The Last Walk in a Toy Ship

This video is very likely going to be the last installment in our series that showcases the progress with NPCs in our toy ship development environment, dubbed “BaryLab“. In here we demonstrate our two most recent work items: 1. Floorplan generation: even though future versions of Floating Sandbox will allow creators to construct custom floorplans for their ships, we still need to generate reasonable floorplans for ships that don’t have any, and here you see the results of our initial algorithm that does exactly that. 2. Complex walk paths: an engaging floorplan is undoubtedly made of floors and staircases, and NPCs need to be able to reach all the crannies and corners of a ship. Thanks to an idea from our friend Dario Bazzichetto, our NPCs now detect the presence of alternative paths in the floor and decide which one to take. Tomorrow we will officially begin the work to integrate the NPCs in Floating Sandbox, after which some more work will need to be taken care of. Some basic things in fact will need to be implemented soon - such as physical interactions with the world (e.g. explosions and fire), skinning and rendering, and floorplan visualization - while some others may come later - such as sounds, furniture, role-play of passengers, more complex behaviors, and the ability to build complex floorplans in the ShipBuilder - and thus we’ll also have to plan what will be in the first release and what instead may come later in subsequent updates. Stay tuned for our next video, which will undoubtedly be set straight inside the world of Floating Sandbox! Music: T-Rex Echoes (Live Version) by Carbon Based Lifeforms