We are adding another area to cavecity2 ( the last area of the shareware levels ), and in it is a winding ramp. Going down this ramp caused the camera to jump around in an unusual way that didn't happen anywhere else in the game.
Turned out it was the code added a few weeks ago to make sure the player wasn't obscured by something. In this case, the code just snaps the camera to a safe place near the player. It was getting triggered b/c going down the ramp, you tended to get your arms sort of through the wall while your physics capsule was in the right place. This caused enough of the raycasts to fail, triggering the safe area re-set.
Just outside the ramp were some black triangles only meant to obscure the mini-map, but that material was set to physically impede the camera, which was causing more issues. Fixing the material and also making the raycasts more bunched towards the capsule rather than the character's visual bounds fixed the issue.
The new AI code is working great - the Patrol state, which previously would get put off track rather easily, is working, and we added some debugging to give context when it fails.
I added a character speed adjustment to make the walk & run cycles more realistic. Now one of two sine waves are mixed into the movement speed of each character, making for a better looking and more rhythmic movement.
Then, I added a bit of camera up/down bob to match for the player, which is subtle but feels better.
