DEV

Creating a Pack Mentality

The team has been focused on AI improvements and has made quite a few this week. We want the animals in Fractured Veil to act as naturally as possible, and our mutants as smart as they are ugly. We started the improvements with animals.

Deer now make use of our dynamic AI grouping system. When a player spooks a buck it will start running and others nearby will join it; We also increased the time they will flee to make them harder to hunt. Our wolves got a few new skills as well. We added a howl mechanic that allows them to alert others nearby to food or danger and form a pack. We’ve added a “scent” feature to players that allow the wolves (and a few other nasty things down the road) to track you down like an angry parent when you’ve missed curfew. Finally, we adjusted their combat tactics a bit by employing “hit and run” attacks and having them charge at different angles instead of just sitting in front of a player, making them much harder to target and hit. All in all, a big wolf pack is one of the most dangerous things on the island now.

We are incorporating some of this grouping work into our mutants as well. It’s never been more important to properly dispose of your kills by burning them or risk creating a cannibal horde looking for fresh meat. We’ve beefed up Big Bob making him a big problem for a group, and virtually impossible to take out single-handedly. The Trophy Collectors just got deadlier too. We’ve adjusted the poison damage their fetid projectiles do, and made it easier for players to get poisoned when hit or standing in the noxious cloud left by their rotting ranged weapons.

As work on improving our road tool continues, we started to build a similar system for rivers, streams, and creeks. While the team still has some kinks to work out, we hope to have a system for procedurally generating waterways on the map soon. Below you can see one of our most complete roads going through the remains of a neighborhood, and a stream cutting through the jungle.

Responsive image

Responsive image

Don’t forget to check out our new Daily Update Twitter feed if you enjoy staying on top of our development process. We post updates and bug fixes there daily so you can stay on top of our progress