Much of the creature movement has been re-written so they now will walk directly toward their target, when on level ground, instead of following the path-finding algorithm's plan, as created. This creates a much more natural feel.

That was slow-going since it is some of the most complicated/ugly code in the system (as I have gone back-and-forth on much of the creature AI's design, a few times), it is very uninteresting work, but also the weather has been shifting so I have been trying to spend more time outside. At least it is done and any further changes it requires will be guided by next steps.

The "next steps" is the complicated part as I am still not sure what I want this "villager" concept to be. Ideally, they would be fairly complicated, being able to work together to build, harvest, craft, etc, but that is a great deal of work and it isn't obvious where to start or how far to go. This also raises the question of whether they should use the same crafting recipes as the player, since doing so kind of reduces their utility to the player. There is also the question of how they should interact with other creatures.

At one point, I was wondering if they should be villagers, at all, or just special "world spirits" which exist in certain places and have magical crafting recipes related to their area/element. However, this quickly just turned into "magical crafting mechanic" without adding anything too interesting with the creature logic (like village coordination, which I think is interesting) so I think this is not a useful direction.

I have some ideas for how I want to coordinate things with them (probably need to create a new "locked global data by location" for them to register and coordinate as a "village" but points of interest or plans that they have will probably just be a new kind of invisible passive. How much of this would need to be persisted is also a question (probably not the village registry but maybe those other passives). Still, there is a question of what they should actually _do_.

At the most ambitious, I would want them to fully play a good chunk of the game, themselves: Sustainable access to wood and food, mining, crafting, building shelters, and reproducing. This is probably too much (at least for a first cut) but at least some of these mechanics are worth considering. Hmm, maybe mining is the only thing that they can't do, hence why they need to trade with the player? Then again, maybe they don't "mine" (since such a planned activity is not feasible), maybe they could "quarry" and would therefore only have natural access to wood and stone materials and tools.

These are, unfortunately, some pretty fundamental questions so it is hard to get much of a start before I figure out the "what do they do?", "how do they do it?", and "is this fun and useful for the player?".

Anyway, these are just some ideas off the top of my head to give a rough shape to what I am trying to figure out. Lots of work to be done,
Jeff.