Work continues on the Slime Gathering AI

Yarrbeard -

Had to take a break there to do some stuff around the house. Still working on some of it but I wanted to spend a little time on the slime AI today. Or at least figure out some things about it to implement tomorrow.

First of all the AI should be able to communicate. I was considering a party based system, where you could form parties at a guard barracks or something and then send them to patrol or guard... Maybe a 5 slime party or perhaps larger, not sure. Enemies will also start to come in parties as threats increase.

Gatherers will need to communicate with guards in order to ask for help when they are running away from an assailant so they can find the closest guard to run to and so that guard will engage the enemy and pull the agro off the gatherer.

I need to continue on the Gatherer AI branch, which is done up to the point of Gather Trees. They do not know what to do with pickaxes or fishing poles or scythes or shovels or... anyway, they need to be taught about the different tools and then I need to start on combat so they know to run from combatants too.

Currently gatherers do not have the ability to wander or hold an area, I will need to write code that will teach them to sample the path of the Transporters and select a random point along it. Also need some AI for patrolling the Transporter path.

Outside of patrolling, gathering and fleeing I need a way for the player to set a flag on the map and have the slime stay within a certain range of that flag.

I also have to consider day and night, slimes returning home or to the tavern if they have no home. Otherwise they would have to sleep outside, I guess I could spawn a tent on them and a campfire?

So I need to pick a place to get started and seeing how I already have the first tool, the axe working to gather from trees I should perhaps start adding new tools and resources, then add each branch of the AI for each of the basic tools I think we'll be needing.

  • Pickaxe - Minerals
  • Shovel - Dig for materials like clay.
  • Sickle - Harvest Grasses
  • Scythe - Harvest grasses more efficiently.
  • Basket - Pick fruit.
  • Etc.

Each job will have AI modifiers and special skills once I add the skill DB but that's part of the combat system and that comes in when I start the combat AI so for now I will just write the AI and leave some hooks for the job modifiers later on.

So long as we can come up with useful reasons to add jobs we can add as many as we want, hence the hooks rather ran writing a whole AI for each job, we'll have the core AI and some hooks and overrides.

Once I have some more tools and resources in it will be time to start working on combat perhaps, unless I come up with a better idea by then. Probably be starting combat next month though, if the pace keeps. With that I will have to work on the party system, party leader AI, party general AI like waiting for members to catch up, etc.

For now I will just keep focused on getting gathering working. I also need to design a farming/field system but I wanted to do that once I had an idea how the slime housing will work. I guess we will just start with tents, at night the slimes will pitch a tent and start a campfire. I also have to consider that households consume resources for heat and food.

Will I even have time to add the day/night and housing systems by the demo deadline? Who can say? For now we'll just focus on gathering from the wild, combat, construction and resource transmutation.

Well, guess I better figure out what the tools I will need to make are and then get them made, as well as a gathering point for each.

Here's a few tools, very quickly sprited since it's 3:30 and I need to give my dog a bath.

Tomorrow (or later) I will start on the sprites for gathering nodes to match these tools.

Bonus 10 foot sword. Wonder if I will be able to make it work?

Cheers.