So my initial pathfinding implementation is done. It’s basically a simple node graph with a very unoptimized A* implementation.
I was pretty annoyed by how long it took me to write the A*, but hey, it’s been a while since I wrote a pathfinder by myself.

The node graph is just manually placed nodes, nothing fancy there. The reason why I didn’t go with an algorithmic solution for node placement was mainly performance and time constraints. This way I can reduce the number of nodes to the bare minimum and placing so few nodes manually was still faster than doing it in code. It also means I have full control over node placement, so I can hopefully do some more fancy stuff like bridges and tunnels in a later iteration of the level map.

Now it’s on to the AI. Once I’ve got the basic behaviour down I’ll refactor things a bit and implement the AI as a proper state machine so it’s easier to expand the abilities.

I’m slightly behind my schedule, but so far I’m not worried. I’m pretty sure I can get pretty much all of the initial gameplay done by early tomorrow morning, then get a few hours of sleep and spend all of tomorrow on Sound and Art. Hopefully the very core mechanics will be done by around 6pm so I can get a bunch of testers to try things out.

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