@TitoOliveira I haven't played Minish Cap, but that is a pretty cool idea. Definately something original I hadn't though of. Thanks!
@Necdilzor Thanks man. And yeah, fog of war doesn't seem to be a popular choice.
Technical post: Bone-menBonemen are a new enemy that use ranged attacks. They chase after the player but only close enough to throw bones. If the player gets too close, they retreat. Observe:
I wanted LOTS of bonemen possible on screen, like 50-100, but after about 30, things started getting clogged. To prevent lag, pathfinding (Which can be VERY intense) is only done so many times per frame. As a result, if you tell 50 units to move at once, it looks like this:
Old Method: Single fileIn combat, it's almost like a lame fight scene where the enemies come at you one at a time since pathfinding can take so long. Since pathfinding is already about as optimized as it can get, I made so NPC's can now share pathing information. If two (Or more) NPC's are near eachother and are headed to the same destination, they just share the same path. This can change 100 path calculations to 10 or so.
New Method: Share pathsAlso I made a blood splat. Is this better than a flashing sprite, or too violent?
Overall, the AI was really fun to work with. It needed almost a complete rewrite but now it's much faster and also easier to change. I'm hoping to have battles with 100 units, but I'm not sure if that will be possible without pushing the requirements too high.
Thanks for all the feedback!