This is Jason with a long[ish] update on our progress towards demos. We have been hard at work getting a demo ready. I wanted to give everyone a feel for what it’s like to develop a game with a small team.
AI
Shipping a demo with combat requires the AI to behave in a reasonable way. Up to this point they have been heavily scripted, but to make a more interactive demo we have accelerated implementing a few things related to perception and reaction to threats.
- We now simulate “a quick glance”. If a character hears a noise and the source of the noise is in their line of sight but not field of view, they now have a chance to also visually detect and evaluate the source.
- We revised “contact tracking”. Previously the fog of war system was too aggressive hiding characters within the line of sight but out of field of view. Now you can track due to sound and neutral and friendly contacts are retained for longer.
- NPC AI now has separate tactics and actions. This allows them to return to their previous actions when interrupted and make better choices about when to take an interrupt vs continue what they were doing.
- AI commands can now be issued from the dialog scripting language. This was a temporary regression from switching to the new dialog editing software.
- Changed vision markers to appear if any party member has contact with enemy, not just selected character.
Dialog
Alex has been entering all the dialog for the demo and initial levels. This has exposed a few issues during testing and we have been fixing those as they pop up.
- Scripts can now be attached to any dialog node. Previously they only worked on player answers.
- Added support for N-way conversations. Previously dialogs could only be between the player and one NPC.
- Some sequences would cause the wrong portrait to be displayed in the chat. This has been fixed.
- Added scripting command to make a NPC face an object.
- Added scripting command to play a specific animation.
- Added item list to instruction nodes to allow item transfers between NPCs and player inventory.
- Characters now play a conversation animation while talking.
- [todo] Add sorting option to answers Fixed bug where NPC could interrupt an existing chat to start a new one.
Objectives
The game has always had a plan to present the player with specific mission objectives. We decided to pull this in [schedule wise] for the demo. So about three days ago I started implementing the objective screen.
- Implemented an Objectives tab in the character screen.
- Added a place to edit the objective list in the UE4 level editor.
- Linked the text descriptions to the description objects in the dialog editor.
- Added C++ code to track progress of objectives.
- Added C++ code to display objective state changes (complete or failed) to player log.
- Added objectives to test map and played though.
- Fixed bugs resulting from above additions.
- [todo] UI cleanup of objectives screen. Display check or X for pass and fail.
Maps
Alex has also been cleaning up the base map for the demo. We should have done this one earlier because the improvement in graphical quality have been huge.
- Review post-processing settings for map.
- Reviewed lighting on map. Added descriptions to items, which will appear in-game as tool tips if you hover over an item.
- Fix some material issues where the materials were too metallic (too reflective). Floors are never clean enough to behave like a perfect mirror.
- Fixed window transparency to work with the fog of war.
- Added AI paths and tasks to NPCs on base map.
- Added lots of environmental items to make the map look more like a real office environment.
Misc
- Fixed bug where weapons could fire in a wrong mode if the player used the default mode.
- Added contact counts to character portraits, showing how many friendly, neutral, and enemy NPCs a character perceives.
- Fixed bug with NPC movement that would sometimes use the wrong movement speed (e.g. walk instead of run).
- Fixed bug where movement animation would not stop when a character finished following another character.
- Moved item descriptions from in-game editor to external tool to support localization. And yes, we hope to have the resources to localize the game.
- Fixed character names getting corrupted in event log.
I hope this gives everyone an idea what two weeks of development here at Shy Snake look like. We operate at a higher than normal velocity and want our backers to know about the progress we’ve made.