Phase 2: Starting Anew

Well, I'm back on working on this.

Taking about 6 months off was nice, honestly got back to it faster than I thought I would.

The project is in a state. Reevaluating now that I started looking back at this, I noticed that the system for spawning was jury rigged to spawn archetypes for each faction. If I want there to be more than a few factions that wont scale well. Moreover, it hardcoded equipment when I want to be able to make loadouts for the PC and custom troopers. I still have the issues with pathing that need to be addressed ontop of this. Also, while my AI is functional, it also is limited to a few actions that are mostly centered around running down field to pound skulls in.

So I have more directions to head in here, than I thought I did. I rearranged my spawning scripts to create a spawner for each faction. My plan now is that the spawner will be fed types and numbers of troops to spawn on start. So more things to serialize. That gets away from the loop I was using at start to create just a flat volume of dudes, and lets me define types of dudes.

That said, I have started to detach the loadout from the archetype that is spawned as well. I have decided on making an inventory system, with each respective loadout being picked up by the default spawned entity. This will allow me to track weapon degradation and whatnot, If I can pass the equipment's weapon variables then on to the script that manages damage (Which I think I can).

And on the subject of the spawned entity, I have decided that since with DOTS I'm dealing with the ability to literally handle millions of entities without significant frame drops, that I will be breaking my entity up into 3 distinct parts. This will allow me to animate more easily, and track the damage of the individual entity pieces. Body, head, and arms will thus be broken out. 

With the AI, I think I need a reliable idle action. I want to structure the AI where there can be a 'selected' state, so that you can issue orders to troops, which means I need everyone to kind of stay still and not immediately default to going kill crazy. I think by introducing sight ranges (Which was something I did originally intend), I can prevent everyone from immediately starting a fight, and start getting the troops organized before they enter a melee.

So, plenty of things to handle!