Sunday, May 15, 2016

Caravan mission music recording


I did two new raw recordings, in theory for use in Caravan. I didn't really plan out these music selections; I just sort of played. The only constraint was the rough length (the non-combat part of Caravan is currently 6 or 7 minutes), and the combat part is expected to be from 6 or 7 to 15 minutes. I also didn't want it to be the same musical theme as from the tutorial, but a common element or two is still good.

It is raw and unprocessed but here they are:

Caravan Opening Theme: This ended up very slow and quite sad; I think there's hope in there but it takes some working up to. Not inappropriate for the mission, but it might be a little too slow. I was amused to realize a few minutes into recording it that I was playing in 6:4 time. It is not amusing in of itself, its more that I was amused that I didn't already know. :)

Caravan Combat Theme: This is supposed to be a pull from the same theme as above, but with a more pounding energy and constant tension. It bears some similarity to the tutorial's combat theme in the nature of the bass and the beat rhythm; that's alright I think.

I'll listen to them both for a while and decide if I'm gonna keep them.


Lots of Caravan and AI updates to talk about; but the current rule is that it waits for Caravan to have a successful full playthrough! Soon? SOON?! (hopefully)

EDIT: There's some funny resonances in the combat theme that are kind of painful and obviously not intended. I'll have to figure out how to fix those sometime, but I'm honestly not sure how.


Monday, February 15, 2016

Overdue update; AI and Terrain effects

Wow. September 5th for the previous post. Long time. Overdue for an update :)

AI was the task last mentioned. Guess what! It turns out AI is hard, just as I was saying in September. It is also interesting, but maybe even moreso frustrating. So what's the current state of it? Well, it works. It works and does some interesting things. We can specify AI parameters for actions we build in the spreadsheets, and it can use them; even those with complicated prerequisites. It can build sequences of steps needed for complex actions. It can forget all that and just decide on an immediate next step. It can be guided to some extent as well; the AI units can be given preferences for types of actions and considerations.

All fine and good you say, but what can it do?

It has a reasonable combat driver; it can control commanders reasonably in combat situations. It weighs objectives, current status and positioning, enemies' status and positioning, and allies'. It will retreat when hurt, rally when it can, charge from distance, advance to stay in proximity, hold when threatened.

It can reasonably find its way to a target location, even with blocked paths and terrain obstacles and complicated areas.

It can run a rudimentary protection objective, defending multiple points and sort of separating out the defense when there are multiple AIs.

It knows how to get unstuck in various ways; it will rally or use other available methods to gather its party and venture forth.

It works in a way that is asynchronous with the game, sort of, so the AI takes game time to execute rather than real time. It can be parameterized to think slow or think fast.

It doesn't sound like much, does it?

The immediate purpose of the AI is to control the caravan opponent in scenario #2. At this point it can control it reasonably well, but it still needs a few more lessons to acheive the goal. It needs to break down paths into pieces for piece-wise evaluation of threat. It needs a partially endurant memory that understands temporality. It needs to be able to be controlled to want to retreat/recover after certain actions (or it needs to decide to do so itself emergently). It needs to gracefully handle the player harassing it without a hard engagement. Still feels like a ways away.

Here's a 3 minute clip of the AI sort of succeeding a traversing the obstacle course. A couple bugs show up pretty obviously.


In any case, I decided to do something more frivolous before I return to Caravan again. I wrote in a system to have the terrain material types execute visual effects. I also changed how the terrain renders to use the materials system that got written somewhat recently. Every now and then you need an easy task with instant gratification.

I know it's not exactly amazing; but it adds a bit more life to the terrain. Here's a clip of some new layers thrown on top of the Caravan terrain as a test.

Next time should be sooner. :p