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.