Basic gameplay features

[paulbrzeski]

Functionality needed:

• Shooting basic projectiles and health systems
• Killboards / players online UI
• Implement bot behaviours
  • Need to make some dynamic behaviour switching
    • Stage 1: Basic movement and target locking
      • Default for bots is to be on patrol
      • If a player or cargo ship is in range, pursue
      • If a structure is in range and currently pursuing, break off pursuit and return to patrol location and pattern
      • Players and bots have their own target lock mechanics
    • Stage 2: Combat
      • If a player or structure attacks the bot, it flees for a few seconds and then doubles back to attack
        • If the player is in range, it will resume the fight
        • If the player has left the area, it will return to it's patrol
  • Behaviour probably needs to be part of the game/ folder so it can be on the server

Out of scope:

• Implement Pirate aircraft and aircraft selection screens
• Missions and objectives

Acceptance Criteria:

• [x] Bots move around the map using automatic pathfinding
• [x] Player can target lock bots
• [x] Mini map
• [ ] Bots change behaviour based on others in proximity
• [ ] Players and bots can shoot at, damage and destroy each other

[paulbrzeski]

Early July notes:

• Working on #32
  • Fixing minor issues
    • Debugging, fast and skip intro are now toggleable
  • Refactoring code base around the scenograph
  • Implementing scene overview
    • Got proof of concept working
      • Tried to use Tweakpane Table but it's for an older Tweakpane and couldn't get it working on the new branch either
      • Looked into making my own Tweakpane Plugin but it seems cumbersome, for now I can get away with just overriding it's inner contents and managing it myself.
  • Refactoring camera into new Cameras class with separate sub cameras
  • Implementing orbit control target selections

Todays notes:

• 32 - Basic Gameplay

  • Just noticed there's no http server built into dev... never mind it was on https
  • Exporting a pirate model from Blender, could be good to add a thruster to it..
    • Never mind it looks wrong aesthetically and the file size is rough
  • Checking Yuka documentation for what I need to do for basic bot behaviours, looks like the options are quite API-ey so I need to think about what I want first and then figure out what parts of the spec I need to use
  • Brainstorming bot requirements. There are two sets of bots I want to build at this stage
    • Freight ships that travel between the structures
      • Could be fun to make them run away from attack so it's a game of cat and mouse to get ships to their destination
    • Pirate ships that are trying to raid the freight ships and attack players who approach them
      • A timer that spawns in the pirates initially and replacements
      • Randomise the spawn location between a couple of pre-set spots
      • They should target the nearest freight ship when spawned, fly towards it and begin attack
      • If a player approaches while they are engaging cargo ships, the player is ignored
      • If a player attacks them while they are attacking the ships, they switch targets to the player
      • If they are not near a freighter yet and the player intercepts them they will immediately aggro and target the player
  • Renaming "Ship" class to Player so that it makes more sense alongside the incoming Bot class
    • Testing, looks good
  • Reviewing Yuka documentation, looks like there's quite a lot to do in order to implement the behaviours
  • Adding the Raven model to the scene within the Bot class
    • Implementing the Wander steering behaviour so the 3D model just flies around at first
      • It's moving but very slowly and I can only seem to get it going backwards..
      • Fixed it up, it needs to be restricted to boundaries somehow
      • The camera isn't able to track the ship, need to look into that

[paulbrzeski]

• 32 - Basic Gameplay

  • Checking project board to make sure I don't give myself tasks out of scope, looks good
  • Finishing off very basic movement AI for enemy bots
    • Restricting wandering to boundaries... tried to get ChatGPT's help but it has no idea what valid functions are for Yuka, it's hallucinated calls to non existent methods and I'm not sure if it's worth implementing them in case there's a better way to do this within Yuka.
  • Refactoring my implementation so Entity Manager sits further up in the app
    • Comparing time module to my delta, looks like I'm sending in the application uptime not a delta... investigating. The animation loop is just passing along currentTime which is passed in by requestAnimationFrame itself.
  • Trying to use ObstacleAvoidanceBehavior but I'm not sure it's compatible with wandering behavior
    • Implemented path following and now it seemingly won't need the obstance avoidance, might leave it with this for now
  • Fixed camera tracking issue, gave it an exemption for the vehicle entity from YUKA
  • Implementing cargo ship AI so they travel between structures
    • Reviewing possible improvements to the Bot/Cargo Ship/Player classes topology, but it's a bit unclear what it should be. Maybe "Entity" and "Scenery" at some point?
    • Adding code from Bot to the cargo ships, it all looks in order but it's not moving
    • Tried Wanderer Behavior also no go... looks like it was the MatrixAutoUpdate = false requirement, going to have to rememeber that one!

