Routing and Avoidance

Hi all,

We've just uploaded a new WIP build of Astra Protocol Remake which primarily includes enemy ship AI.

This is a peek in the direction we're aiming to go in as we're working on something that is more intelligent than the pathfinding in both the original Astra Protocol and Astra Protocol 2. 

In Astra Protocol, the ships would try to find the player, but most often would fly past due to the way the AI worked. Astra Protocol 2 improved things significantly by pathfinding to a location, though this only took into account planets (and only those which had been discovered) meaning that it would plough through asteroids and other ships if they were in the way.

The new system, which needs to be heavily tested, should take into account the environment and try to steer around other ships and asteroids - though the practicality of that is to be seen...

The other big part about this release means that we edge ever closer to Astra Protocol Remake being feature complete! For those of you who have played the original, you'll know that there's not much scope to it, and the AI was the last major gameplay component to implement. We've still got things like the game over screen to implement, gameplay to tweak and a lot of bugs to squash, but as a remake, we're almost there!

If you give the new build a play, let us know what you think, what needs changing and what you like. We've already received some user feedback which we'll be looking to add in once we get to tweaking the game.