Hey there Ylanders!
If you watched our video on Facebook, the Major General might have spoiled today’s Dev Diary a tad bit, but for those, who did the sensible thing and paused the video the minute MJ opened his mouth, here’s the cool news.
A while back we improved on the Animal AI and gave you more options to control them through the Editor. Now it is time for the most dangerous animal of all! Humans!!! Soon you’ll be able to do much more with humanoids than ever before. In your scenarios and games, you’ll be able to make them hostile to the player, equipping them with close combat weapons. They’ll be able to detect a player and when at a certain distance, attack him. Or say you have a precious treasure in an abandoned keep…seemingly abandoned keep. And a player decides to steal your gold and shiny things. Well that might trigger two guards, who were hiding behind some strategically placed pillars and show him a thing or two!
But that’s not all humanoids will be capable of from now on. You’ll be able to plan a patrol trail for them and thus you’ll be able to populate your cities with moving crowds. Also, their stances can be different. They can be hostile, indifferent or even flea at the sight of a player, so maybe there’s a suspicious character with some lovely trinkets and the player has to stop with a well-aimed shot…but the bugger is legging it! You’ll be able to use AI behaviour (before called waypoints) for humanoids and assign to them many more things than ever before.
And here’s the kicker though! All of this will also be possible with animals, so now you’ll be able to craft much more complex encounters for your players 😁
And that’s all for now Ylanders, so stay classy!
P.S. Check out our Facebook and the Major General's video on this topic to see, how the new NPC tools work: https://www.facebook.com/YlandsGame/videos/939620803078678/