Coffee Diary 26/6/23

Posted by Zetheros:

"Hey Exanimates,

Last week we talked about lots of exciting stuff we're doing with thaumaturgy, if you missed it check it out, it provides lots of context and details of what's coming to Exanima. Right now we're very focused on working towards these goals, or at least as much as we can accomplish short term for this update.

We finalised two more powers, both of which are quite impressive and unique, one of which belongs to a domain other than Mind and Force. We did a lot of work on two core effects systems, making some big improvements in terms of graphics, physics and lighting. We're also making these into modular and configurable systems as these are things we'll be using quite extensively for more powers, abilities and other effects. Force now is quite complete. We have a good number of diverse powers, with most of the powers still to come being tied to future features like ranged combat.

Now we're focusing on teaching AI to use different powers and we're doing this by building a sort of shared tactics framework so that we don't need to develop all the logic again for every power the AI can use. The idea is to give AI a "quickbar" with slotted powers just like the player's, then they need to prioritise what to use and when as well as consider preserving resources etc. All the skills that affect these things also affect AI and it's all quite a lot more involved than just using random abilities every so often. Right now we're not really concerned with using a lot of powers, but we still want to develop the right system that we can improve on over time rather than something temporary.

Have a great week! -the BM team"