Greetings carnival-goers! Apologies for the long delay, but we are back at making devlogs! This devlog is sort of a life-update/game news update rolled into one. Things have been going well with the updating process of the game but switching two major systems in the game, those being Audio and AI, as well as some life events on the end of the game designer means that we still have not released our next major update, but work is still well underway--and some major improvements are already visible!

Here's what we did in the last couple months: 

-SOUND-

We moved Reverie's entire sound system from Unity Audio to Wwise. This took some time but we figured out how to replace the logic to reference Wwise as opposed to all Unity Audio System's stuff.  Far more convenient than coding an entire sound system from scratch, and a very powerful tool. 

--AI AND PATHFINDING--

We also completely restructured our pathfinding system from the built-in navmesh system to a third party source by Aron Granberg, called the A* Pathfinding Project from Unity's Asset Store. Currently, all enemies have been converted into "RichAI" agents, one of the more dynamic forms of AI out of the plethora of options for AI types, and we are currently seeing whether or not future enemy types will adopt different AI agents to suit their particular needs, or will do just fine with RichAI components as well. The current situation is that the components mesh incredibly well with our scripting for the enemy behavior, so we're quite optimistic about some of the more advanced enemy types we have in store for our players. 

(link below)

https://arongranberg.com/astar/docs/index.html

With these changes, the AI is so much more responsive, and is able to smoothly transition from different elevations as well as different states of dashing/dodging. Furthermore, the pathing seems to run faster and is better optimized, and the paths themselves are far more accurate and believable. That on top of the immense addition to control parameters and documentation made available to us by this change makes this the definitive solution going forward for Reverie, and I couldn't be more happy to use it for our game and learn more  in the coming days. 

Good new things:

Sound system and AI has been updated to perform better and be far less glitchy!

AI pathfinding is smoother, smarter and more believable, as well as more responsive.

Sound system's fade-ins and outs sound much better

Sound just less glitchy in general

COMING SOON:

New enemies & potion mechanic

More detailed environments, and lighting updates.

More areas to explore, and more interconnection.

More story elements?? We'll see!