7DRL Day 6

I spent a huge chunk of the day trying to work some of the kinks out of the enemy movement. There were situations where two guys would be trying to squeeze into the same attack spot (between obstacles) and since they both couldn't get there, nobody would move.

I eventually solved this by having guys reserve attack spots, and the ninja-circle ring goal spots for everyone else omit any spots that aren't accessible without passing through the reserved attack spots.

Another fun thing I was able to do with the pathing: when you're down to one guy who is aware of you, he runs off to the nearest treasure. This helps lead the player toward treasure/battle, and is better than the previous behavior which was for the guy to follow you around (but stay out of your reach).



Other work today consisted of slight improvements to the user interface, and discussions with my beta tester Tom Elmer. The main problem with current gameplay is to train the player to use the wait key, which is critical to survival. You have to look for patterns of enemies to avoid getting hit back. They will take a swing at you if they can do so and have at least one buddy adjacent to the hero at the end of the turn; otherwise they retreat. (If it's not obvious, I'm a huge fan of Hoplite.)

The latest build is up at the game's website.