Carrying on from the last update, new features have been added to the school system such as adjustable variables, editable fish navigation pathway, self-aware obstacle/landscape avoidance navigation pathway adjustment, and 4 different fish species.
The variables are mostly the major new improvement from the previous school system. These adjustable values let you adjust schools, each school can be different from the last one without needing to manually input values every time in the code. The new variables include the speed of the fish which can be adjusted at any time of game time. The fish spread is another variable but unlike speed, it isn't adjustable seamlessly during game time, you will need to refresh the whole school system for this to take effect. I have also added 4 new fish species to the school system and plan to add more. Each fish in the school has different swimming animation speed given it the feeling that each fish is moving differently.
The self-aware obstacle/landscape avoidance navigation pathway adjustment is currently the best avoidance system I have come up with. The fish avoiding incoming objects/landscape has been majorly improved compared to the previous different attempts at object avoidance.
This brings me onto the next topic; editable fish spline navigation pathway which can be edited during game time seamlessly. You can create very different spline pathways for the fish to follow, very quickly.
Below is the video which shows all of the new changes.
During the week I have also been researching on fish systems and came across the Boids Algorithm and it looks like it could be the next step for my Fish AI system. Also, during my time researching, I saw a GDC talk on YouTube which was presented by Matt Nava of Giant Squid Studios' who worked on Abzu which is an underwater game with fish AI, I will be taking inspirations and knowledge gained from the insightful talk by Matt Nav and the amazing game Abzu.
Next step is giving each fish in the school a slightly different behavior; such as moving closer towards or further from the school, the speed of the individual fish compared to the rest of the school and many more. I also plan to add adjustable fish variables such as fish size, fish colouration etc.
VIDEO
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