Today I spent a lot of time rebuilding the AI system for the game… It’s a bit more manageable that before, but the technical solution still looks “sloppy”, to be honest…
I think the only good solution is to build some sort of visual language for the top level decisions, with the low-level part being done either in the code or scripting… The idea is that you could at any moment in time check where the system was, what state was running, etc… That’s maybe a good idea for the Spellbook! 
Anyway, I got basic behaviors working!
While it already behaves better than the previous version (less indecisions, better positioning), it still has some borderline behaviors, a nervousness to the behaviors that look terrible…
Anyway, it’s good progress!
Now listening to “Unarmed” by “Helloween”
Link of the Day: Here’s a nice article about future/modern engine architectures… I thought it was an interesting read, and can’t wait for the future articles on this series: http://molecularmusings.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/stateless-layered-multi-threaded-rendering-part-1/
The perfect storm: not much free time, and a new WoW expansion=not much work done today…
As the title says, mostly writing… I intended to write at least one weapon description per-day, but I really fell behind on that, since I’m very lazy…
So, today, instead of carrying on work with the AI, I decided to do a bit of writing, try to catch up, so I can go and play… er… It counts as research, right? 
Now listening to “World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor OST”
Link of the Day: Alpha-blending (transparency) is always an interesting topic, one of the few areas where we actually didn’t move forward that much in the last 10 years or so. Here’s an interesting article describing some of the old and current ways of handling transparency in realtime rendering: https://developer.nvidia.com/content/transparency-or-translucency-rendering
Today I started this big task… This is the result so far:
Probably something simple to solve, though… 
Anyway, I’m replacing the current FSM-based approach to a more organic one, based in an action layer (in the C++ code) and a decision layer (on a Lua script). This way it’s probably easier to handle the multiple enemy states, clearer transitions (a big problem), and a less hacky code for “interruptions of action”.
Oh, and by the way: screenshot number 300! Yay! Celebration!
Link of the Day: This is like QWOP for multiplayer… I’m not seeing myself playing, but at least it’s original:
Another nice milestone: the random missions are complete now!
Five types of missions that you can use to make some precious alloy to buy weapons and fuel!
Only a few more tasks on the “Second Stage” list, which is awesome (although some of them are rather big and time consuming, like the new UI and the new AI).
Now listening to “Nine Destinies and a Downfall” by “Sirenia”
As the title says, today I almost finished the assassination missions code… Didn’t have much time, or else I’d have finished it… Tomorrow it will be done for sure!
Starting to dread the next task: unifying all the AI code, improving it, etc… The AI code is too responsible for the fun of the game to do a half-assed job, but AI programming is not exactly my strong suit…
Now listening to “The Great Divide” by “Allen/Lande”
Link of the Day: Oh yeah… *drool*… And there’s an IMax opening in a couple of days near my home!
Today was mostly about writing… writing weapon text, writing assassination mission templates…
That’s it, really… Text is very time consuming, if you like to do it right (don’t even get me started in “well”).
Now listening to “Tunes of War” by “Gravedigger”
Link of the Day: This is a quite neat macro for 3d Studio Max… It allows to create real fast procedural texturing from tileable textures, good to make filler or as a starting point for something:
Finished the escort mission today… There were some tricky stuff that I didn’t consider (surprise!), mostly related to the fact that game objects weren’t created to be able to transit from area to area!
Anyway, it’s now sorted and it’s not a bad mission type… Escort person moves fairly fast, so none of those “boring” segments as most escort missions.
This whole random mission thing was a valuable learning tool… For example, the random text generation could have been done much better, based on a L-system kind of thing… That would have allowed for more variety of texts, and maybe would have made me not be so lazy on certain descriptions…
Now listening to “The Phantom Agony” by “Epica”
Today I mostly worked on the escort missions text…
Then, I landed on a planet, and for actually the first time I saw the fog on lava planets:
I think it looks rather good!
Problem is that I loose the skybox this way, which is too bad as well, but maybe I can think of a way to add to the fog shader the azimuth of the camera so that the fog color changes according to the angle, so that we have best of the two worlds (this is kind of what happens in the real world, if we think of scattering over long distances).
Anyway, finished the text for the escort missions and created the variation texts for the escort start cutscene.
Now listening to “Souls Highway” by “Beseech”
Link of the Day: Looks a bit tedious from the video (but it’s in early development, so that’s to be expected), but “Eitr” has great looking pixel art, tons of atmosphere, and really good aesthetics all around!
Today I started work on the “Escort” mission… Because everybody loves escort missions, right? Right? Guys?
Still only have 3 or 4 variations of text for the escort missions, so I have to add more… The objective of the escort missions is to protect someone while fighting enemies that randomly spawn around the player. Need to figure out a way to artificially inflate the agro of the person we’re escorting, to make sure it gets attacked first and to make the player react.
Also added some assets the artist made, mostly props and the grenade graphics:
Now listening to “Unholy Cross” by “Bloodbound”
Now playing “World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor”… Although I haven’t played WoW for ages, I’m getting ready for the expansion. Got to admit I kind of missed it, the game is still very playable and it’s good seeing the gang again! The expansion only comes out in a week or so, but I want to see the content I didn’t see on the last expansion and relearn how to play… the muscle memory is there, but the timings are all off! Hopefully I’ll not be too drawn in and this doesn’t impact (much) the development of “Gateway”! 
Today I just created areas for the random missions…
These are just small areas that get placed on the mission planets when they spawn for a mission…
Next step in the game’s development is to create the “Rescue” mission.
Now listening to “Poetry to the Poisoned” by “Kamelot”
Link of the Day: Either this will be the best game ever, or just a jumble of mechanics thrown together… Either way, it’s interesting to follow:
