SCP:FS Devlog #14 – AI & UI & Reworks

Overview

Hello SCP-peeps!

These past weeks we have decided to switch how we write our devlogs and as a consequence we’ll now be providing content biweekly. Also, a little fun fact is at the time of writing this we have reached exactly 299 wishlists on Steam. So who’s going to be lucky number 300? 👀

(Ultra) TL;DR: SCP-096 AI, Build-System fixes on the way, new UI design (image included)

What progress has been made on the SCP Game?

Other

Workers now have a blood VFX when injured.
New art-design for UI that is more akin to SCP: Containment Breach.

Experiments

Created base code for performing experiments.
You can now save- & load experiments.
You get rewards for finishing an experiment.

Right now you get cash for each experiment immediately on completion. Documents come later in development.
Added 7 new experiment types.

All existing experiment types so far are: checking cognative abilities, interviewing, reading, reconfiguring, sending in a D-class, performing a physical examination, taking a sample, testing durability, viewing.

SCPs

SCP-096 now has its most basic AI.

Note: The player viewing SCP-096 will not enrage it.

The SCP starts of in its idle state, where it checks if it can see the worker and periodically moves around slowly. When it looks for a “target” it firstly checks if there are any walls or other obstacles in the way. If there is a target then it enters a rage state, we will add the animations & sounds for this later. After a couple seconds it enters a chase-state where it has a faster speed and continues chasing the worker. We will eventually add the ability for it to break doors and gates. After the target is eliminated it will enter a “feeding”-state. After a while it stands still and enters a roaming state.
SCP-173 & SCP-106 “clickable” hitbox changed.
SCPs now have experiments that suits them better. (Manually assigned by Devs)

Build System

Reworking the mouse-to-grid snapping system.

The build-system was originally designed to only allow the player to build in a cell-based patter – that will say, ONLY place structures in cells. This worked for a time, but we soon realized that this is extremely limiting and thus, to allow the player more freedom and creativity, I am reworking the system to also support placing structures on the edges and corners between cells. This feature will be extremely useful and will make, for example, placing walls feel much more natural now that you can place them on the edges of a cell. Each object will now have their own field for their “snapping preference” which determines where they will be placed on the grid; additionally, if we for some reason would need it, a structure can also have multiple snapping preferences.
Reworking the offset between the structure to be placed and the cursor.

Let’s say that you want to place a structure with a width and depth of the 1×1 ratio, simply placing the structure on the position of the cursor would pose no issues, but let’s say that the structure had the dimensions 2×2. This would un-align the structure with the grid which is not desired.

To fix this, my previous solution was to simply anchor the cursor to the bottom left corner of the structure. This solution was simple and meant that we could make structures of any size without having to worry if it would align with the grid or not. However, this had the problem of feeling a bit ‘weird’ to use.

Therefore, I have developed a system where the structure kind of “lags” behind the cursor only moving in increments of one cell (if cell is the preferred snapping mode).