Added a quick text banner on level load, to give the player a hint or reminder of the scenario type. While right now the scenario type is "random collection of enemies scattered across a randomized terrain", eventually I'll have different scenarios such as "boss fight", "base assault", "base defense", "dungeon crawl", etc... This, I hope, will help to provide variety in the kinds of gameplay a player can take on.

A couple days ago, I implemented a DoTs and HoTs system. Damage-over-time, heal-over-time. Spells and effects can apply dots or hots (either timed or permanent) which deal or heal a set amount of damage of a set of specified type(s). The way the system works is that whenever a unit is acting (moving, casting, attacking), the amount of "real" turn time (ie, actual action points used, not modified amounts used due to speed modifiers) is accumulated and used to apply damage or healing whenever time accumulates to one round or longer. So, as the unit is walking along, periodically there will be damage applied or healing done.

Now, the DoT/HoT system is working pretty well. However, in the process I uncovered another bug in the AI. When I first went to test the system with a test DoT, I noticed that certain units would stop acting correctly after a DoT would hit them. These units would work correctly before the DoT, but once the first damage was applied they would stop moving or acting in any way. Confused, I dug into the code. Turns out, in the Aggro component (which tracks damage sources and is used to figure out who the unit hates the most) I wasn't filtering incoming damage sources based on origin. It wasn't a big deal before, when all damage applied to a unit was external; however, the DoT damage is tagged as being applied by the unit itself. This resulted in the mobs damaging themselves, getting pissed at themselves, and trying to kill themselves using skills and attacks that can't be used on themselves. It was a simple fix, but demonstrative, I think, of the kind of weird shit you have to tackle when doing AI.

Tonight, I rewrote and cleaned up the heuristic function for enemy pathfinding as well. It runs faster, making pathfinding more snappy. I also started tweaking AIs to better handle incidental enemy units encountered while pathing, for example to bust through a barrier or wall owned by Crusoe. The additions and changes make them much more effective at busting through any fortifications GC puts up. I still need to do more work on this, though, as there are still a few oddities. Still, it is nice that GC can no longer sit untouchable by melee units behind a ring of walls.