I have made several improvements, and fixed several bugs, with the AI graph and navigation system that I am using.
The paths that the AI is following now use linear interpolation, so they are much smoother and more natural looking.
I have also improved the graph detection algorithm, so that the AI can better detect when a navigable graph is within range.
I have also made several other improvements to the city generator, including lighting fixes, etc.
I have done some further testing on the AI system, and despite some minor bugs, it seems to work well.
I have some more features to add to my current AI system (Including smoothing out the navigation points), but after this, I want to try to replace the existing AI system with my new system.
I also have a lot of playtesting to do within the cities, but other than that, most of the work for B5 is done.
I have made improvements to the AI navigation system so that the AI can now switch to and from dynamically generated graphs at will. If a dynamically generated graph is present, the AI will detect it and use it for navigation, otherwise it will default to simpler navigation behaviour.
The AI system needs extensive testing and improvements in the future, but it seems to be generally functional. I will probably replace a lot of the existing code with my new AI system, but this system needs additional improvements first.
I have spend a few days testing, debugging, and optimising the new city features.
They were causing significant slowdowns in the project, but I tracked this down to the animators on the guis that I was using.
I made several optimisation improvements to these, as well as paging in/out various objects in the world, and this significantly improved performance.
The next goal is to test and improve the AI navigation a little more.
I have added a small number of new items that the player can purchase within cities only, and I have added more vendors and vending machines that the player can buy items from.
In addition to that, I have improved the AI NPC code to add unique names for each NPC. This should increase immersion during player interactions.
I have also fixed some bugs where the player and AI positions were incorrect when they interacted with objects in the enviroment.
The next goal is to optimise and test the city more, and then spend some more time on the AI graph system, there are still issues here that I would like to look at further.
The basic “jobs” that the player can do are now mostly working.
I have also added more interactivity for the various city objects, so that the player, and AI, can interact with more objects in the world.
Even though the number of different actions and interaction options are limited at the moment, there are enough to allow the player to successfully live and survive in a city, in the same way that they can live and survive outside cities (by finding and crafting items, etc).
I have also fixed several bugs and added more smaller improvements to the project.
The artwork for the city decoration objects is done.
I am now in the process of importing it into unity and setting it up.
I have to scale and rotate some of the objects and mounting points so that the art looks correct in the world.
This is mostly working fine, and the city does look at lot less spartan with this artwork added.
The next goal is to add some very simple options for the player to earn credits within the city.
I have made several improvements to the procedural city builder. The system should now spawn a lot more decorations and other world objects in the scene.
The next goal is to model these. I will keep the art simple for now, I am mainly trying to add greater immersion and gameplay features, that art is not a priority for the moment.
The artwork and texturing is mostly done, and the importing should be done in a few days. I can then work on adding the new features.
I ran into a minor issue with pseudo-random seeds not being reproducible.
This was causing the NPC’s that were being generated to change with each run of the game. This has now been fixed.
I have also fixed some additional issues with the NPCAI. There is more work to be done here, but I am ready to move on to the next part of the project.
The next goal is to add some more basic decorations to the city, to make it look more visually interesting. I then want to add more interactive features for the player to use.
The NPCAI system is almost done, but there are still some last minute issues with transitioning from exterior to interior graphs, and navigation and pathfinding.
I have added basic logic to the system that will allow the NPC to enter and leave the various buildings within the city, but there is more testing required.
I have also fixed some issues with the vehicle navigaton system.