WIP - NPC's (and a few setbacks)

Hey all! I have some good news and some bad news.

Bad news: Adding NPC's has been a much bigger challenge than I thought and I probably won't be able to add all of the features I had planned in time for the next build.

Good news: I eventually found a much better way to handle NPC's that will make them a lot more manageable and extendable in the future.

Let me preface by saying I am not a good programmer and I had almost zero programming experience before starting this project. Because of this, I make a lot of mistakes and I often underestimate how complicated certain things will be. Adding NPC's has been no exception.

At first, I tried adding to the really basic script I made to control the hazmat suit guys for Snackrooms V2. It was going well for a while, but it quickly got to the point where every new behavior I added caused tons of other issues. It was difficult to debug and I spent a lot of time rewriting code only to have it blow up in my face over and over.

Eventually, I decided to explore other options and I bought a very useful plugin called Behavior Designer to help make the task more manageable. This tool breaks behaviors down into bite-sized chunks of logic that hook together in a visual way called a behavior tree. Here's an example of one in action.

Behavior trees make it much easier to see what's going on inside the brain of an NPC while they are thinking. Their decisions are based on a visual hierarchy where certain behaviors override others depending on the situation and the order of their arrangement.

It took some effort to rebuild what I already had using this new system, but it's definitely been worth it. I still have to write some code, but overall these visual graphs make things way less overwhelming and it will allow me to add new behaviors much more easily in the future.

Blah, blah, blah technical nonsense... so what can you expect to see in the next build?

Right now I'm focusing on a basic dialogue system and some simple behaviors. NPC's will say different things based on your weight and their behavior will change to some extent as you grow. I plan to add NPC's to at least the Buffet and Candy Factory with more to come in future updates. I want each NPC to have a distinct appearance, unique dialogues and somewhat different behaviors so they all feel like they have their own personality. That said, it will take some time to populate all the locations in the game.

I've also been trying to rework the rolling body so it won't pancake at lower frame rates. In addition, I want the squishiness of the rolling body to be more consistent across all PC's. That way the firmness slider can be used more for fine tuning to your desired squishiness instead of compensating for a poorly performing PC. I'm still working on this, but so far it seems like it will work.

Anyway, I hope to have the next build ready in about a week or two. Thanks for your patience as I continue to chip away at this project and I'll see you again soon!