Task Prioritization

October 2018

While last month we said that we were going to start work on the combat system, we quickly realized that there were some other tasks that we needed to change around first. A large part of this was the fact that we had no way of telling citizens which types of tasks were more important than others. Instead, citizens worked on tasks in the order they received them, which was by no means efficient. Additionally, we didn’t want to just have a static order for how tasks would be accomplished, we wanted to adapt a system similar to that in RimWorld, where you could tell each individual citizen which tasks are more important to work on than others.

From there, we also caught many other issues within the task system, including a bug that would freeze citizens in an infinite loop if the task they were working on, couldn’t be completed. So with some shuffling of code and a few reworks, citizens now check to ensure a task can be completed, before taking it on. This will also help with citizens getting tasks done faster, as they won’t have to walk to a location, just to realize they don’t have the required elements to finish that task.

Finally this month, we worked on our crafting system! While this was the system we were working on when we discovered the freezing citizen bug, the whole thing was actually a lot of fun to make! The crafting system consists of a queue of items to craft, that allow citizens to work on when they have the required materials. Citizens will skip items in the queue if they don’t have the resources and can be set to prioritize crafting items.

Next month will probably consist of some polishing to our building system, and a rough implementation of our combat system. We are really pushing to have some kind of release next month, just so we can get input back on features we have implemented thus far. Till next month, we’ll be banging away at our keyboards.

• Download: Pre Alpha Release Coming Soon
• Projects Worked On: Exhiled