Ah…finally at the stage of adding micro details to Saucer…
The layout is completed. I am super happy with how it’s come out, it’s got terrific flow, vastly superior to the original and subsequent versions of the map that were in Alien Arena. I’ve started putting in collision meshes, which greatly smoothed out the movement. Still a few few to go there, but very pleased thus far. I still have a couple of key assets to make (the giant robot, and the navigator). In the meantime I threw down some blood and guts! This is just a taste, I will be adding quite a bit more.
I feel like this map (and game) is really coming alive with these kinds of details added. Things will *really* start to pop when I add my script effects and I have more animated looking lighting, electricity on the electrodes, etc. For now I’m digging the vibe. I’m going to probably tweak the ambient lighting and fog levels a little but overall I’m pretty pleased with the mood and look. I have one texture I want to revamp a little after looking at these screenshots, that will clean things up a bit palette-wise, there’s just one color on the floor and ceiling that is kind of ugly, and I don’t like the tile it has, will change to a less busy look.
The other “big” progress to report is that I have a working spawn/respawn system, and working bot waypoint pathing. I took a little different approach than what was done in Alien Arena, and it’s less predictable, and feels more “human” like. Alien Arena’s bots were very, very good, IMO, and especially in how they fought you. I’m not close to that yet in Saucermen, it’s all very simplistic and crude at the moment, but it’s all from scratch, with different ideas, not to mention the differences in physics and animation. While Alien Arena’s AceBot based bots used a linked list of ordered waypoints, and bots would run around a map in a loop of sorts, Saucermen takes a different approach. Waypoints are not linked, there is no order that is used. Instead when a bot reaches a waypoint, it will scan for the next one that is in front of him and unobstructed. This requires more careful placement, especially in cases of path intersection, but thus far in testing it’s proving to be very smooth and far less predictable. Bots at times will, if distracted by another player, reverse course or jump onto another path. The other thing about these bots is that they are *very* aggressive and relentless. In Alien Arena it wasn’t very hard to run away from a bot if need be. In Saucermen, often you run away, thinking you’ve lost them, only to turn around and have them right on your tail!
Well, I guess I will work on the last of the assets for this map, and start focusing more on the game mechanics, which will be quite a chore, there is much to do there!