Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We are still mostly working on the new pathfinding system, though we're touching on various other things to try to get a test build ready before long. There's quite a few important technical challenges with the pathfinding, and we want to make sure we get things right now so as to not have to revisit this again later.
At this point we're mainly concerned with optimisation, both in terms of memory usage and just general AI and physics performance. This is an important part of a number of things we're trying to do to dramatically improve the simulation performance, so that we can support more active characters and increase the simulation rate. This will result in generally more accurate and stable physics. We've already begun tuning things to this higher rate and started on further optimisations as this is a really important change that we'd like to take advantage of as soon as possible.
Besides the new pathfinding system itself, we've also been improving pathfinding behaviours. Not just for AI, but also how the player and controls behave. One important change we're making is to add a degree of pathfinding to basic movement controls, so that when you try to move and the exact path is blocked the movement will be automatically corrected rather than leave you stuck in place. The new pathfinding is also generally much more accurate, so you should get less moments when movement feels artificially blocked.
Our original goals didn't include all these requirements for pathfinding, but as the game evolves and we listen to the feedback and desires of our community it has become clear that we were being limited here and that it can make the game better in many important ways. Accepting limitations is something that never seems to survive the process. It is a bit of a development hurdle, but it will be worth the effort.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
We are still mostly working on the new pathfinding system, though we're touching on various other things to try to get a test build ready before long. There's quite a few important technical challenges with the pathfinding, and we want to make sure we get things right now so as to not have to revisit this again later.
At this point we're mainly concerned with optimisation, both in terms of memory usage and just general AI and physics performance. This is an important part of a number of things we're trying to do to dramatically improve the simulation performance, so that we can support more active characters and increase the simulation rate. This will result in generally more accurate and stable physics. We've already begun tuning things to this higher rate and started on further optimisations as this is a really important change that we'd like to take advantage of as soon as possible.
Besides the new pathfinding system itself, we've also been improving pathfinding behaviours. Not just for AI, but also how the player and controls behave. One important change we're making is to add a degree of pathfinding to basic movement controls, so that when you try to move and the exact path is blocked the movement will be automatically corrected rather than leave you stuck in place. The new pathfinding is also generally much more accurate, so you should get less moments when movement feels artificially blocked.
Our original goals didn't include all these requirements for pathfinding, but as the game evolves and we listen to the feedback and desires of our community it has become clear that we were being limited here and that it can make the game better in many important ways. Accepting limitations is something that never seems to survive the process. It is a bit of a development hurdle, but it will be worth the effort.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
