Squad control update

It’s taken some time, but the squad code is now almost completely reworked. Originally I was thinking that I would use a central squad manager for all of the squad control, but in the end I didnt like that sort of implementation. Now I have a squadmanager (arranges who is in a given squad), a squad (the actual meat of the squad implementation) and a squadmember (the individual agent within the squad).

What that means, is that I can do things like add members to multiple squads, add new members to squads on-the-fly and generally allows the squad code to be a lot more focussed.

The other side to the squad code, is shown in the video above. Squad control is an important part of the game. I’ve been looking at the “move” control first, because its one of the most important. Here you can see some work on the cursor that controls the move. Starting off in third person (press space to enter third person with time stopped) you can select squad members, assign them to squads etc. You can also select squads (1..n) and then activate the move cursor to set where the squad is going. I’m going to try out a “facing” element to the cursor soon too. In the vid you can see me switch to first person and do the same thing. The idea of first person squad control is basically taken from Brothers In Arms, which was a really interesting game design-wise for me. I felt like it offered a nice mix of first person and squad control, but lacked some of the micro you sometimes want to do and occasionally felt a bit stunted in terms of real FPS feeling. Almost like you couldnt just blaze away, which is not a bad thing necassarily but sometimes you just want to blaze and I’m damn sure I’ll allow that in Damzel (which consequences of course).

Now that movement works ok, I’ll concentrate on adding the other commands (attack, defend, investigate etc), such that I’ll have a basic version of them all done asap, because they’ll take a lot of iteration to get right.

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