This week we continued our progress on the player building system and made some big additions. We fixed rotation snap points for floors and foundations so walls will always face outwards or inwards because walls are most useful when they are at right angles. We added window planks to the construction menu and added glass penetration to building windows. Very few things are more satisfying than shooting out a new window, especially after the collapse of civilization. We fixed a bug with the building totem health bar not showing in the game and added a recipe for the construction tool to the craftable items list so players beside us can get in on the construction craze that seems to be sweeping what’s left of Lahaina.
We added a couple of bits of audio and nabbed some weapon bugs this week too. We implemented audio alive/dead state switches for WWise and low health audio events. Bleeding out, the strangled gasps of the poisoned, and death rattles have never sounded better. The team fixed a bug with weapon sights showing camera meshes in-game. We also fixed a bug where ADS’ing with the shotgun made all pellets hit the center point, making bird hunting particularly difficult.
Most of our time this week, however, was spent on AI steering. Our goal is to make the AI run and move more naturally when tracking players. Instead of charging or running away in straight lines, we’re striving to round out their pathing showing that there is weight behind their movements and making it more realistic. We fixed a bug where AI could get stuck on corners if two nav path points were generated too close to each other, and one where AI enemy tracking modules could cause an AI to lose their enemy in certain cases.
We’ve mostly focused on deer and wolves while we work out the kinks, but plan on improving the mutant’s lurching in the near future too. Below you can see a video highlighting our steering work and comparing AI pathing before and after.
