Blade Ballad

0.4.1

Combat

Spatial Partition

Previously, NPC targeting would be done by colliders, which was implemented by a large sphere enclosing the character, and any other character that enters it would be evaluated for targeting. Conceptually, it functioned like a sonar, but this approach only worked for close range targets and became unmanageable as more NPCs are added all running their individual targeting call, while the sphere radius would have to be increased out of proportion to detect further targets.

So I asked my senior software developer ChatGPT for some ideas and learned about spatial grids, which worked by registering NPCs to a grid cell approximated from their position, and from there, find other NPCs within that grid and neighboring ones to determine their target from a manager class based on closest distance. This solved the problem of performance, where only a single class was responsible for handling targeting logic, instead of per NPC, and organized them into partitioned cells.

This also solved the problem of retargeting which was very apparent in 0.4.0 when multiple gladiators are spawned in the arena, only to bunch up because they all decided to target the same person. As you can see in the video, NPCs would fight their closest target then quickly pivot towards another attacker if they got to close.

Melee has also been further refined, removing a lot of the jitter present in the last version from a short I posted (which for no reason, warning or notification, died suddenly after reaching 500 views two days after it was uploaded). That stutter you feel when attacking is mostly eliminated, and crouching has been reimplemented.

Models

Decoupled Armor

Greave and sleeve armor now have their own specific armor slot, bringing the total count to 10. This addition is to complement gear degradation, as your armor will lose condition after taking damage, encouraging you to scavenge better ones from fallen foes, a practice found in games where scarcity is emphasized.

Placeable V3

I’ve been reworking the building system introduced in my first blog, but due to lack of polish and general instability, I won’t go into detail for it, at least not until the next post. You can try it out in Story Mode if you’re really curious.