Version Update: v.0.0.1

Ahh! First version update! My major focus the past few weeks has been non-player character AI. I had initially built out a 'Enemy' character, and then cloned that into a 'Crowdfolk' character, and then tweaked it to be harmless. Once I started making changes, however, I realized how much they still have in common, and for the AI to really shine and present the player with dynamic, interesting choices, I needed to tackle them holistically.

So I spent some time re-combining the enemy and crowdfolk into a single 'Demon' entity, who can be made either aggressive or peaceful, and laid the foundation to bring more personality and nuance into both types of characters.

I confess, this update was a little worrisome, as a lot of the stuff I was tackling was not really immediately tangible. Trying to improve NPC behavior is mostly invisible work, and so the finish line for 'successfully improved' felt like an invisible target, too. Doesn't quite have the same pop as implementing a flashy new model or slick combat mechanic.

In these cases sometimes the best you can do is work on it with the time you have and then move on, knowing that it's always an option to come back; It's only the first update of many!

Version notes:

• Totally overhauled the 'Enemy' and 'Crowdfolk' AI types into a single, modular 'Demon' AI, which can be either Enemy or Civilian, but shares much more of the functionality, and will make further improvements a lot easier.
• Changed demon model to a Mixamo placeholder.
• Switched from single-speed walk/run animations to a smoothed blend-tree.
• Switched from using timers to using Unity Mecanim animation events to trigger animation-driven mechanics.
• Smoothed out the enemy's transition between range combat and melee combat to make their actions feel more thoughtful.
• Updated the placeholder target block with a dead-end block.

Some thoughts on next steps; My next planned chunk of updates tackles a few more modifications to the demon denizen of our game, allowing them to come in a better variety of sizes, shapes and colors. Putting in a few more items to increase the variations of each randomly-generated level will go a long way towards helping me test combat repeatedly without going too crazy, I think. We'll see how it turns out once I have more to show and tell. Until then!