I have been trying to solve a long-standing bug in this project, and I have run into some issues with it.

This bug causes a texture seaming issue when I bake the space environment into a cubemap for use with the atmosphere renderer.

Fixing it may involve updating some of the assets within my project, which would be a lot of work, so I may postpone it for now.

I have tried a number of things to fix this, and none of them have worked yet.

I have not done very much debugging and optimising in A6, since I didn’t have the time. I intend to spend most of A7 debugging and cleaning up the project, and I should have a reasonably solid and stable release at the end of it.

The post P0-A6: Part 735: Debugging, A7 Plan first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completed my art piece for the Android, which I think looks quite good.

I did a very small amount of post processing in Photoshop, but it is almost all rendered from the iRay renderer in Substance Painter.

A6 is now basically done, I will be starting A7 shortly.

The post P0-A6: Part 734: Art first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I am very close to finishing Alpha-6.

I have added some improvements to the Item and Inventory management systems, to allow for more complex functionality.

I have also made improvements to the AI, etc.

I have a lot more testing to do, and some additional features, but I am making good progress with this.

The post P0-A6: Part 733: AI, Dynamic Story, Items first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have finished the Color ID mapping and UV unwrapping, and all preparatory work for the art piece that I am working on. I am hoping to get it properly textured this month, and then I intend to take some 3D renders from it.

I may look into post-processing those renders too, to improve the quality or add image effects.

The post P0-A6: Part 732: Art first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added several actions and new features to the AI system.

The AI can now use the new dialog system to interact with the player. Their dialog will change depending on various events and variables, such as whether enemies are present, the temperature, weather, and what the state of the current story or objective is.

They can also help the player by healing them, or offering them ammunition, etc.

I have also made improvements to the AI for the creatures. Not only can the player now damage them with a weapon, but they will respond to non-fatal damage by either running away, or attacking, depending on whether they are prey animals or predators, and depending on their current health status.

The post P0-A6: Part 731: AI, Dynamic Story first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added some new items to the project, including weapon items and navigation items.

The weapon has the ability to apply context-sensitive damage (using sendmessage) to the objects that they hit.

The navigation items allow the player to locate objects in the world by using relative bearing angles. If the player is facing the item, the device shows a high intensity signal, if they are facing away, it shows a low intensity signal. This requires a little more skill to use than a simple compass, and would work when the player should not know exactly where an object or building is.

The next step is to improve the AI, and add more actions.

The post P0-A6: Part 730: Art, Items, improvements first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have created an interactive dialog system for the project that allows the player to receive text and voice messages from AI entities, and, optionally, respond to them.

The system is relatively simple, but has support for message queues, works in world space, and can be displayed while the player is performing actions without interrupting gameplay.

I also have support for callbacks, (using delegates) so that clicking on a dialog action triggers a specific function to be called.

As the stories that I am generating get more advanced, this system will become more and more useful.

The post P0-A6: Part 729: AI, Dynamic Story first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have made some additonal improvements to the AI, as well as the inventory and item management features.

I have also added a system that hides the terrain surface when the user enters a building that protrudes below the surface of the terrain.

The next part of the project is to work on an AI dialog system, to allow for voice and text best communication with an AI entity. I want to be able to use voice output for immersion, but have text output as a backup.

The user should also be able to use voice input and output too, and allowing the user to choose between dialog options visually will require some changes to the controls of the game.

I have also done a little work on my art project. I intend to finish this in the next week or so.

The post P0-A6: Part 728: AI, Art, Dynamic Story first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

The AI navigation system seems to finally work. There is still a lot of testing to be done, in particular with regards to rotation of the world axis, etc.

There is also a bug with the direction that the AI is facing when they are moving towards a target location that is above or below them.

However, the system seems to work quite well, and I have at least achieved proof of conept.

I can now load complex structures (such as cities, buildings with interiors, etc) into the world dynamically, and generate a navmesh. The players AI companions can then transition to this navmesh, and navigate around the structure without any major issues.

The post P0-A6: Part 727: AI, Dynamic Story first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

After much work, I have managed to fix most of the concept issues with the AI navigation.

The issue with the graph transition was caused by the AI’s internal graph reference not being updated after they transitioned, so they were looking for a path on the old graph, after they had moved to the new one.

There are, however, still some issues with the AI navigation improvements in the field.

The post P0-A6: Part 726: AI, Dynamic Story first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.