Finally fixed the shader bug!!

Update on the yesterday's releases: the architect view shader is now working correctly both in web and standalone. What that means:

Tab switches between architect view and normal view. The game is paused in the architect view and there is a special menu for it. You can use it to place multiple dig commands to make easier tunnels; when you switch back to normal mode, the robots will start digging.

Keys (after selecting "multiple dig"): scroll wheel makes the selection bigger on one axis, Shift+scroll wheel and Ctrl+scroll wheel do the same on the other 2 axis. For now, the height is limited to 3 squares.

You can in the same way cancel dig orders.

As for the bug, I have no idea what caused it but all I had to do was remove a variable (I started suspecting something when checking the shaders Unity compiled for me and seeing it generated lots of internal variables). After 5 minutes of reorganizing some parts, everything worked, without a clue as what the original problem was.

Weekly update on progress #6

I have to apologize for being late with public demo (more of a technical demo than a game, but it's a start). Last week saw only about 1% development time for Roobuts because of unrelated life issues but now we're back on track with full time coding.

Weekly update on progress #5

Version 0.4 is here. Though we tried, the public test version needs two more days of work before releasing it.

Weekly update on progress #4

As we're closing on our first deadline (IGF contest last submission date), our focus right now is finishing the first version's gameplay. Current version is 0.3.5.

Weekly update on progress #3

Big week; many world engine changes, closing in on alpha. Version is 0.3.1

Weekly update on progress #2

Current version is 0.2.18.1 and here's the list of last week's most important changes:

Weekly update on progress #1

Some of the most important features implemented in the week 15/08-21/08: (current version is 0.2.14)

The issue of Infinite Worlds

We've decide for our game to make a finite world even though "infinite worlds" and "procedurally generated content" are all the rage these days. Here's the rationale behind this decision, using most of the examples from Minecraft (the simplest and clearest game which gives the impression of an infinite world):

Some details about the bot AI

One of the key architectural decisions we took was to make each agent as independent as possible. That means trying to avoid inter-agent references and only having operations based on agent-to-agent "conversations". We'll see in a bit what this means, when we talk about some examples.

Lets start with the internal workings of a robot after being placed fresh in the world. Bots have a two level finite state machine, shown in the following image (only some of the actual states are being shown there):

(note: each state is run over many frames)

Game architecture

I'll begin by showing a very crude diagram of the game's architecture:

Presentation of the game

Before I jump into the gory details of the AI implementation for our WIP game, a general presentation is in order: what are our goals and the planning on how to get there.

Elevator pitch: Dwarf Fortress with robots in a fully 3d environment combined with an automated economy simulator and minor Tower Defense and FPS elements (you can shoot enemies along your automated defense systems).

Analysis of some #gamedev questions and answers

As anyone who's ever browsed #gamedev or any other game development related forums knows, there's a very large number of people trying to communicate somewhere along these lines:

I [don't have any/have a little] programming experience/knowledge and I want to know what are some free resources to make a next-next-generation [trendy game]. Can anyone help?

Most of the answers are quite stereotypical too:

Use [this language] and/or [this engine] because it's the best thing since pet rocks.

or

Don't do it, instead start with something simple like [game from '70]

and

Oooh, I so want that game made. It is close to [some idea] I had a while back and I won't be able to find happiness in life unless you make that game.