Shimmer's Reach

This page documents the development of this project, specifically the gameplay systems I implemented so far.

Description

The empire is on the brink of civil war. Take control of a fleet of bounty hunters as you venture into the depths of the imperial heartland to hunt down the enemies of the crown.

Engage with various factions to bolster your forces and gather intelligence on your foes. Find ways to make money by hunting beasts, mining in the vast ore fields or trading with locals. Manage your fleet and crew, level up your ships and develop strategies to counter each new threat.

Development: Gameplay Systems

1. Pathfinding System

I implemented a sparse-graph pathfinding system from scratch, which creates nodes and vertices based on obstacles and ignores empty space, giving a 5X boost on performance. It uses A* with LOS check.

Ships use a collision check for avoidance of dynamic objects.

2. Procedural Map Generation

A map generator can create a new map and calculate pathfinding in circa 5 seconds. It creates random islands, debris and cities based on specified weights with controllable levels of freedom.




3. AI Behaviour

Ship AI is a crucial aspect of this game. They can trade, mine and attack other ships, as well as form convoys and autonomously decide when to use their abilities.

Advanced behaviour: ships scan the area in intervals to decide whether or not to engage in a fight or to flee. They can also issue distress calls to allied ships in the vicinity.


4. AI Marking System

Ships can be marked as foes by AI ships when they are attacked, but this information doesn't reach the  AI player directly. Instead, it passes through the ship to other allied ships in the vicinity and is only relayed to the AI player if a ship reaches port, allowing the player to strategically take out enemies without them noticing.
Further, it is possible to fake your ships' allegiance and commit false flag attacks.