Enemy AI and magic, the battle is on! news - Crypts of Avaritia

So finally I am ready to show you guys some magic and working enemies! I have been pushing it these last couple of days (mostly nights, haha) and took a day of work to get more done. It is nowhere near perfect, but it gives you an idea of how things might work in the final product. As always this is very early pre-alpha and as such there will be changes in the final product. I like to show you stuff early and give you the chance to bring input and changes early in the process, so please excuse the rough edges :)

Of course we will start out with a known bug (the aura of magic gets strange colors when highlighted, I have to tweak the shader change when highlighting objects). Anyhow, in the video you will show some magic and how it can interact with the environment (only 3 spells for now, have 25 planned like I mentioned in a old update, might also go for some special magic to solve puzzles, but I keep that a secret for now :)). The water element puts out the fire and the fireball ignites it again, clean and simple. The spirit spell is just for show for now (will be used to summon and drain life over time etc). Although I do not really show it, you can equip 2 spells, one in each hand (as long as nothing else is in your hands). The hand texture will also reflect on the element that is equipped in the hand (so much to do, so little time).

Next we move on to the enemies. I placed a couple of skeletons in a room and throw a fireball at one of them. When a enemy is hit by you you will be targeted, and he will tell his nearby friends to come with him (in code that is, no voice acting... ;P). They all start to follow you around and since you are outnumbered it is best to flee. In the video I run like hell to be able to show off the pathfinding of the enemies. Since all content is generated at run-time I could not use navmeshes (without messy solutions at least). So all you see is dynamic real-time pathfinding They are not the smartest bunch in the world (at least not for now, and probably never, they are monsters after all :)), but they find you and hunt you down to their best ability, even when the area is cluttered with objects.

You will also see me fighting back a bit and kill one of them, just to die a couple of seconds later. As always I play to showcase features, not to showcase gaming skills ;)

And for those traditional cRPG players out there, don't worry. The combat shown in this video is really hectic, once balanced so many enemies will cut you to pieces in no time, the encounters will be fewer in number. And as I previously has stated, my goal is to make it possible to avoid combat almost altogether, and for those moments that calls for brute force, there will be potions to buff your weak, sneaking, lock-picking peaceful miner.

That is all for now, I will be working on improving all that I have shown and new stuff will be added (the hunting skill for example, need an animal to kill...). There are tons to do with the weapon and item generating algorithms, and even more to do with assets, but as always I will keep you all updated. Please comment on anything that pops into your head, I am all up for discussion!