Monday 5 March 2012

Peek under the hood

I'm not an artist, so instead of nice concept art or cool screenshots, please bear with me for a peek inside the workings of Cargo Commander!

This is a visualisation of some navigation information that's used by the enemies, so they can find their way through the procedurally generated containers (note: the gravity in this container is towards bottom right).
The yellow lines show where enemies can move by walking (including falling down from platforms), the green lines show how they can jump around. Each enemy uses this map to find a way from its current position to the player (in which each type of connection has a different cost).

The player can destroy platforms by drilling them away or create explosions, which means that the map isn't correct anymore and needs to be recalculated. If the player finds a gravity switch and switches it off, the map has become completely useless, and the enemies will float around helplessly, ready for the Cargo Commander to pick them off one by one with his sixshooter!

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