Those are a few screens from the "evil ending" area. It's basically serving as a cutscene area. Pick the evil path, do it, go there, game over. So the evil ending is completely finished, and go me.
So, we need a "good ending" a.k.a. continue the mod. So I've begun that. Basically I'm going for a go to this area and defend a fort from a horde of demons and such. So in order to do that, I needed formations, arrow towers, catapult towers, etc. and an AI that chooses targets and attacks the towers and defenders. Basically what's going to happen is the assault is going to come in waves of 5, I don't know, squads at a time around the fort, and try and kill the commander. You have to defend the commander and suvive the waves...then something else you'll have to do that I haven't decided yet. Then the mod ends after a suitably epic battle.
Yeah, sounds like a big project, right? Well, it is. But I've made a lot of progress, highlighted in these screens:
Look, they move as a unit, see? They're in a "loose" formation there, but their formations change as they progress through the fort.
Oh, look, they knocked down the gate. Cool. See, they'll react accordingly based upon what's around them. If a gate blocks their path, they'll knock it down. If they're being fired upon by an archer's tower, they'll try to destroy it. If they see a defender, they'll try and kill it. All as a unit. Until the leader is killed, then they gain their own AI and act as individuals.
You can also see the catapult firing in the distance.
A dead archer's tower. There's three types of towers, archer, scorpion, and catapult. The catapults fire arrows at nearby enemies, and long range catapult shots at locations and they take a while to get there, but pack a punch, but they can't shoot things with catapult shots that are too close. The catapult shots are indiscriminate, though, so don't get too close. The scorpion chooses a single target at a pretty far range and fires a bunch of extremely accurate arrows. The archer tower chooses up to three targets and fires arrows at each.
Just an arrow/catapult shot, and a shot of the guys assaulting a tent. There's arrows flying everywhere when this sequence is running.
Tents serve as respawn points for the defenders (since you don't want too many objects fighting at once, you see. Kind of lame but the lag is a real issue.), spawing troops as they die. Those are targetted also by the attackers. There's several throughout the camp, so you'll want to defend those so they can distract the attackers from taking down the towers. Once those are gone, it's a leisurely stroll up to the commander.
Finally, I'm helping a bit with Misery Stone, found here. You know those fancy new models? The awesome looking areas? Custom music? I'm not doing any of that. I'm scripting a single encounter that needs a special AI.
That's it.
5 comments:
And you're doing a fantastic at helping too, DW :) This is definitely one of those fights to go down into the history books as "memorable" as you called it.
And I'm glad you managed to get the formations working. I bet it's been a real nuisance getting those NPCs to act correctly.
sounds pretty funky. Don't envy the debugging this beast of a sequel must take tho!
That battle sounds great and it will be nice to have an organized end battle opposed to choas that the custom AI provides when a large number of hostiles and defenders get together.
The NPCs still aren't 100%. Getting them to attack placeables and such isn't that easy haha but it's acceptable.
Most of the debugging is done. I've been having ongoing testing from a bunch of people who volunteered. I've been fixing it as I go, so it should be in good shape come a few weeks when it's done.
haha shaughn, it'll still be chaotic ;) organized chaos haha
Wow, this looks and sounds great! A huge tactical battle with catapults, reinforcements and stuff, what could be better? And looks very pretty, too.
One thing that I don't quite understand is the reference to an "evil" ending that takes you out of the mod. Does it mean that having taken an evil path here we'd be finished with the SoT sequence - i.e. the next installment continues from the "good" ending only?
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