Invasion Machine News

[h2]Small hotfix[/h2]
In same cases, the units were indefinitely getting stuck in front of buildings, when trying to stack up.
This was caused due to a way too rigorous check for their current locations, making the game think they were always too far away from the building's entry. This is now fixed.

Also, there was still a single type of decorations on map, unknown to the pathfinding system and also, in some rare cases, causing the units to get stuck. This is now fixed, as well.

[h2]What's coming in the next version[/h2]
I will soon be releasing a content update - adding the fog of war to the game. You will no longer be able to see and target units from the other side of the map, unless you have your own men prepositioned in the strategic areas. The fog of war will work the same way for your own men, as it does for the enemy AI. This is my attempt at letting more enemies sneak by you, and have them be able to complete some of their goals, before you find and kill them all.
I plan on releasing this update in the coming days (but I'm still testing it, for now. It touches a lot of game systems).

I just uploaded another small hotfix, fixing an issue with the units getting stuck on the edges of buildings, in some cases. It was caused by some of the small decorations placed around the buildings, having their own colliders, by mistake.

Additionally, the units will now be allowed to pass through buildings freely, in case they still get stuck on them. This will not, however, cause them to try to walk directly through any structures, unless already stuck on them for some strange reason. The same thing goes for vehicles. This should finally fix the remaining pathfinding issues, and let me move on to other developments.

Among other fixes, the next new feature that will appear in the game next week, will be the fog of war.

So, for a patch that was only supposed to improve the quality and make the gameplay smoother, the previous one didn't end up being much of a success. Because I changed so much in the pathfinding system under the hood, I didn't realize how many new problems it caused as a side-effect.

I've just released a hotfix, addressing the issues I've been warned about since version 0.8 became active, and will continue releasing new ones (sooner, this time), if some other new bugs appear.

The fixes include:

1. Units getting stuck next to houses
This was caused by holes in the navigation mesh, next to some buildings. The units weren't stuck in the doors, but rather were trying to walk an impassable path, and were getting stuck. This unfortunately is sometimes happening on new navigation meshes, because there's a bunch of manual fixing required on them.

2. Units unable to walk into houses
That was because the new navmesh didn't extend as far as needed, and the unit was never able to get close enough to the entry. Fixed and will not happen again.

3. Units turning in circles, when carrying wounded
In some cases, the navmesh agent was getting activated on wounded troops, causing those carrying them, to continuously try to avoid the person they were actually holding. Fixed and will not happen again this way.

4. Wreckers can now pick up cars with passengers inside, as long as all the passengers are dead or wounded. This should help with picking wrecks off the map. The passengers will simply get dumped, in this case. I will also add more fixes to this in the future update, allowing you to check for wounded in cars and clear them out.

5. There was an issue with the game spamming you with too many humaid missions at once. This should not be happening again.

6. The villages tend to get empty over time (where most or all villagers would leave their houses all at once, either to go to work, or trying to visit someone else). I've greatly increased the timouts between these events, to keep more people in houses. Note: the villages will still get vacated if you kill civilians. The game tries to repopulate them from time to time, but the new villagers actually have to get to the houses, somehow).

7. Fixed all the places on the map, where the actors would get stuck at the edges of the road (and walk in place). This is also mostly a manual process, so I'm not yet sure if the entire map is now fixed. Will continue doing this, if I find more broken parts of the map.

8. Civilian traffic will resume driving much faster after engagements ahead of it end. This was previously taking too long, and was really confusing.

9. Your units should now have less trouble entering larger cars.

For now that's it. I will continue working on improving the quality and smoothness of the gameplay and the UI for a while (more hotfixes possibly coming soon), before moving on to adding new features.

As for the new features planned - I'd first like to add proper fog of war and more buildable structures related to the humaid efforts.

[h2]There's a new patch out in the main branch[/h2]
Over time, I've received a bunch of requests from the community, most often related to the quality of life and game breaking issues, along with a lot of useful feedback. I'll be focusing on addressing these, in the coming weeks.
I'm releasing the first (of a number of) quality-improvements-only patch today, containing a collection of assorted fixes.

[h2]Pathfinding[/h2]
I've decided to replace the pathfinding system the game originally shipped with (which is the one built into the game engine), because it never let me optimize it enough, or expand it for all the special cases I needed.
In this patch, all units are now using the new system. It should fix a bunch of the problems the old one had, at one:
* actors should no longer try to walk into each other
* actors will no longer wait a couple of seconds before reacting to your "move" orders (the old system was too slow to calculate their path, and was forcing the unit to wait for the calculation to complete, first)
* actors will no longer be walking into parked cars

[h2]Traffic[/h2]
* following the feedback I got from some of you, I've decided to disable all unnecessary collisions between vehicles and parts of the environment. The cars will still try to avoid their surroundings, but in case they fail - they'll just be able to pass through any decorations on the map, freely. This might sometimes look silly, but at least allows for smoother gameplay. As a bonus - it's faster on the CPU, because that's fewer layers to test collisions on.
* cars will now be able to turn more aggressively, letting them avoid more obstacles in narrow areas
* cars will now take more direct paths to their destinations

[h2]UI[/h2]
* added the "Order of Battle" window (can be toggled with the TAB key or a button in the top left corner of the screen), showing you the entire roster of the units in your possession. You can see which units are on the map, ordered by their distance from the current camera position, as well as some basic status of each soldier (wounded, in combat, in transport, etc.).
* added the Minimap - the minimap will show you the locations of all your units on the map, as well as the locations of all _already identified_ enemies. You can zoom it in (using the small button with the magnifying glass icon).
* more fixes to be added in the next patch...



[h2]Fixes[/h2]
Along with dozens of assorted fixes in the UI and the behavior of all the units, we have:
* fixed the stupid behavior of enemy soldiers trying to run right in front of your riflemen, when looking for a house to hide in.
* fixed the "Possible IED Location" markers. Previously it was sometimes impossible to remove them with your EOD unit, once placed.
* pathfinding now runs on multiple threads, and supports calculations for many more agents at once
* optimizations to physics

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.

[h2]What changed:[/h2]
* 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

[h2]Changes for vehicle units:[/h2]
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.

[h2]What's next[/h2]
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.