After a long wait, the next version of Unsung Heroes is finally out. Thank you all for your patience with the development of this update. Unfortunately, there were some events that took away much of the development time for this update. You can expect future updates to arrive on much shorter time intervals.

New Infantry AI

The infantry AI is the highlight of this update. The AI was originally very unintelligent and often acted and reacted in nonsensical and unreasonable ways to their surroundings. This was due to the limited number of AI “behavioral states” (behavioral states define certain actions that the AI can do under specific conditions). This is being addressed by redoing the infantry AI with vastly more behavioral states that are much more complex and intelligent. This update specifically adds two behavioral types: “regroup” states and “charge” states. As you may already know, the infantry AI works based on what commands the commanding officer of an infantry unit gives. Where before there was only one behavioral state for each command, there are now multiple (4 for the regroup command, and 5 for the charge command). These new states (and the behavioral states that still have not been added) were listed in a previous devlog (https://venomic-games.itch.io/unsung-heroes/devlog/621296/progress-on-the-new-ai-system-of-unsung-heroes-1898).

When the commanding officer calls the regroup command, infantry AI will run (no longer will they walk to their destination) to the commander's position. If they see an enemy along the way and they are not too far from the commanding officer, they will proceed to attack the enemy until either the commanding officer is too far away or the enemy has been killed. Upon regrouping near the commanding officer, infantry AI will search their nearby surroundings for any enemies. If there is any, they will attack them from their current position. Unlike in the original version of the game, the infantry AI will always try to stay as close to the commanding officer as possible. If the commanding officer proceeds to move away again, infantry AI will follow the commanding officer (in the original version of the game, players had to recall the regroup command for infantry AI to continuously follow the commanding officer).

Charge commands work similarly to the regroup command, but instead of regrouping at the commanding officer’s position they instead charge to an objective (marked with a flag and a new “beam of light”). Just like before, infantry AI will run to the objective, stopping along the way if they need to fight an enemy. Once at an objective, infantry AI will search their surroundings until they spot an enemy. If they are able to, the infantry AI will proceed to run a short distance towards the enemy to attack them from a closer distance. Otherwise, they will attack from their position.

These states work with the all new field-of-view system that the AI uses. The original version of the game simply kept a list of all soldiers on the battlefield, which soldiers could use to find the nearest enemy and attack. While functional, this meant that AI always knew where everyone was and could attack an enemy they did not have sight of. In the new update, the infantry AI will only attack enemies they can see, allowing players to use stealth to get around detection.

Rework of the Objective Points

The objective points on the map provided players with additional goals to complete on the battlefield (namely to capture all the points on the map in addition to eliminating all enemy units). To simplify the UI of the game, the minimap has been removed (this is not much of a loss, since very little information was conveyed with it). However, finding the objective points would be much more difficult without the minimap. The new objective points now include a “beam of light” that can be seen from nearly any point on the battlefield. The color of their glow indicates the current state of the objective (white is a player controlled objective, red is an enemy controlled objective, green is an objective that the player’s infantry unit is currently charging regardless if they chose to play as a commanding officer or infantry soldier). This also allows commanding officers to easily select which objectives to charge. In the original version, the nearest objective was the one that would be set as the target. In this version, players simply aim their crosshairs at an objective while calling the charge command and the objective will be set to be targeted.

New Museum Map

Also stated in the previous devlog, the new museum map has been added in this update. This new museum is much larger, complex, and visually interesting. There is still some more work needed to improve texture quality and some of the model geometry (in addition, most of the exhibits are unfinished as they will be worked on throughout the course of Early Access).

Next Update and Other Announcements

The next update will focus on implementing “cover-hiding” systems for the infantry AI as well as the full implementation of the AI behavior states for the “defend” and “scatter” infantry unit commands. Work will also progress with the creation of new infantry models to replace the old, broken, and historically inaccurate infantry models (including the temporary testing models in the development map).

During this next development sprint, I will be out of town to attend some family events. That being said, I still plan to work as much as possible to get this next update out in a much shorter timespan. In addition, I plan on creating another development video on my youtube channel detailing the work I’ve made since the Itch.io release (the last development video was almost 6 months ago). This video will be short, in an effort to conserve time and energy to work on the next update.

Lastly, upon returning from family matters, I plan on having a few livestreams on the development so as to get more feedback with the rest of the community. More information will be announced at a later date.

Quick Reminders

Just as a quick reminder, all additional content in this update (excluding the new museum map) is only available on the development map of the game, not on the other maps (as stated before, this will be added to preexisting maps when all the infantry AI systems are complete). You can join the Unsung Heroes 1898 Community Discord server (https://discord.com/invite/p8CA9qXgCN). This post is also available on the Venomic Games website: https://venomicgames.com/?p=690

Known Issues

• Infantry death has not yet been added. While friendly fire is on, infantry can go into negative health.
• Infantry still is not holding a rifle in third-person. The new infantry models will include models of their currently holding weapon, which will resolve this issue.
• Enemy soldiers are currently represented as “red-capsules.” This is temporary for the time being until the new infantry models have been created.
• Some behavior states are not fully visible in game (even though they have been implemented), since enemy soldiers do not have the capacity to die yet.
• The objective points have a “progress bar” above them showing if they have been captured or not. This is still not fully implemented yet and does not rotate to follow the player.
• Calling the “defend” and “scatter” commands can break the AI, since those states have not yet been implemented. Calling “regroup” or “charge” commands afterwards will resolve any issues.
• Infantry can not see enemies that are too far away (even with clear line of sight). This is due to testing values on a smaller map and will be fixed at a later date.
• Infantry AI does not react quickly to nearby enemies present. This will be changed later to allow for faster reaction.
• Calling the “charge” command has a half second delay. This is a weird bug in Unity that will be worked on during the next few updates.
• Commanding officer sfx (specifically the sound coming from the horse) is quite off. This will be updated in the future with better sounds that fit the model’s animations and movements better.
• The museum map may have weird collision issues on stairs. This will be fixed when better geometry is made (and also when the movement system from the development map gets added to the museum mode).

If you find any additional issues or bugs in the game, please report them in the community discord server.