I finally broke 105,000 SIS sometime last week. I did plan to do a video and ‘ooo’ moment, but sadly time is not with me at present. However, it is a milestone event, and it has led to a number of improvements (largely UI related) and also some serious thinking on the UI front as well.
I did a brief development diversion to work on something behind the scenes, something I want to incorporate into the Galaxy Map but also has uses elsewhere – generating a convex hull from a point cloud. That work is now complete, but some more work is needed to get the end result I’m after. As a bonus the work is also great for use in the collision detection system, generating shield effects, and I have some ideas which may make it useful for generating clouds, nebulas, explosions – but we’ll see how that turns out. I’m intending to do a detailed ‘how to’ article on the convex hull system, as there is little ‘followable’ info out there on the web it seems.
Now I can trade reliably, I’ve turned to NPC’s and bringing in the next gameplay challenge I want to drive things forward – combat scenarios.
To this end I’m extending the previous work on Flocking and developing a generic ‘Boids‘ system. Boids flock together, and also avoid obstacles smoothly. However, I can use the same algorithms to potentially replace part of the Autopilot system and break away from rigidly forcing the vessels along the pre-calculated spline courses, using them as a guide, or ‘ideal path’ instead. I’m also intending to do an article on how I’m using Boids in Dominium as well.
I definitely like to cut out my work it seems!
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