Coles Notes – there is a pre-alpha demo for you to try!

There is a pre-pre-alpha demo available for Windows and MacOS here: https://github.com/bradhannah/Ultima5Redux-Demos/blob/master/README.md! This version is not a game – it some core mechanics with endless bugs, but it’s something 🙂 I hope you like it. Please follow the instructions, if you don’t then you will only be disappointed.

So what’s new?

Since last update I have added a number of features:

Improved pathfinding tile weighting allowing NPCs to favour dirt paths and brick roads over grassy shortcuts smarter wandering and collision correction comprehensive simulation of NPC travel over full day for every single town, keep and every single NPC

Improved directory/save game selection menu which was previously very buggy

Klimbing down grates and falling through floors (think Blackthorne’s Palace!)

Mirrors now reflect and can be broken by Avatar

Fixed a ton of long standing bugs NPCs getting stuck/deadlocked “Bleeding tiles” on outside tiles of townes Conversation bugs causing crashing with gold or item transactions

Upgraded to latest High Defintion Render Pipeline for Unity

Created first pre-alpha release

Performance improvements and optimizations (was at 2fps in Blackthorne’s castle before I did!)

Added Unit Testing framework (NUnit), writing some initial tests

Initially migrated all tasks to Trello and then GitHub Projects

Updated MindMap

This work is now all being tracked here if you want to follow along https://github.com/users/bradhannah/projects/1.

Interestingly the biggest chunk of time was spent tuning the pathfinding, taking it from “good enough” to “not too shabby!”. I was able to write a number of simulations which both exposed a TON of deadlocks, but also let me address them, solve them and then prove they were solved.

What’s Next?

Well if my project list is any indication then I will intend on focusing on the following (as always – subject to change):

Gradual sunrise and sunsets

Creating a tile override system that will allow overrides for “poorly guessed” floor tiles

‘P’ush things around the maps

‘T’alk to shopkeepers

Moongates!!

Rewrite of voxel caching system to prevent “double caching” annoyance

Complete population of remaining item and inventory descriptions for Z-Stats

Fix some “special NPCs” that do not have proper sprites

Add “conversation log” feature for recording NPC conversations

Mindmap Update

Also here is an updated and already out of date mindmap for those who like pretty pictures.