Stream: For those interested in coding, I've been streaming a bit on Twitch, although not at regular times. Whenever something comes up that I think would be interesting to watch, I stream it. Mostly C++ code. Here: twitch.tv/emt1337
Dishonored: I played this game for the first time last week. Accidentally beat the whole thing in a single 8-hour play session. I had completely forgotten about the game, and now I come to the obvious realization that my game is basically the Blink ability. Not a bad thing, certainly.
I learned some things about stealth. My AI bots now follow predictable patrol routes. And footsteps now emit sound which I visualize in-game like so:
But mostly, Dishonored just made me wish I was making a normal FPS with a human player character rather than a spiderbot. So, the big reveal is:
Humanoids: you can now switch back and forth between humanoid and spiderbot.
I always planned to do something like this, but it was going to be more of a "possess this character" thing. But I think it needs to play a more central role, so I think you'll be able to switch back and forth at will. We'll see. The controls will be exactly like Lemma. I've already got rough jumps, wall-jumps, mantles, wall-running, a decent acceleration curve, a non-horrible placeholder running animation, and wall sliding. All this was pretty straightforward since I've done it before.
Here's the tricky thing about humanoids: they can walk even on pink surfaces which are inaccessible to spiderbots. But spiderbots can climb on walls and ceilings. Several movement puzzles immediately come to mind.
Level design: still struggling with this. My goal is to bring a demo to GDC and find a world-class level designer willing to collaborate.
In the meantime, I decided to steal a design from Dishonored and use it to test the humanoid controls. See if you can place it. There are two Sentinels guarding the entrance...
I also removed edge detection on the out-of-range (pink) geometry. It cuts out some unnecessary noise, but also makes it harder to see stuff in the distance. We'll see if I keep it. Visuals are very much subject to change.
Engine stuff: The armature component now supports multiple blended animation layers. Silky smooth motion. I'm also nearly done with a major refactor which will enable saving/loading games. My goal is to basically fread a bunch of data into memory, hit "go" on the simulation, and have it work. Pretty much that boils down to: IDs everywhere rather than pointers.
Looking ahead: Been reading up on behavior trees. AI is a major shortcoming in my games, it's always been simple FSMs. I'd like to level up this area of my development expertise.