The AI is complete, more or less, barring a few tweaks. I decided to go ahead and try making a new test level to see how the process goes.
Thankfully, it was relatively painless once I set up my photoshop template. About 2-3 hours to create the piece you see here (Mission: steal the nano-brain) Obviously, it's not very polished, but it implements all new objectives, layout, etc. I coded everything to be as simple as possible: drop in the guards & civilians where you want them, cameras, turrets etc. The rest is handled automatically.
I added the objectives system- see attached picture. Also the after-action report which should give you an idea of how missions will be ranked. So, you can choose one of two missions and either fail or complete them, after which you're taken to the post screen. It's a playable game at this point!
Before I begin level creation for real I must be sure I've made all the weapons & items I want. Currently there are 26 guns, but I think I'll make it a full 30.
I've also included a pic of the inventory screen just because I don't think I ever showed it. There are 4 sub-screens to the inventory screen, including also data, bio, and weapon screens.
I'm thinking of putting out a call to get some pixel art for status screen images of weapons & items. I don't think I have the time or interest to do the larger graphics for all 30 guns or the 12+ items. Let me know if you'd be interested...
Exciting stuff! I've been following this game since it was announced, and I have it favourited. The scope of this game is potentially HUGE. One thing I would like to know though... are you planning on a level editor? Because the 'drop and forget' style of character placement would work well with one. Allowing players to code their own objectives could be a bit complex though.
To me, a level editor is one thing that makes a game go from good to awesome, so I would have loved to include one. However, there's a lot of finicky behind-the-scenes stuff that needs to be tweaked per level. The shadow map, AI map, floor material map, and collision maps all have to be done separately in photoshop. It involves a lot of MMF stuff... At best I could try to explain the process as clearly as possible for other MMF hackers.
As the project goes on I keep earmarking "could have been" ideas for a future DataJack 2... Just trying to keep this relatively sane so I actually release it sometime in the future.
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Rick Shaw 
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