May 2, 2023

Wayfinder - Shiva mi Timbers

With Early Access coming this summer, we want to emphasize how invaluable our community's feedback has been in shaping Wayfinder's development. To all the dedicated Wayfinders who participated in our Closed Beta tests – thank you for your insights and support!

While we will conduct this next Closed Beta with an NDA in place – as the game is still truly in development. We are excited to share the following top requested features that have been implemented in advance of Early Access, and playable in the upcoming Closed Beta! While this is not an exhaustive list of all changes we’ve made, we wanted to highlight how our community has been integral in helping us prioritize and shape the future of Wayfinder.

Jump Dash and Movement Speed Increases
As a Wayfinder, we want you to not only feel powerful, but swift – whether it’s nimbly dancing around enemies in combat or mastering the terrain across Evenor! To assist with this maneuverability, we have added a jump dash and increased overall movement speed so you can now traverse dungeons and outplay opponents more quickly!

Movement While Queued
Freedom! You will no longer be confined while queued for dungeons. Once you queue up for a Lost Zone at the Gloom Gate, you'll be free to move around town and to continue exploring the open world!

Material Codex
We know your time is precious, and we want to help you make the most of it. To streamline your gathering and crafting experience, we've introduced a Material Codex that will give you an approximation of where to find particular materials you are looking for!

Performance, Optimization and Stability Gains
Each Beta test gives us an opportunity to dramatically improve loading times between zones, frame rates and address server stability and crashes. We’ve made significant strides in these areas to ensure a smoother experience across all platforms by increasing frames on both lower specced and high end machines to almost double the performance in some situations! We’ve also fully implemented AMD’s FSR 2.2, resulting in greater performance gains when enabled. These adjustments will continue all the way up until Early Access.

Camera System Overhaul
When adventuring in interior locations or when locking onto enemies, it could at times become tricky to track your enemies or even your own character due to the twisted and maze-like nature of some of our Lost Zones. We’ve completely overhauled the camera system to provide smart detection for both walls and enemies in the world, automatically adjusting the camera’s positioning for a smoother, less frustrating experience.

Gameplay Adjustments
We've implemented numerous enhancements to improve gameplay with clearer FX animations for critical hits and guidance on when to block and parry to help mitigate damage, and a revamp to the Gloom Gate Mission and End of Mission screen!

We can't wait for you to experience these exciting new additions and improvements, Wayfinder! This is just the tip of the iceberg, and we’ll continue to shape the game with the community’s help. If you’re taking part in the Global Closed beta we encourage you to get involved with the community and give us your feedback because we’re listening!

Sign Up Now

Don’t forget! Join us for the upcoming Global Closed Beta beginning on May 10 at 10 a.m. CT (3 p.m. UTC) and running until May 14 at 10 a.m. CT (3 p.m. UTC). There is still time to register! This time, Evenor is opening its doors to players all over the globe!

We hope to see you in Evenor, Wayfinder!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1171690/Wayfinder/

May 2, 2023

Imperfect AI is Fun AI

Cleared Hot - cfinger

Welcome back, intrepid pilots and nostalgia seekers. Today we have a deep dive into the world of NPC AI. But first allow me to tell you a story about the first AI behavior I ever wrote.

We have to go way back to a time so shrouded in nerdiness and embarassment that nobody in their right mind would ever revisit it. Computer camp.

Yes, 13 year old me learned to program at a week long camp surrounded by other uber nerds whose collective abilities quickly showed me I was not the smartest one in the room. Where I learned that you could actually be tired from just thinking all day. Where I learned that losing in Risk really sucks.

Our first task was to create a tic-tac-toe game in C++ (I really wish Python existed back then), and then create an AI player who would never lose. It was a monstrous if-else disaster of listing every possible case of what the AI should do. Eventually I got it working and it would never lose. It was a "perfect" AI player.

Soon I discovered that the game was no longer fun to play. Something about that stuck with me; a fun opponent is imperfect. If you've ever said "the AI is cheating" in a game, you know what I mean.

So the goal is to make AI that is human-like, instead of god-like. Well, let's start with Behavior Trees.

Behavior Trees

Behavior Trees are basically a flow chart of decisions and actions. For example:

Thank you Zanid Haytam for my fav example of why I spend too much money on ubereats.

My first take on AI in Cleared Hot was pretty simple: If you see an enemy, shoot them. If you have a destination, walk towards it. If you were a friendly unit and the helo landed near you, get in. It was governed by a Behavior Tree.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Well here is what the behavior tree looked for this simple behavior.

