We've been hard at work adding in Skirmish AI for our game; and although it's not quite ready for an official release we want you guys to be able to see for yourselves what we've been working on. We've removed the requirement for the beta tester branch; now you don't have to worry about entering a code or anything, just select it from the beta opt in menu. Expect updates pretty often on this build; but beware, some builds might be very experimental!
if you do opt in, we'd LOVE to hear your feedback! We'll always respond here or on our Discord.
Changes
We'll catalogue all the quite numerous changes and additions in the patch notes when we finally release the update, but for now we'll just talk about some of the cool stuff you'll find on the tester branch!
Skirmish AI
An AI player starting their base up
We've finally gotten the framework in to support the skirmish AI on the testing build! Our goal in making the skirmish AI is to make a bot that imitates a player as closely as possible; even in FFA scenarios where alliances and trading will eventually be pretty in depth. Right now, we're just focused on the combat component and interacting with the game world.
AI players will build structures, train units, and craft equipment; we spent time making a goal and task system that's gonna help us create and randomize variants of the skirmish AI with ease. At the moment, you can play with AI on the 1v1 Hidden Ruins map or the 3v3 Cinderpeak map.
Quality of Life
Idle workers now can easily be tracked
Generally speaking, we feel that the user experience of the game could use some work; we want to keep RTS actions feeling meaningful, UI looking clean, and the information displayed important. With the advent of AI, we've gotten to add in a few things that we've wanted to do, but couldn't get to due to time constraints. This includes things like units moving on from an attack move order after winning a fight, an idle worker button, alerts that let you know when your base or army is being attacked, or torch units targeting structures automatically. We have a lot more coming for quality of life, so stick around!
Environment
The crystals have made their way outside of the cave a bit
We haven't forgotten about the environment! While working on the AI, we squeezed in some visual and audio improvements to the game. Over time, we'll be working towards a more immersive game world; crystals will hum, ambient tracks change when moving through the world, shelves and tables will be destructible.
New Atmosphere and Skybox
We've utilized UE4's Volumetric clouds and atmosphere systems to create a more realistic skybox. We aren't quite finished here; and the lighting needs a bit more work before the public build, but the improvement is notable.
We're slowly but surely piecing together the Cinderpeak map; and we'll be revamping the Hamlet completely along with updates to the Wave Defense game mode. The pacing, especially in later Battalions, is downright unacceptably slow; this is something we'll be fixing for the public update as well.
That's it for now! There are a bunch more additions and fixes coming down the pipe, and we're looking forward to having you guys test this new huge update before we launch it.