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This will be the third update of our 5-update AI and Interaction Overhaul -the 60% progress mark. It will build upon the foundations laid during the first two beta updates and actually start implementing the AI and interaction systems into the game.
- Introduce a new AI system, along with a first bunch of conditional NPC behavior packages. Each NPC will now have somewhere to live, work and/or study and they will be logically somewhere on the map at any point of gameplay (work during the day, home at night, shopping / leisure activities depending on their stats for the rest of the day etc).
- Introduce a new Interaction system where you can physically click on the 3d model of any NPC at your current location and be prompted a list of relevant interactions you can do with that NPC, some of which will directly lead to scenes (i.e. this improves how 'proactive' gameplay feels - less doing random things and hoping for things to trigger). Also add a first bunch of NPC interactions, their conditions & linked scenes to go with this new system.
- These systems are designed in a way that ensures both these first NPC behavior packages and NPC interactions will be editable / moddable right away and easily with any text editors. Modders will also be able to add their own AI packages and interactions that will be picked up automatically by the new systems.
- Add a navigation system for indoor 3d space so that NPCs don't rely 100% on furniture like in Beta 2 to know where to spawn and they can stand idle or wander around too. This also means that player and NPCs will try to walk to rather than just teleporting between objects and dialogue/ interaction targets like in Beta 2. Scenes will feel less awkward than Beta 2 because of this.
- Some very basic physics mostly to aid the navigation system above
- Around half of April's commissions
- Bug fixes and other improvements
- In summary, Beta 3 is a major coding effort and will already have most of the core components of the AI and interaction systems planned for v3.0. It will mostly just lack in variety of AI packages and interactions (which will continue to be added in Beta 4 and 3.0 Stable). Scenes will feel less awkward than Beta 2 thanks to the navigation system, although I will still have to go through all the lpscene files and add new API functions so that the scenes fully take advantage of the new fully 3d gameplay and the new AI data.
Estimated Release Date: Saturday, 4 April