Things are getting better in terms of proper control over your team:

Before, when you pressed either of the actor switch buttons, brain control changed immediately. Now, when you press and hold either, you get all that stuff you see here overlaid on top of your current and adjacent team members.

When in this mode, you can use the directional keys/pad/stick to change your currently selected AI mode before the actual control switch happens. Only when you let go of the actor switch button you pressed earlier, does the actual switch happen.

This way you can still very quickly cycle through your guys (by tapping the switch buttons) – or conveniently change their AI modes as you go through them, by briefly holding the switch button and hitting a direction corresponding to the new AI mode you want.

Also, all your team members are now sorted by their horizontal position on the map, so it’s more intuitive to switch between them. When you hit the right switch actor button, you’ll get the guy to your right, and vice versa.

We’ll, we’re back to programming after the post-conference fatigue. Here’s the photos from last week. Good times.

Anyway, work is well underway on the next test build which will focus on the different selectable AI modes for both the humanoid and flying actors.

Before switching away from the currently controlled one, you get to choose what behavior it will have when it is on its own. Some example modes are sentry, patrol, brain hunt, and gold dig for the humanoids.

If we can make the interface intuitive enough, it should be fun to play too!

Spending the week in San Fransisco at the GDC, making friends with fellow game developers and and absorbing the wisdom. More photos to follow!