DamoclesX

Right now, the freeplay strategy mode offers me all tech right from the beginning. I think it would be more interesting to have the option of aquiering higher tech (Gatling, Rockets, Shields) during the island attacks by hacking an enemies Lab. So you also have a tech progression during the course of the campaign. The tech beeing spread over the initial enemy islands. This also makes it more interesting to use lower grade tech and strategies in the beginning.

I did not see the first Post showing (since you some review automatism) , so I might have doubleposted it then.

The game is really good in many areas and its overall concept, but also a central problem that everyone knows by now, So let me propose: 7 (simpler) ways to improve pathfinding (or easing the issues) Lets take the current pathfinding (overall grid calculation and placing of waypoints) as given... #1 Let the vehicles have more freedom. Simple concept: make the turncircle much smaller, or none existing. The vehicles could just turn in place, orienting at the next path-node. This would of could eliminate the nice steering mechanincs you implemented, but at least fix 80% of the problems And fun is more important than realistic vehicle behavior. #2 turn Pathfinding off as Option and let the player set waypoints -> as an Option in the menu for player vehicles. Now turning the walrus pathfinding off would make the vehicles look kind of helpless, but it would give the player the option to plan the paths manually (setting waypoints), and the executing the path at the needed time. This would still make the vehicles have problems with bumping into small obstacles and each other. A simple scan could avoid this. (if obstacle is on the left-front, turn tight, and vice versa) A graphical help could be a drawn curve of how the vehicles would actually behave when steering. So the user can reset the waypoints if the actual followed path would crash. #3 make them follow you like a sniffdog in "assist" mode Here the pathfinding changes mode when doing "assist". The player steers a vehicles. and every other walrus that is set to assist follows the players past positions. (like a dog following a trail) So when the player drives, he leaves a marker every few meters and a counter. The following vehicles try to reach each point in this path from the oldest to the newes. The first point is the closest they can "see". each vehicle will follow the one in front. (example: 6 player, 7 follows 6, 8 follows 7, 9follows 8) This works quite ok, and at least lets the player plot a good path manually while driving the leasing walrus. #4 Cheat 1 (passable) -make obstacles and other vehicles passable (if bumping more than once.) This shows at least some collisions, but eliminate the cludding and hanging problems the vehicles suffers most from. The current pathfinder should still make the vehicles going around obstacles and structure most of the time, but if needs be better cheat than hang. #5 Cheat 2 (snap) -warp to a waypoint when missing it. If the vehicles reaches the waypoint and misses it, it will snap onto it automatically, if no other vehicles is on it instead of strying to turn around. #6 make a problem counter. leave the pathfinding working as it is, until a threshold of problems (collisions, turning around, recalc) is reached. Then turn on a cheat mode, and let it move just like the Droids (no turning circles, less collision radius) similar to #1 #7 brute force If the PC has enough CPU power left, you could simulate timesteps and see if there is a collision - at least with static objects. Simulate (with simplification) the traveled route by calculating the physics simulation for a timefraction (like 5 seconds) if the was a collision adjust the waypoint or insert a steercommand to target and rerun the simulation. Thake the path that showed the best outcome based on the heuristics (beeing close to the next waypoint) --- my humble Ideas on that topic.