next »

[Christian Knudsen]

Neither. They're drawn using the Marching Squares Algorithm.

[verticalvertex]

Never heard of it. Thanks for the link.

[Christian Knudsen]

Running through walls
September 17th

I spent the entirety of yesterday tracking down a tough bug. Through casual testing, I had discovered that if characters were trying to run through a door, but their path was blocked, they'd run through the wall next to the door instead. And seeing as those characters were neither ghosts nor X-Men, that wouldn't do.

At first, I thought their paths were getting out of whack. The pathfinding works by instantaneously finding a path from start to end, then having the character store the directions of this path (move forward, move left, move left, move down - you get the picture). But if for some reason these directions went out of sync with where the character actually was, that would account for weird pathfinding, such as running through walls. So I spent a great deal of time searching for places in the code that could potentially push a character out of sync with his pathfinding. I wasn't able to find any.

So with that theory abandoned, I started running through the actual pathfinding code. Outputting some debug info revealed that the pathfinding did indeed path its way through a wall. So the issue arose from the pathfinding itself. And that's when the fact that this was always happening next to a door lit a lightbulb above my head (I quickly turned off that lightbulb, as the glare on the screen was distracting). There was a problem with how doors was handled in pathfinding. The process of pathfinding is a 3 step process in my code. First, a path is attempted while respecting locked doors. If no path is found, a path is attempted while ignoring doors completely (since the character will be stopped anyway when trying to move through a locked door). If a path still can't be achieved, the code will find the closest reachable spot to the destination and find a path to this spot instead.

The issue was with the second step: ignoring locked doors. The code didn't check properly that the door to ignore was actually in the direction the character was moving, just that the door was associated with the tile the character was currently on. So if a character was trying to run left, through a wall, and there was a door to the right that was associated with this tile, the game would think that the wall obstructing the character on the left was a door as well - and since the second pathfinding step ignores doors, the wall would be ignored. The fix was just to make sure that the door was actually in the direction the character was moving from this tile. 6 hours spent finding a bug, 2 minutes spent fixing it once found. That's programming, I guess.

Anyway, there's currently only one AI thing left to do: characters reacting to finding a corpse. After that, I need to polish some minor things, do a bunch of testing, fixing the bugs that are bound to reveal themselves from this testing, and then packing up everything I've got so far for release. This is the home stretch!

[Christian Knudsen]

I've got a pre-alpha test level completed now, but before I post it on my website, I want to make sure that it won't crash right away or blow up people's computers. So if any kind souls out there want to give this demo a spin, it'd be much appreciated!

Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.1 for Windows (20 MB)

There are two executables. The debug version may run a bit slower on older systems as it's doing range checks on variables and such. If you're getting slow-downs, try running the non-debug version. But if you can, please use the debug version, as this will provide valuable information in case of a crash. Pressing F1 in either version will display the current rendering speed (if the number goes below 0, it means there are slow-downs).

[s0]

Pretty nice, definitely picked up on the Fallout and Syndicate influences. Also appreciate the 90s PC game look. I also liked how there's stuff happening in the world around you even when you're not doing anything (the elevator for instance).

A couple things I noticed:

Crouch mode makes the game lag slightly.

The left door on the ground floor of the building can't be opened from the other side once you go through it, meaning you're permanently stuck if you do

-IMO, right-clicking on an object you can't reach should make your character automatically walk there and interact with it. I don't really get why the game needs separate mouse buttons for moving and interacting anyway. 

[Christian Knudsen]

Thanks for trying it out! Which door are you talking about? The door behind the receptionist that needs a keycard to open?

[s0]

no, the glass door to the left of the receptionist that leads into some kind of dark corridor

[Christian Knudsen]

Weird. I have no problem walking back and forth through those doors. So when you click on the other side, your character just stops in front of the doors?

[s0]

yup. even restarted the game just to check again.

[Christian Knudsen]

Just to be sure, you're not actually hovering over the door and left clicking -- you're clicking on the tile on the other side of the door and the player character won't go through? And this is both glass doors? Is the door outline red to indicate that it's locked? Can you open either door manually by right clicking on it?

EDIT: Would you mind saving the game when you're trapped behind the doors and emailing me the save files?

[Christian Knudsen]

Here's a new version with a couple of fixes - and native Linux compiles.

- Fixed issue with rendering of character shadows that would potentially crash the game.
- Fixed bug that allowed you to access objects through walls.
- You can now also scroll the map with W, A, S, D.

Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.2 for Windows (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.2 for Linux 32-bit (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.2 for Linux 64-bit (19 MB)

[Dom2D]

You should post some sexy screenshots

[Christian Knudsen]

There are a bunch in this thread (as well as videos), but I'll gather some of them in the OP for easy access.

[Christian Knudsen]

First week in release and combat improvements
October 1st

Hostile Takeover was released into the wild last week, and so far the latest v0.1.2 has been downloaded almost 300 times in 2 days. So that's awesome. I've also received a bunch of great feedback and fixed various bugs.

The most pressing issue seems to be the combat. Simply put, for an assassin, you get killed way too easily in a gunfight with guards. So I've made three changes to address this: Your shooting animation is no longer interrupted when you take damage, your chance to hit has been improved, and AIs can't deal you a critical one-shot kill anymore. I've also added damage indicators that show how much damage is dealt. This will all be in v0.1.3, which I'll probably release when I've also fixed a bug with an infinite loop that freezes the game.

