Development Updates

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by Usurpator

Hello everyone!

This week Axel has been working on a group system for non-player units, which includes pathfinding according to depth/terrain and task/waypoint management. Without getting too technical, individual units (ships, submarines, aircraft) are composed into groups (mixed compositions are available), groups share tasks and waypoints and will operate as a group when pursuing those objectives. Groups can dynamically form and split at the command of a "global" AI director. This should make missions much more dynamic and more replayable.

This group system is built with a new mission editor in mind, where our vision is for mission authors to be able to compose groups in real-time and assign waypoints, etc.
Oscar is making progress on the network update and Einar is working on a few unfinished parts of the the VIIC/41 tower.

It will be useful if these groups can be deployed in formations by a real player acting as "convoy commander", so, for example, two or three Flower class corvettes can sweep an area in an asdic search about a half a mile apart. or be formed into line ahead to protect a flank, or sequentially DC a discovered u-boat? This is I hope a great first step towards players being able to drop into escorts and control them, with AI escorts continuing to follow their formation/route/activity orders. That'll put all the tedious searching into AI boats, but nevertheless have them directed by a human mind, with boats able to prosecute DC attacks again under player control. Meaning they won't just give up merely because a uboat has reached 185m, or the elapsed time for searching has been reached.