Today largely involved more work on NPCs of the sort we discussed in last night’s update! Honestly, you’re gonna hear a lot of that this week. Configuring NPCs is a lot of work.
The ‘villager’ NPC type was added! They’ll call on nearby guards to help them out if they’re being harmed and have (temporary) dialogue defined for three different states of danger– calling for help, encouraging the guards to attack their pursuer (spoilers: it’s probably you, you scoundrel!), and once they’ve reached safety. Here’s a gif displaying the current state of that behavior! I had admin commands turned on, which is why I’m not taking any damage. :O
Also, here’s a tiny cropped sneak peak at an upcoming dungeon.
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You should definitely check it out once it receives its upcoming update. The game is definitely worth the money. (Wait for the update just to get the "best possible experience" though)
Today the coders worked on various things such as starting the process to be able to put input abilities into armors (like our Tech items with double jump and dash). Think stuff like Jetpacks, Wings, etc that would work on top of the Tech abilities.
They’ve also been working on getting NPC guards able to use melee weapons and doing some work on the physics to get all these nice abilities working well.
As for the artists it’s just more dungeon stuff. We should have the first pass on all the dungeons done really soon! Here’s a tiny sneak peak:
So for the most part work continued on NPCs today. The Glitch village is now entirely finished. Stephen has done a wonderful job populating it with farms, Inns, shops, wells, signs, etc
The NPCs got another brain boost. NPCs will now approach eachother and ‘silently chat’. Meaning you’ll see their lips move and youll see them emote to each other. They’re also aware of the time of day, so they’ll head out during the day, they tend to stay in at night and sleep. Their path finding has improved again, they have names and will sometimes call each other by name. Villagers will egg on the guards as they attack you, they’ll look for safety when attacked and react when they feel they’ve escaped. Villagers that see you attack another villager will call the guards.
The next step is getting NPC shops and quest givers working. These NPCs can also be used to produce travelers and wandering merchants.
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We did a bit more work on NPCs today! Mostly in the way of adding dialogue. We want NPCs to have a really decent variety of things to say to the player depending on their race.
At the moment we’re aiming for about 40 dialogue options per race for standard villagers. So…a Glitch villager will have at least 40 different things to say to an Avian, 40 different things to say to an Apex, etc.
As far as AI progress goes, villagers will be more inclined to hang out outdoors during the day, and while they’re out there they’ll work the fields! We’ve also limited the amount of guard NPCs that will run after you when you’ve committed a crime, so you won’t have a hundred guards on your tail at once, humorous as that can be.
More work on NPCs today. We’ve been giving the NPCs idle tasks. During the day villagers will work fields, till the land, work on an anvil and so on. We’ve also improved the NPC response to a hostile player, no longer does the entire village guard chase after you at once.
Speaking of guards, they’ve also grown smarter, they’re now capable of flanking you and taking turns to attack you.
We’ve also finished all of the Glitch speech, so for now the Glitch are temporarily the most chatty race.
We also had time to finish up a big performance increase.
We’re also working on some planet serialization issues (unlocking particular biomes/dungeons based on sector, etc). Getting lua support worked into status effects, finishing the next dungeon on our list and more.
Today was a good day for bug fixes! Not much to elaborate on there, I suppose. Rho’s continued working on the second Floran dungeon, and some changes have been made to the first to keep the game a bit more age-friendly.
NPC trading is in the works as well!
I know today’s update is tiny- a couple of us were traveling today! But here’s a little look at some of the more futuristic Hylotl furniture, which George is working on.
Programming-wise, today was largely another day of bug fixes and progress on NPC shops and AI!
Art-wise, though, things have been pretty exciting! The artists have been working on lots of new assets for Floran and Hylotl dungeons, and we’ve been working on lore for the Floran dungeons as well.
I’m just going to leave you with some images from today.
Today I’m going to keep this brief. We’ve been working on the same kind of stuff as the usual lately. Dungeons are being built and NPCs are being placed into them. Balance is being worked on. The last couple of dungeons are still in progress and assets are continuing to be made for them. Bugs are being squashed by our great programmers. Etc, etc…
So to help tide you over here’s a mockup of one of the Hylotl underwater city buildings. Hopefully when this dungeon type is complete you’ll be able to find sprawling cityscapes under the sea. The mock is pretty large so be careful to zoom in.
So I wake up to find my European and American chums haven’t gotten around to writing today’s update, so allow me to step in to shed some light on what I’ve been up to this weekend!
I’ve spent the last couple of days configuring all our tiered gear to provide appropriate levels of protection and damage output for their levels and assigning them to our town guard NPCs in the game. Now depending on the level of the planet, you may find a mixture of differently equipped guards, some may have the strongest equipment for that level, others may be making do with weaker armor and in some cases weaker weapons too.
