Instilling Life & Intelligence

I have been distracted by real life events in the past couple of weeks, but I have been able to tinker with some of the monster AI (Artificial Intelligence) and encounters that will be had in the first module. Thankfully, I had already set in place a generic AI script for creatures that already handles many of the basic responses such as healing themselves, or choosing to cast certain spells instead of using basic combat. I also designed this script to allow for the running of an additional script each round, which has now enabled me to add some other tactics used by certain creatures.

Shaughn of Risen Hero fame had produced some Giant Throwing Boulders scripts, which I was able to rewrite to work with my own AI script, and to good effect! I was able to produce results by adding one simple script via the additional script facility and the creatures now throw a number of boulders according to a variable on the creature, and will do so until they run out, or indefinitely if they are near a good supply.

I have also been looking closer at my own Waypoint System that I am using instead of the official campaign version, because I found in certain situations that my own system suffered from the same problems the official campaign version did. i.e. Creatures not always adhering to waypoints. I have now added additional checks that force the creature to keep trying to go to the waypoint in question until successful, adding a "get safe point" when required to prevent any creature "lock up". The routes taken by creatures and patrols now appear much more stable, and all work with waypoint scripting still.

Over the coming months, I am aiming to finish off the last few quests I have to add, and complete the monster encounters and check for balance. I don't think I have much more "original" material left to write or script, as the core ideas are now in place and unless I encounter any more issues, I will simply be filling out now. However, I won't shout too soon, as I did encounter a problem with my "speech" trigger script, which also took some debugging to fix, and so I may still have that kind of issue to consider as I bring the first module to a close. (That "speech" script is one of the more difficult ones to keep track of though.)

As always, your comments are welcome!