Spiritus Astrum [P0-B10]: p1488: Towards Early Access
I have completed another full mission in the new campaign.
This one took a long time to do, since it involved travelling to a planet and generating a navmesh, and then spawning NPC’s and issuing commands. The game has code to do this, but it didn’t cover this use case, so I had to make some complex changes.
I have also made improvements to the character creator system, so that I can create not only random NPC’s, but specific characters and character types as well (Ie, characters wearing the same uniforms, etc).
There was a lot of work involved with this particular story, but it works quite well, and I can reuse the mechanics that I added in other stories.
The next goal is to continue with the missions in the current campaign, there are quite a few left to do.
![Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1554: Towards Early Access](https://i.imgur.com/tRe0AXh.jpeg "Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1554: Towards Early Access")
![Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1553: Towards Early Access](https://i.imgur.com/Y5SI3jU.jpeg "Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1553: Towards Early Access")
March 17, 2025 @ 12:45 am
Sounds like you’ve made some serious progress with the NPC mechanics! I can imagine how tricky it must have been to get that navmesh working for the specific mission. Are you planning to integrate this system into earlier parts of the campaign as well?
March 20, 2025 @ 7:07 pm
Thank you! Yes, it is integrated into the rest of the project already, but there are various different use cases depending on the type of AI, and the circumstances (Whether the AI is on a moving object like a starship, or a planet, etc). Thanks for your comment!
April 6, 2025 @ 11:08 pm
Really interesting to hear about the navmesh and NPC command work—it’s always cool to get a peek behind the curtain at how these gameplay systems evolve. Being able to reuse those mechanics across different stories seems like a great payoff for the effort. Looking forward to seeing how the character creator improvements come into play in future missions!
April 8, 2025 @ 3:41 am
Thank you! Yes, the game is starting to come together, finally!
May 5, 2025 @ 12:09 am
Love how you’re building out systems that not only solve the current mission’s needs but are also reusable across the game. The character creator updates in particular seem like they’ll go a long way toward immersion and narrative consistency.
May 7, 2025 @ 12:04 am
Thank you!
May 6, 2025 @ 1:11 am
I really appreciate the detail on building mission-specific mechanics that can later be reused—that kind of foresight often makes or breaks long-term development. Curious if there were any unexpected challenges in getting the NPCs to follow commands reliably?
May 7, 2025 @ 12:04 am
Hi!
Yeah, I am definitely going for reusability! This also ties in with the procedural generation system.
Getting NPC’s to follow commands works ok, the problem is pathfinding. If an NPC is spawned at long ranges, the terrain will be rendered, but won’t have a collider, so the NPC is not going to have any ground surface to raycast or collide against, so I have to basically disable NPC processing (Or Disable the entire NPC) at longer distances.
December 27, 2025 @ 10:35 am
I love reading about the complex navmesh generation and NPC commands-a real look into game development! It’s fascinating how these systems evolve over time
January 3, 2026 @ 11:39 am
The navmesh detail really caught my attention! It sounds challenging to have NPCs follow commands reliably, especially considering terrain issues