In the long run, I'll be adding melee combat. The current idea is that if you're standing right next to a target, an attack will automatically be with melee combat, while if the target is further away, it's a ranged attack (i.e. shooting). Melee combat will also be used for sneaking up behind a target and slitting his throat or administering a sedative. For stealthy ranged attacks, I'll probably also be adding a pistol with a silencer.

[eobet]

I haven't had time to try the latest version, but the screenshot you posted has a lot of wasted space in the user interface. Also, the fake wooden paneling seems thematically a very strange choice, and gives off a rather weird "cheap 1980s car" vibe. The rest of the graphics are also very anonymous mid 90s, but that's perhaps more difficult to fix.

[Christian Knudsen]

Release: v0.1.3
October 6th

Changes:

- Fixed bug that would freeze the game when loading a new objective from the script file (temporary script file wasn't created when loading a game, only when starting new game).
- Fixed rare crashing bug when drawing the character selection border.
- Fixed patrolling AIs being stopped indefinitely by a locked door.
- Fixed issue that would make inventory items disappear if you tried to use them on something they can't be used on.
- Higher chance of player hitting target when shooting (non-aimed).
- Player aiming/shooting animations won't get interrupted when taking damage.
- Balancing of damage given when shooting.
- Damage dealt shown.
- You can now also rotate the map with Q and E.

Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3 for Windows (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3 for Linux 32-bit (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3 for Linux 64-bit (19 MB)

If you've previously downloaded v0.1.2, you can just download the new executables and replace the v0.1.2 ones:

Windows (executable only) (3.9 MB)
Linux 32-bit (executable only) (4.1 MB)
Linux 64-bit (executable only) (3.9 MB)

[Christian Knudsen]

Here's a quick bug-fix release I wanted out, as the next release will probably take a week or two to get out:

- Fixed bug that crashed the game when placing a device.
- Fixed bug with item labels (for picking up stuff from the ground or placed devices) not being positioned correctly if resolution changed.
- Fixed issue with attacking guards constantly opening and closing a door if the target is right on the other side.

Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3.1 for Windows (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3.1 for Linux 32-bit (19 MB)
Hostile Takeover Pre-Alpha Demo v0.1.3.1 for Linux 64-bit (19 MB)

If you've previously downloaded v0.1.3, you can just download the new executables and replace the v0.1.3 ones:

Windows (executable only) (3.9 MB)
Linux 32-bit (executable only) (4.1 MB)
Linux 64-bit (executable only) (3.9 MB)

[Christian Knudsen]

In the last blog post, I mentioned something I was working on that wasn't quite ready to show yet. Well, it's working now, so here it is:

I've added functionality for showing these power lines when hovering over something that's connected to something else. Until now, you kinda had to guess or give it a try to figure out what shutting off a fuse box would do, for example, but now it should be a lot easier.

This also means that I can have multiple fuse boxes (or switches or other stuff in the future) that all affect different parts of a building - instead of just a single fuse box that shuts off all power. This really opens up the options for adding various puzzles to a map.

[Lynx]

That looks pretty awesome. ^_^

[Christian Knudsen]

Release: v0.1.4.1 (and Development Video #19)
October 26th

Here's the latest version and a video demonstrating what's new gameplay-wise:

Hostile Takeover Demo v0.1.4.1 for Windows (20 MB)
Hostile Takeover Demo v0.1.4.1 for Linux 32-bit (20 MB)
Hostile Takeover Demo v0.1.4.1 for Linux 64-bit (20 MB)

Please note that savegames from previous versions won't work in this version.

Changes:

- Fixed bug with saving open doors.
- Fixed issue that made NPCs react to seeing you with a weapon in another building.
- Fixed bug that made it impossible to do an aimed shot while crouching.
- Fixed bug that would potentially crash the game when drawing the selection outline around a shooting character whose line of sight is broken.
- Fixed minor issue with the opening and closing of some doors not affecting tile lighting.
- Fixed some issues with elevators that could severly mess up the pathfinding of NPCs.
- Fixed player and background noise levels getting stuck if sound files are missing for some reason.
- Fixed bug that would cause the player to still be alive after dying if he was following a character when killed (i.e. the player had clicked on a character and the player character was walking up to that character).
- Fixed issue that would make a character face in a different direction than he was moving when getting out of another character's way.
- Fixed bug that would make a character choose an edge tile to walk to when getting out of another character's way.
- Made level visibility also apply to other buildings.
- Added power lines overlay when hovering over fuse boxes (and other stuff that's connected to something else via power lines).
- When clicking on a world object or using an item on it, the player character will now automatically walk up to it if it's out of reach (but not if the player character is in one building and the object in another).
- You can now shoot at characters in an elevator, and they can shoot at you.
- Made sure the current objective screen is removed if you walk into an elevator and the elevator buttons are displayed or walk up to talk to a character.
- Added an arrow for when hovering over an edge tile to show that going there will make you leave the map.
- Integrated the current objective and restart location buttons better with the interface.
- Made placement of character dialogue take into account whether or not the character is in a moving elevator.
- Changed the name of the Electric Surge and Lock Override devices to Remote Power Surge and Remote Door Lock.
- Added functionality to the scripting language so that actions can be set to only occur after a dialogue has ended and the player has closed the dialogue screen (such as the receptionist only going to investigate the car alarm when the player closes the dialogue window).
- Some changes to the test map.