Buyog's Lair

Artificial

Sunday, February 06, 2011

The beta testing for Blackest Night Hal Jordan has been going very well. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from folks, all of which I have been working on addressing in the main code base before I can release. The biggest revelation to come out of the beta process, though, is something I should have realized long ago: making a decent AI for Hal, one that behaves appropriately in both standard Green Lantern mode and all 6 custom Corps modes, is really hard.

MUGEN AI programming is something of a dark art, all about how different triggers interact with each other under certain conditions, which ones take precedence over each other, that sort of thing. Adding in a layer of 7 different play styles (and really, the different modes are starting to feel different from each other) just ratchets up the complexity level. In the past, I've released characters without custom AI; in this case, though, I really feel like he needs something that will obey the same gameplay rules that a human has to follow (for example, Orange and Black Lantern modes can't charge their ring power up with the taunt move that the other modes can use). Without implementing those same rules for the AI, certain modes become really cheap, and it's no fun to play against a cheap opponent. (although I seem to remember seeing some pretty cool videos on YouTube of people winning against legendarily cheap characters, like Omega Tom Hanks or the April Fools Darkseid Kal-Elvis and I cooked up a few years ago. But I digress.)

So the long and the short of it is, Hal's still on the operating table, but progress is being made. As of last night, I've resolved 50 of the 65 issues raised by one or more of my beta testers. So if that's any clue as to his progress, there you go. Meanwhile, check out this shot of the second custom Yellow Lantern special, which I've finally finished:

[Yellow Lantern] Cruel Grip special

I should hopefully have more to post here really soon.

Labels: Blackest Night Hal