I’ve finally nailed down the new camera code! It took a while (I knew it would). The purpose of it is to make sure the camera doesn’t get behind a wall as the player moves around in tight quarters. I also have created the spawn/trigger functionality needed to do things like monster spawns/respawns. I am planning on using that functionality for other things too, like traps and special effects triggered in an area.
Yesterday during lunch I rewrote the AI’s main routines to highly optimize them and make them easier to expand. This should decrease the load on the processor and let me fit more in. Good for framerates! I did notice that there is a tiny hiccup/jump when a group of monsters spawns in. It can’t be helped; introducing a new object into the world is an intensive process. I can smooth it out by introducing a tiny delay between spawns though. Shouldn’t be noticable to the user then, and will smooth out the jump.
For art side, I dug up a TON of artwork we had from way back in the Torque MMOKIT days, so the user interface will be getting beefed up in this update. With the camera and moving code out of the way, I can get to the fun stuff of flushing out the level and adding in some extra functionality. I have already started decorating with torches and some wall decorations, the art from the MMOKIT should help in that department. I plan on working on it over the weekend and am targetting next Monday or Tuesday to submit the update.
