Weekly Report (Feb 11)

Jason here,

This week, I discovered and resolved issues with the nav graph generation method. The biggest problem was occurring when nodes that should have been navigable were not usable; the graph generator thought they had already been traversed.

Also, NPCs can move along Bezier curves, but it could use some tweaking as far as their ability to turn around goes: as NPCs move along the path, their direction is not completely related to their movement direction--this was done in order to create a smoother transition between portals: it appears more continuous in that case, but looks terrible when they need to turn around.

I am not sure what next week's plans are--if the group will be combining the projects, then that will be the focus, but if not, then I will direct my attention to implementing the NPCs' various states and movement behaviors--so far, these states include things like: retreating, attacking, evading, moveToLocation, following, wandering, and idling.

I had been thinking about these behaviors, and I believe that it would be interesting if the NPCs had their own hierarchy in which they may hunt each other as well as the player.

This applies mainly to Myriem, Matthew, and me: make sure the objects that you create code for can be loaded dynamically from an Autodesk fbx file, a text file, or some other medium that is not compiled into the game; I'll be choosing fbx format mainly because model editors can function as our level editors.

I already proved the feasibility of the concept with the nav graphs, and it makes it easier to make levels in the long run.

I can give advice on how certain elements could be loaded if you all want me to.

Later