I have been thinking about some changes to the Gate AI algorithm in order to make the gameplay more fun and not unreasonably mean. I tried one simple change yesterday and it worked quite well. This morning I refined it further and made it more fluid. Here are more details on all the changes.
- The spawn strength of the enemy Gate is now adjusted according to the status of the cores. If the enemy units have captured a number of cores and they are in the process of carrying it to the gate, then the gate becomes more complacent about victory and starts cooling down. This results in the reduction of spawn strength. This gives the player some chance to recover from a bad situation. If he succeeds in freeing the stolen cores, then the gate starts becoming more agitated and regains its spawning power. This mechanism allows for interesting tug-of-war mechanism between two sides.
Other changes
- Fixed the flickering of the selection rings on the widgets in the level editor
- Added a chance mechanism to the fire damage that lava tiles can deal. Without this, it's possible to create long lava fields that the enemies will never be able to cross, thus leading to infinitely running levels.
- Reduced the maximum number of enemies that get fire damage in the cone of fire of the Pyro towers. It used to be 7, now it's 4. This keeps the strength of the Pyro balanced, especially now that it costs same as the Gun (since last build)
- Adjusted the Grinder blade physics so that the enemy unit comes close enough before getting splattered
- Fixed an issues with the "Show health bars" setting change. You don't have to restart the game for this change to take effect now.
- Cleanup progress ring on towers when they are destroyed. This was causing some unfinished progress rings displayed across levels
- Restart the pending upgrades indicator, if the tower is moved. This indicator used to disappear once the tower was relocated, even though the upgrades were in the queue.
Gate AI Complacency
Ok. I'm now off to host this afternoon's streaming session. Feel free to tune in and say hello.
Cheers!
