Dwarves all up in your mine, laying trapses.

This is just a quick update to let people know what I'm working on.

I'm in the process of adding dwarfy goodness to the game. Dwarves are tricky because, unlike other units, they have no direct attacks. Instead dwarves will try and predict what sections of the map the player is likely to pass through and set traps there.

The tricky part for getting these dwarves working, then, is obviously getting them to lay their traps in the right spots. This is as complicated as it sounds, and probably much more so.

The one bright side to this is that with enough dwarves running around it won't matter if some of them lay traps in bad positions. As long as a few dwarves get their traps in good spots, the player won't know the difference.

Other new stuff to expect in the open beta: Overhauled AI and pathfinding, drunken dwarves, graveyards (a new building type that is beneficial towards for the player), and *MAYBE* the first boss unit for the player to summon (more on him later).

Update! Open beta & other news

Yeah, it has been awhile. School has been extremely rough, and I've had *a lot* of trouble getting any kind of coding done in my spare time.

What have done at all recently? Well, I have managed to overhaul the AI and movement in the game to use velocity vectors. This means that the player can now shoot in 360 degrees (instead of in 8 directions, which was the case before). This also means that instead of doing a lot of resource hogging A* path finds, the AI can now use target vectors to smoothly traverse the battlefield on its own initiative. The AI still does an occasional A*, but only for more complicated paths over larger distances.

While this isn't new content, it does change the way the game plays significantly. Elves, for instance, are 100% bigger pains in the ass now that they can run away intelligently. Now they will run away before you can close in on them and will keep their distance as they rain arrowy death down on you. Luckily, your own Phantoms will do the same. I've had some trouble making Phantoms useful, and while they aren't quite there yet, they are getting there quick.

Did you say Open Beta?

Why yes, yes I did. I've given up on any kind of release schedule, as my time is just too tight. I'm not very happy with this, but that's how it goes. At any rate, I want to save the open beta for when I've ironed out a few niggling environment collision issues with the AI and have Dwarves functioning and in game. When can you expect this?

Hell if I know!

But really, I'm hoping against hope that I can get this out by next week, but we'll see.