the next release is done and ready..