The real culprit was this: Combining State and Actions in one tree. For the non-programmers, state is something you have to keep track of about the world, that will determine what you do. For example: Am I currently attacking, am in the helo or not, etc. So every time the tree was executed, you would have to dive into the right sub-tree for that state.

Behavior Trees inside State Machines

After experiencing enough pain with the behavior tree approach, I stumbled upon a GDC video. In this talk, Bobby Anguelov mentions an approach that uses State Machines for... state, and Behavior Trees for actions. This is based off his experience creating AI for the Hitman series! Pretty cool.

This approach made so much sense to me that I figured it was worth implementing before I added anything new to the NPCs. So I build a simple version. The NPCs have a small set of states:

Idle
Attack
Flee
Hit
Dead

Each state contains it's own behavior tree, that is set up when entering that state, and cleaned up when leaving. These behavior trees are just actions. They aren't making decisions and they aren't running any sensors. They are just executing actions. This cleans things up a TON. Look at the attacking behavior tree, which is currently the most complex one:

The really cool thing about this is that you can update your knowledge separate from running the behavior. Previously the NPCs were doing raycasts everytime they executed the behavior tree, but now they only need to update their knowledge base at the speed of a human reaction, and yet they can drive their behavior trees much faster.

Perception and Knowledge

In order to make decisions, the state machine needs some knowledge of the outside world. This is done by implementing "sensor" scripts that allow the NPC to see or hear things in the world. Each NPC updates their knowledge base about every 200-250ms (typical human reaction time) and will change state if needed.

Credit: Bobby Anguelov's Game AI Basics video

These sensors react to "Stims" or AI Stimulations, which are just things you can drop in the world for an action that you want the NPCs to know about. So far I'm using these for: shots being fired, shots impacting a surface, explosions, all NPC and player positions, etc.

A trail of minigun bullet impacts create "Stims" in the world that NPCs can see and hear.

The game also adds some randomness into their update timing, so it tends to spread the processing time across frames, making the game run smoother. I've yet to fully stress test this, but I've put about 50 NPCs in view at once with no problems.

My favorite example of new behavior is the "RPG Warning". When an enemy is about to fire an RPG (or other high damage weapon), they create a "RPG about to fire" Stim. If another NPC can see that, they will play an RPG warning voice line (RPG!!!) which also creates an audio stim. If another NPC sees the RPG enemy but already heard someone else yell the warning, they won't repeat it.

All of this makes it possible for the NPCs to react to things in the world. Like being shot at.

Thank You

If you read this far, you need to be subscribed to my email list! https://clearedhotgame.com/email-list/

This is where I will release the first play test builds! I've already been interacting w some of you over email. Thanks for your thoughts and feedback, your emails are super motivating.

I hope to have a rough schedule for the beta soon.

Thank you all for your support!

May 2, 2023

Swirl Watch Version 1.018 (Cold Launch)

Swirl W@tch - sleeper_games

-Rebalanced some item prices.
-BLAST PACK now deals 125 max damage to ships (was 250), but has a +100% damage bonus against structures now.
-WRNCH ARM can now silently sabotage comms stations.
-Combat Wire melee EMP damage bonus reduced (30-->10) and renamed to photon
-Passive sonar now works by increasing guard engine sound range and is expressed as percentage.
-Clarified unlock conditions for unlocks that are awarded for zone completion.
-Zone completion unlocks now only trigger in their respective zone (not above) and will now trigger when exiting via maglevator as well.
-Individual matter condensers only restock 2 times now.
-Fully boarding a ship now interrupt most tac-jumps.
-NPC ships will now generally attempt to path around high threat hazards.
-Increased LP reduction within industrial sludge (25%-->50%).
-Decreased LP reduction within nano-wire (50%-->25%).
-Gadgets produced on high level mission matter condensers can now have mods.
-Fixed loot pool mod lists not generating correctly, leading to weapons not generating with full mod selection.
-Fixed Freezer Crystal hitbox causing self damage when downloading comms key (?)
-Fixed Pneumo Mount granting perfect aim stability to NAIL-R.
-Fixed high level actions requiring one more lower level win to unlock than intended.
-Fixed scenarios in which a boarded ship that jumps would remain in boarded state.
-Attempted to fix crash occurring when completing decompression on boarded ships.
-Fixed certain placed gadgets not self-destructing consistently when approached by guards.
-Fixed certain object destruction events not destroying attached tripwires.
-Fixed certain melee attack effects applying even when targets resists melee.
-Fixed Combat Wire shield piercing not taking effect.
-Fixed resupply cannisters being valid shot and melee targets while still being dropped in.
-Fixed certain key enemies still being able to retreat due to comms blackout.
-Fixed a certain area not generating comms relays.