Plague 3.39

Not much in the way of changes from 3.38 from a players perspective - I've just recoded some of the engine stuff - treat as a beta-ish release since all manner of bugs can crop up (although I think I've squished them all so far). Main reason for release is so the dll pack isnt needed.

Plague DLLs

I've just uploaded a 1Mb zip file of dlls for the windows version of plague. Unzip them into the same directory as the plague.exe. This fixes the missing "mixer" error message.

This seems to be caused by developing on Win7 - weird. It's kind of ugly having all the dlls there, so I will probably compile on winxp from now on (doesnt seem to be a quicker answer for sorting this out, but I'm happy to be proven incorrect).

Plague 3.38

So I've just picked up Code Complete, and I'll be reading through that before working on Plague - see if I can learn some stuff to reduce the complexity in Plague to increase the speed of development.

I'll probably then refactor/recode large amounts of Plague with better coding practices which will mean no visible development for a while - hopefully there will be speed improvements though and the end product should be much easier to continue development on.

The plan is then to stop working on the "battle" simulations and get onto the strategic game layer. Adding features to the battles can resume once theres some more context for them.

I've also picked up a couple of AI programming books. Once I've worked through those I'll upgrade the AI infrastructure from a state machine.

As always, if anyone wants to work on this, feel free; either drop me a line in the comments or send me a gmail to benedictnz.

One thing that would be particularly good is a fast implementation of an A* like pathfinder - I've got one written in python, and its good (and since its written in python, easily modified) but with 10AI using it things get kinda slow.

The other issue thats been bothering me for a while is the simulation will "pause/lag" for a fraction of a second every couple of seconds when doing grunty calculations (eg: calculating partitions during the tech demo). I have no idea why. Does this happen to you? If so, do you know why? If so, can you provide advice or a fix? If it doesnt happen to you, can you let me know your system specs and OS?

• Finally fixed annoying ammo bug (I think) - still some other bugs to do with removal of shrubs and rocks, but not worth worrying about right now.
• Added smoke trail to Rocket Launcher.
• Altered petrol dispersal from molotov grenade.
• Updated "kill" method of Sim.check_boundary()
• changed the way sim command destinations are updated (to decrease and distribute cpu cost)
• corrected 2 errors in resources.py that led to incorrect images for memorised pistols and shotguns
• improved manual map building functionality
• rocks create smoke when destroyed

Plague 3.37

• Fixed Bug: items could be dropped from inventory after they had been removed, leading to AI bugs where the AI would try to pick up the item (but it wasnt possible, so they'd become stuck). Similar bug (to do with blocks/hives/shrubs) may still be present... nasty bug!
• Survivor AI: Will now turn and fight if pressed too hard by zombies
• Ammo: Ammo generated as part of level recharges (eff. ammo crates)
• Survivor AI: Will now not try to pick up ammo which is mostly empty
• Rocket launcher now has a min_dist before explosion
• Survivors now start all over the map
• Floating point maths error with shadowing fixed (so shadowing always work properly now)
• Tweaked flamethrower stats
• Saved survivors now join your squad (max 4 for speed)
• Improved demo to include survivors and zombies (battle but without the player)

Todo:

• Need to reduce path finding updates (/or some other path finding speed optimisation)
• continue removing stupid ammo and block bug (grrr)

Plague 3.36

Well, Plague seems to be fairly stable, so heres another playable release. I wont get to work on it for the next week at all, so the next release will probably be two weeks away.

There is a desperate need for some better artwork for the Rocket Launcher (RT) and Flame Thrower (FT), both images and sounds. If anyone wants to help out (with that or anything else), please feel free.

Changes:

• Flamethrower (oh so much fun)
• city type level generation
• random level type
• level generation paramerisations randomly picked to increase level unpredictability
• Changed collision checking to be event based (speed op)
• Removed various bugs (sorry, cant remember, too tired)

Todo in the near future:

• cave system type level generation
• RL_bullet bug - sometimes explodes straight away as it collides with RL (need to add a min safety dist check)
• tile based background
• doors
• add more survivors, less weapons and make them start at random locations
• check shadowing algorithm for bugs (sim removal sometimes removes too much shadow)
• human corpses
• zombies drag corpses back to hives
• refactor level generation as a state machine to control level generation outcomes

Weekend update

I havent posted Plague 3.36 yet as I'm still working on randomising level generation. The new flamethrower is pretty fun and I've rewritten collision detection to be much faster. Should have a new release in a few more days (as I dont get much time per day to work on it).

Plague 3.35

I didnt get as much as I wanted to do done today, due to unforseen events. That said, I:

• Added end of level stats showing your cumulative kill count etc (I'll put in discrete kill count as well next time)
• refactored: simobject rmeoval to remove a bug
• refactored the cellular simulations for heat and shockwaves to take time as an input variable, and made them update at varibles rates (trading accuracy for greater speed)
• increased sim sight radii - need to see further for explosions - Plague is probably too easy right now, dont worry, I've got something planned that you'll either love or hate :)
• improved smoke art - it was uuuugly.
• turned off pre-processing of line of sight by default (turn on in options if you want)

Stuff I didnt get done that I'll try for next weekend:

• Flamethrower (now I've sped up the fire)
• cave system type level generation
• city type level generation
• random level type
• level generation paramerisations randomly picked to increase level unpredictability
• add more survivors, less weapons and make them start at random locations