So I was challenged with making a game reliant on artificial intelligence for my Advanced Seminar in AI Design. I am a huge fan of AI in games, so I wanted to do something I have never done before. Because most of my games have been either single player or networked multiplayer, I haven't worked on developing AI much in the past (that task usually falls onto my team's gameplay and AI programmers and I design, place, and balance them).
This leads me into what I aim to do for this project. I am a big fan of League of Legend's spin off game Team Fight Tactics. Something that takes both strategy and luck, with a hands off gameplay that still brings players in. Researching the topic, I found that autochess games are few and far between, and there are even fewer that have the same approach as TFT. It is because of this that I wanted to tackle this challenge. Over the course of this semester, I plan to develop an autochess game with 2 playable characters, multiplayer (or a mockup of it), and all the gimmicks that follow.
After a week of development, I managed to meet my milestone of having a board, placeable pieces, and the ability to switch teams through the use of a dev tool.
(Sorry for low quality, Wix has a 25mb limit)
The most challenging problem I found was getting the piece to follow the mouse. Having a 3D static mesh follow a 2D access of a mouse in a 3D environment was a challenge I never figured would be a challenge. What I did to counteract this was to trace a line from the camera to the mouse and fire this laser until it collides with something. I then link the piece that the player has clicked on to the hit point that the laser is colliding with and BOOM! It looks like the piece is snapped to the mouse, but in all actuality it is under the mouse and on the table instead.