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Scrunchies!

The infantry are coming! You can see a quick video here.

Infantry are moving around as expected, it's easy to select them and get them to go where you want. As of yesterday there were still problems with them getting too near to tanks, and not knowing to get out of the way when a vehicle wants to come through. I think I got that covered today though.






Here's a first version, you can see something is up right away though if you look carefully. That's right, I forgot the camera is rotated 45 degrees for an isometric style view so the infantry are facing the wrong way when moving. After adding a 45 degree offset to the code for sprite display I got them to face the right way.


I also tweaked the code to stop them from walking through each other. Now they won't occupy the same square as a fellow squad member. They also adjust their avoidance radius based on their state. If they are standing still they will move out of the way sooner. But while walking they are not so quick to give way to vehicles. If they are given the order to mount a vehicle, they will reduce the avoidance radius to 0, effectively allowing them to go right up the vehicle and get on board.

[Taxi!]
One thing I'm considering is the possibility of giving tankers the order to ignore friendly infantry when driving. This would leave it up to the player to keep their infantry safe from being run over by their own tanks. I don't really like the idea because war is violent enough without making it possible to intentionally run over your own guys.

Another consideration is whether to give vehicles code to manage right of way. Vehicles which are already moving would have a higher ROW index, vehicles which move later would avoid them the same way infantry do. Perhaps smaller vehicles or non-combat vehicles could also be asked to always give way to tanks... It's a really nice idea, but I think the result might be even more traffic jams. As I've said before, make the AI too smart and the player will be disappointed if they don't perform well in battle. Make them dumb and the player will be more inclined to take the responsibility themselves (and maybe not get annoyed at the game's AI).
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