Okay, I've figured out what I want to do
Overview:
The NPCs will attempt to reach a goal area by crossing over hills and valleys. Going uphill slows them down and going downhill speeds them up (within limits). The Player can drop bombs which deform the landscape and kill NPCs, or Terraform to create difficult terrain.
NPC Behavior:
NPCs will have basic flocking behaviours and no pathfinding. Their direction of movement will be largely determined by the goal, and the terrain.
There will be three distinct NPC types: Engineer, Shielder and Soldier.
- Engineers will stop and attempt to smooth out steep uphill slopes.
- Shielders will stop and deploy shields in areas that the player has recently bombed.
- Soldiers are the only ones that will score points for the NPCs when they reach the goal zone.
My goal is to see some emergent cooperative behavior among the NPCs. e.g. Shielders protecting Engineers as they smooth out a slope for the Soldiers.
Development Environment:
I will be using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition and the Truevision SDK for this project.