Development Update
Hi guys,
Firstly, thanks for your suggestions on the previous blog post. We’ve got some cool idea for tribe defences now we’re hoping to build on.
A month or two ago we hit a wall with some of the game mechanics we had planned and recreated our plans for the main gametype. We didn’t make sacrificed, we were able to both improve the gameplay and improve the practicality in programming the thing. So I’ve had to take a few steps backward in the development process and redevelop parts of the AI to make sure it’s all consistent.
In short, instead of leaving your ‘map’ and going to an enemy base which is an entirely different map, you and an enemy tribe ‘share’ a piece of land. The aim of the game is to take over the enemy checkpoints, and eventually their main base. Of course, the enemy tribe is going to attack you at times too, and you don’t want your warriors to be sleeping when it happens! As you conquer each tribe, you will advance to more difficult terrains with more dinosaurs and smarter tribes.
With a few new techniques, there should be some big performance increases even though there’ll be twice as many cavemen running around, and not to mention with much greater intelligence.
I wish I’d more interesting screenshot teasers to show you but at this point it’s still all very unappealing. Here’s a snippet of our Hunter AI – this is what a hunter executes every frame. Primarily, the hunter looks at what ‘status’ he’s in (i.e ‘normal’, ‘throwing a rock’, ‘dodging’, ‘sleeping’, etc) and executes code accordingly. The “normal” status is like his main menu. It’s where he determines where he needs to go, and what he needs to do when he gets there. What he ‘does’ is usually another status (which, once completed, returns to his ‘normal’ status). The comments and resource names should provide some cryptic clues to some of the features of caveman craig 2.
For a bit of fun, I challenge you all to point out some features that Caveman Craig 2 is going to have based on the PDF below.
Click here to view the PDF
Regards,
Rhys Andrews
