Getting ready for a closed beta, the game is being shaped with reworks on many systems. Today we'd like to share the upgrade done to crew navigation and mechanics. Here's what it used to look like, present in the live demo.
The way you could interacted with the crew felt quite clunky so it was best that it was built again from the ground up. Deck navigation was done using in-house node based system with A* as the calculation method for pathing. This had the disadvantage of having to connect all nodes by hand, both ways, while also forcing a discrete position input from the user.
This method was completely scrapped along with the AI code that depended on it, which was also completely reimagined and reimplemented. Instead of using discrete points to define where crew can be located, a mesh is generated and utilized by Unity where points can be sampled from. Unity also handles calculating routes requested by AI or players themselves. Specifically the "NavMeshComponents" package is used. Though, it only supports static navigation surfaces so a system to connect a moving object to a static offscreen one has to be developed on your side.
This results in a much more comfortable experience for interacting with crew.
As for the AI, here's a clip showing that it's functional and responds well to player interests.
This update should show up in the demo towards the end of the month, but you will be able to access it sooner via the closed beta, which you can apply for through our discord server.
Crew AI deserves a blog post of it's own, which may be the next one. Thanks for catching up with development and hope to see you in the next one!