I've spent the past few weeks working on PunjiVR's new AI which will be featured in the next major update. Things have been going well and a lot of progress has been made, but the new AI just don't feel right.
To speed up development, I have been using premade AI solutions as a base, integrating them with PunjiVR's mechanics, and expanding them. While this makes things go faster, there's more headache involved due to mashing someone else's code with mine and having to think through the eyes of the solution's creator. In addition to that, it's more challenging to create unique AI that's based on systems other popular games are also based on.
In short, I'm going back and creating all of the AI's systems from scratch with my code and my style. This will allow me to be 100% familiar with how everything works and it will speed up the debugging and testing process as well as making future AI improvements much easier. I will make the AI exactly how I'm envisioning them while still having them optimized. This will of course take longer than originally planned, but it will be so much better in the long run.
The AI have been the weakest part of PunjiVR since launch, which isn't good for a singleplayer tactical shooter, so I see this as a sort of necessity at this point in development. For the direction that I want to take the game to, great AI is a must and I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort just to make something slightly better when I could spend more time to make it how I actually want it. The goal of PunjiVR is to make a shooter different from the rest, so this change will be well worth it.
There likely won't be a lot of progress updates for a while because there won't be a lot to show for some time, but I am still working hard every day on it. If you're ever interested in the update's progress, I'm always happy to share and be transparent, so don't hesitate to ask!
Thank you all so much for your patience, this will be the most impactful update to date and it will pave the way for the next few major changes coming this year. If you have any bug reports or suggestions you can let me know through one of the links below or on the Steam forums. Good luck and remember to check for leeches!