Greetings, lovelies! Another Friday, another development blog!

And let me tell you, since last Friday I’ve been doing a lot of progress. Last week, I showed you all how my AI could travel from point A to B by calculating the fastest route and travel there, in the air.

Now, I have expanded on that behavior tree. As you all may remember from last week, the AI is also designed to chase the player. And since this game is all about being up in the air, dangling over life and death with only your jet-pack as security… The AI is bound to follow the player out to the open and fall down to its death more often than not.

Even though it’s hilarious watching my own creation fall to its own demise, it will not be the most intriguing gameplay experience. So with that, let me introduce you all to my solution. The “Emergency Landing Task”. Enjoy:

“What did I just witness?” You may ask yourself. Well, let me explain.

As you noticed, the AI decided, after it’s “ground roaming state”, to travel to the big green node. But halfway there, it just turned around and went completely off track, only to fall to the ground behind the pillar. Why?

You see, as of now, the AI´s ability to fly is set on a timer, which means that it switches “Movement modes”. After X seconds it can fly, and after x seconds it cannot. Here’s a blueprint that shows its structure.

(Do not worry, what you see on this picture is just a showcase that explains how the AI can switch its movement modes. This is just a simple placeholder so that I can design a much better system for it later on.)

So when the AI´s ability to fly starts to diminish, it tells the behavior tree, as seen below:

To start the “Emergency Landing” task. Which makes the AI to change which nodes it shall follow. These “Emergency landing nodes” are placed over platforms so that the AI can fall down to safe grounds instead of certain death.

Of course, the AI can still shoot and try to kill the player, but during the “Emergency Landing”, it priorities to get to safe grounds before its “jet-pack” de-activates.

But that’s not everything. We all can agree that my AI´s guise was rather… Lack lusting.
So I decided to give it a makeover.

From now on, it shares the same mesh and animations as the players’ character.

This particular AI is designed to act as other players, like playing against the AI in unreal tournament.

So maybe in the not so distant future, if father time allows, I can design a completely different looking enemy. But for now, this will have to do.

And now on a different subject. The holidays are upon us all, and thus by tradition, I shall also partake in said festivities. Which means that I will not return back to work until, at the earliest, 3rd of January. But after that, the schedule will not change… Knock on wood.

So, until then: Happy holidays and take care.