New Pathfinding With Long Jumps – January 25th 2023

This is actually a huge update that’s been in the works for a while. I’ve finally replaced the old pathfinding system with one that supports different methods of navigation between nodes. Essentially, units can now jump across gaps! (jump animation is a WIP, it’s very floaty) This allows for much more than just cliff jumping, though.

Currently the rules are a unit can jump one (1) tile distance in a horizontal manner IF both tiles are the same height and the tile being jumped to is occupiable. This will probably be changed to include movement types and move/jump stat as well as allowing jumps to lower tiles.

A more accurate way to put it is that pathfinding will now consider non-adjacent tiles depending on the circumstances. Replacing my old A* with a custom graph path search took the whole weekend, but now I can make much more interesting maps and scenarios.

This was high on my list of features to add after playing Tactics Ogre Reborn (Also from re-playing Stella Deus). I struggled a bit with isometric, z-depth sorted pathfinding years ago when I first implemented it so I was reluctant to dive back into the math of it all.

It’s one of those things that I find kind of fun and dreadful. Spending most of the time going “oh wow, I have no idea what I am doing” to finally getting that “OHHH!” moment is pretty satisfying…even if it takes way too long.

Anyway, back to bug testing the new system!

Note: The gif featured in this update takes place in a special editor where I can manually control the unit, sort of like a point and click adventure. I wouldn’t mind making a little puzzle game where you control the unit like this in neat isometric environments.

Note: Remember, some of the images and gameplay depicted here may be outdated and does not represent the current state of the game!