[paulbrzeski]

• 32 - Basic Gameplay

  • Checking how the View/Edit buttons work, their commands are embedded in the UI template
  • Object Editor is currently not doing anything
  • Adding paths, the cargo ships are definitely not following the paths sigh

[paulbrzeski]

• Gameplay #32

  • Implementing Overlays class to draw flight related overlays
    • Adding sensors class with initial hardcoded target of the bot
      • Having issues accurately scaling the overlay in 3D space, I believe I already have it's coordinates in 2D the issue is that I'm currently drawing a diamond in 3D space.
    • Trying browser side overlay to see if current 2D coordinates are accurate.. they are!
      • There's a weird ghost that appears but that's OK.

• TODO:

  • Fix accuracy issues with scanner overlay
  • Players flight instruments overlay
    • Comment out current flight instrument and replace with a Tweakpane debug view for now

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32
  • Updated readme
  • Set ticket acceptance criteria
  • Merged WIP branch

[paulbrzeski]

• 32 - Targetting UI

  • Checking past references for targetting UI, best bet is to just salvage the old icons
  • Creating icons for all scenery objects so they can be selected with the targetting scanner
  • Adding a targetting scanner area to the UI along with weapon launch icons
    • Scaffolding the new class under UI, overlays can stay in scenograph for now but it might make sense to move them out given they're HTML based
    • Currently the overlays display automatically even before the game starts, but the scanners should only appear on selected and targetted objects.

[paulbrzeski]

• 32 - Targetting UI

  • Adding tray that targeted objects will be added to
  • Cleaning up overlays scanner class so I can get it to be dynamic and link it up with the UI targetting scanner class

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 - Targetting UI
  • Thinking about how to do the target list VS locked targets
  • A table with a list of detected objects plus a list of locked targets like EVE Online would make sense but I don't think the mechanics being the same would make sense
    • Given players can free fly in Langenium, the target lock should be involve some kind of tracking or flight manouvering.

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 - Targeting UI
  • Refactoring targeting UI to use PUG based templates
  • Updating distance of targets dynamically
  • Reducing UI update interval
  • Tried a refactor of the objects in current scene but the impetus to do so made less and less sense as I went down the rabbit hole so it's been rolled back. Turns out attaching objects to current_scene does make more sense than holding them in memory
  • Adding cargo ships to targeting scanner UI
    • Adding new metadata to meshes to track icon lookup keyname and standing with player to determine colour
    • Tweaking the UI and adding hover effect using CSS
  • Adding full list of targetable scene objects
    • Checking how scene overview works, might need to add a flag as I don't want the skybox and other scene objects in the list
    • Adding a 'targetable' flag to all scene objects
    • Refactoring the existing Targeting Scanner UI class and templates to be a sub component called Locked alongside List within Targeting.

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 - Targeting UI
  • Adding pug-stylus to the repo to tidy up template styles
    • Getting some hectic console errors but the client is compiling and working OK
    • Deleting docs folder and fully rebuilding, came back great.
    • Ah, I had debug on for pug. Turned off, restarted and it's all good again.

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32
  • Prototyping the look and feel of the sensor list

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32
  • Prototyping the look and feel of the sensor list
    • Moving game client styles into a stylus file and refactoring for extension/maintainability
    • The sensor list is looking great, it's ready to be made dynamic
  • Adding full list of targetable scene objects
    • Referencing existing target lock code

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32
  • Adding remove and info buttons to the active targets
  • Adding HTML for a active target window
  • Fixing issues with client size and touch controls using wrong canvas element for their positioning
  • Adding icons for other classes and replacing ship icons with their targetting overlay symbols
  • Discussing with Garrett, this needs a rethink. There's too many clunky UI elements

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 Targeting
  • Reviewing where we're at to remove the new UI's and replace with cleaner inline approach
  • Commenting out the new overlays
  • Shrinking the targeting reticule to be 25%of screen instead of 65%
  • Making targetables change to yellow when in the targetable zone
  • Tweaking colours and fixing div structure

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 Targeting
  • Implementing targeting effect
  • Updating ticket
  • Minor tidy up and refactor
  • Merging PR #47

[paulbrzeski]

• Langenium #32 Mini Map
  • Adding static HTML container with background colour
  • Aligning all the overlay colours and refactoring styles
  • Adding minimap class and player's FOV shape to the minimap
    • Adding icons
    • Replaced FOV shape with chevron
  • Adding portrait mode to HUD
  • Fixing game control positions after resizing, actually this needs more work because they need to debounce
  • Disabling overlays before game mode is active