I’ve also made a guard captain class who will typically be wearing a flashier colour variation of the armor to stand out, and they’ll be a few levels higher with stronger weapons, making them a good deal more dangerous! If you have one of them around, don’t start a fight carelessly! Generally you will only encounter a couple of these guys in a village at most. If I’ve done my job right, you should be able to tell at a glance how strong a given guard will be compared to the others, and be able to prioritize your targets appropriately!
Of course a point will come where the guards cannot keep up with your power as you progress through the game, after all who doesn’t love to create a bit of anarchy in a town when you know the guards are not the threat they once were? That said, don’t expect to still be able to buy some of the highly useful stuff from our merchants if you cause trouble. Pick your fights people!
The progress on NPCs of late has been absolutely staggering, and it couldn’t have happened this fast without the efforts of Jordo. I cannot overstate how much amazing work he has been contributing, especially these past few weeks! Combined with the pathfinding code that Bartwe has implemented recently, the NPCs are getting good at moving through the environments and pursuing you! There’s just a few more kinks to work out.
I leave you with this screenshot of one of the glitch guard posts in the village. See if you can spot the captain!
Today we worked on unlocking lore/adding lore to the player’s codex.
Armagon has been working on populating more dungeons with both hostile and non-hostile NPCs! Legris has been producing content for more underground biomes. Tiy’s been configuring item costs for NPC shops and trading, and Kyren’s implemented ship-saving such that ships are now saved alongside the character.
More improvements have been made to guard AI! Guards will now forget about targets that have been out of sight for awhile, will move back to their original position after pursuing a target, will follow you around and tell you to put away your weapon. Yay!
But I don’t have any pretty screenshots to post tonight! I’ll make it up to you. <3
Today we’ve been doing some more work on fleshing out minibiomes! Especially the underground ones.
We’ve been working on adding some content to make them more interesting, but ALSO dangerous. :O Hooray, danger! Here’s a screenshot of a WIP underground minibiome.
GeorgeV has been working on Hylotl dungeons and Bart and Kyren have been working on bug fixes. Armagon’s continued populating dungeons and villages– today he did the Avian village, and now he’s making preparations for the next dungeon.
Rho finished the Floran dungeon stuff and has been drawing icons/implementing the objects in-game.
Today a whole bunch of underground mini-biomes were added. Many of which are very unique.
We’ve also populated the Avian airships with unique NPCs. Building pirates that react in various amusing ways.
Village guards got another behaviour upgrade, they get upset if you wield weapons whilst in town.
Ignoring multiple requests to put the weapons away could result in trouble.
NPCs and hostile monsters now battle eachother and village guards will keep the towns free of rogue monsters.
We also added this nifty little item, it can appear on any planet (and there are various similar items). It works a little bit like a fountain or shrine in a roguelike.
Activating it will result in a surprise.
the gif doesn’t loop very well, sorry!
We’ve also started adding a few changes that will make the above ground terrain more interesting.
Yesterday we focused a lot on making sure the transition between tiers smooth and balanced! A few of us had a serious late-night brainstorm session about it on the inside of a box of Cheerios.
We implemented some more tiered objects, too, like a crafting table upgrade.
Some more tweaks were made to NPC shops! It’s looking really really cool. Yesterday I was in a village and walked up to an NPC who said, “Follow me back to my store!” I did (maybe against my better judgement– who knows what kind of shady stuff they might have been selling?) and the NPC walked back to a market stall and sold me some weapons.
And as per usual, we’re working on dungeons and minibiomes.
Today we’ll continue with tier progression, hopefully get loads of it done! Woooo
Hey! A bit late with last night’s, so I’ll tell you what we’re up to today, too.
Yesterday some code was added to allow players to unlock recipes when certain game events occur, including finding new materials (i.e- when you find snow, you’ll unlock a recipe to create snowballs).
Armagon aaalmost finished the Avian airship, and Legris added this awesome frog merchant.
Today we’re continuing with tier progression! Legris, Tiy and I are about to do a play test to make sure recent changes have made things much more balanced.
Yesterday and today we’ve been working on making terrain generation less…flat and boring. We’ve been in need of more frequent dips in terrain, caves, crevices, and such for awhile. Take a look!
Some more random merchants and trade caravans were added in, allowing you the chance to run into those. But we’ve also added bandit NPCs! They’ll attack you on sight, because they’re real big jerks.
A bunch of improvements have been made to merchant UI. They’re no longer pacing back and forth awkwardly while trying to return to their shop stall upon seeing a player. Also, a merchant’s inventory will largely depend on their race! An Avian merchant will sell Avian ingredients and goods based on tier, for instance.
Still working away on tiers and bug fixes– today Kyren fixed a bunch of old animation-related bugs. And apparently the anvil object was working as a chair. It is no longer doing that.
Also Legris added bandit clothes for our bandit jerks!
Starbound [Winter Update!]
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I’ll make it up to you. <3![[Image: uEIPlF5.png]](http://playstarbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/uEIPlF5.png)
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