All the pathfinding stuff is in a place where it’s basically functional, just needs tweaking to make it look nice. This is really just as much an aesthetic and design problem as it is a programming one at this point, trying to make the entity navigate the path in a way that looks smooth and intentional, while making sure it doesn’t stray from the movements it’s calculated to take it where it wants to go.
At this point, I’m kind of tackling this at both ends, which is an image that makes absolutely zero physical sense but oh well. I’m going back and forth between tweaking the entity’s movement code, to make it move more safely and intentionally, and working on some prototype animations which will also help to sell the illusion of this as a creature with intent. The animations I have now are serviceable for the time being, though I’m going to need to make a lot more of them (crouch, attack, looking around) before I’ll be able to fully animate this entity – and this is the most basic version, with additional animations having to be created for the other versions.
It’s going kind of slow, but all of these pieces I’ve been working on for the last month or so are starting to come together to form the first fully featured enemy of the game. Once this guy is done, I can start building the first couple of areas of the game, the first foray into building actual content – I feel a bit frustrated only getting to that point after a couple of years, but heck it’s better than never getting there at all – and who knows what new things I may discover about the game, and about myself, once I get there.
