I decided to take on the potentially toughest challenge in the Black Shadow engine sooner rather than later.

Setting up the basic AI and interactions.

Now I have to give Duke3d a lot of credit in showing me an easy way to handle a semi-intelligent AI, and all the functions and formulas needed to do the job done are at hand.

I hope to release a functioing AI demo soon, so far only a few basic things are handled.

(*) AI awareness, becomes alert when it can see the player(currently even if facing away) and within a certain range.

(*) Falling, I had to make them fall off ledges, next I'll need to have them hop up short ledges.

After I leap over my jumping challenge, its on to a little more fine tuning of AI based on monster type.

Bowman for one do not chase the player, but will seek out a clear line of sight to shoot the player. Also they flee when you are near, but should only flee if they can escape.

This leads me to doing a few more enviromental checks, like looking out for walls and checking distances between the floor and ceiling.

One current issue I have is that enenmies are prone to being platforms. Now this happened in Duke3d but it wasn't as much a problem. I'm thinking I"ll have the player slide off of monsters they stand on. Few objects should be able to hold the player, except barrels and pillars.

Monster Stats are expanded now, heres what they are:

1) Attack range(for melee) distance of weapon strike

2) Lo&HI damage range

3) Accuracy, a value vs. the player's ability to dodge/auto-block

4) Dodge, the likeliness enemy will avoid or deflect an attack

5) Attacking speed

6) Recover delay.

I may end up adding more values once I get more of the basics done. It's even possible to create thief type enemies, stealing dropped items and such.