That’s why we’re starting over with Episode 3. Every line of gameplay code in Tower Fall will be fresh and new. Tommi, our lead Unity developer, has been working on this new codebase for over six months now, merging his knowledge of WolfQuest gameplay with some fresh perspectives on code design.
What do we gain from this effort?
- We can design the entire episode as a coherent body of code, rather than incrementally, adding features one by one, as we did with the original game. That’ll give us a clean, modern codebase for ongoing development and expansion.
- We can implement a new type for AI. Instead of behavior trees (essentially branching if/then logic), we’re using Utility AI, which creates more naturalistic behaviors based on the animal’s current priorities and available options to satisfy their needs and wants.
- We have a blank slate to redesign some features — like a new, more naturalistic spawning and scent system for prey animals.
- We can make core elements more robust and modular — for example, setting up new animals is very bow now but will be much easier in the new codebase. We’re also making it easy to let players switch from one animal to another at will. (Not saying this will be included in Tower Fall’s initial release, but you never know…)
- We can build a new wolf and camera controller, with better camera controls (including a mouse-driven camera orbit), vastly improved Jump function, and other improvements.
- We can make the game fully compatible with Xbox and Steam controllers.
- We’re writing code in a special way that will allow automated testing, which should help us identify and fix bugs far more quickly and efficiently than in the past.