Invasion Machine update for 6 February 2022

I'm testing a new pathfinding system

If you switch your game to the testing branch (you can do it in the "properties" tab of the game in your Steam client app), you'll be able to play with a completely rebuilt pathfinding system.

The original pathfinding in the game had numerous issues, with the most annoying of them - being the units walking directly into parked cars, and failing to see many other obstacles on the map. The system I've been using was a closed library, built into the game engine, and was very cumbersome to work with and try to extend. This meant I had to basically live how it worked, and very little I could change when it didn't.

In the new build, I'm using a different, custom solution. All the human units in the game now use it, and from what I was able to test so far - it makes them much smoother, and they generally choose their paths in a much smarter way.

What changed:

• you'll no longer have to wait for a few seconds on a crowded map, before your unit decides on a path to take (before, there was often a lag in between your move order, and the unit starting to move. this was because the pathdinging system was calculating the path for your unit, first)
• the system is multithreaded, and can handle hundreds of units
• local avoidance is much better, the human units should no longer walk right into parked cars, like they often used to do, before

Changes for vehicle units:

The new system also supports the cars (to some degree), and it means they should also get improved pathfinding as well, but there's still a bunch of issues with them.
The main thing that got improved already, is that the cars now are able to navigate crowded spaces better. It's still not a perfect solution, though. Cars are harder to tune than people, because of the turning radius they need, and generally much more awareness around them because of the higher speed they move at.
So - it's still a work in progress, but it's gonna get better.

What's next

After the new pathfinding is finished and moved to the main build of the game, I will continue making other quality improvements. I'd like to take the nearest month and make as many fixes to the existing gameplay as I can, before continuing with adding more, original content.