AI development update!

Synopsis of this blog

I have fixed an annoying issue with my AI.  The AI was working but I was constantly getting massive issues in regards to log errors saying a perform check was not checking.  After 2 days of trying various things, it turned out I was making too many arguments for it to check and deleting it provided no issues for errors.

Blackboard (AI)

So overall beginning is that I had developed a good working AI that walked around and then ran after the player when the player was seen.  I had to delete the previous AI as it wasn't working right with the decision tree branches basically breaking and not making the right decisions.  I essentially made the branches way to complicated and in the end it was breaking which wasted about 5 days.

I then thought of a breakdown idea, get the basic ideas working and then develop onto the AI with more information. I then decided to do that and developed the AI that I currently have with i will back up as it is effectively working.

It works of the decision so far on "Can i see the enemy (Player)?" to the branches of yes and no.  With context with this style of behaviour tree when running via simulation, it comes up with red bars to say, it's not compiling but due to the way I developed the AI decorators, I made it so the enemy target was nulled until I saw an enemy (Player) then the object variable would become filled with the necessary data for the hunt to happen.  I was having issues in the "In attack range" decorator where I was providing way too many arguments for it to decide if i was close enough to attack or not.  

Initially, I thought it was in the way the information was being presented for the BT to decide but overall, it actually was because of a boolean that conflicted itself and in the process of this, it was working but making constant error logs as well.  This has now been fixed. 

Next Step with AI is now to breakdown and make the AI, more predator using states.

I want to give it more of a 4 stage decision working with a value as provided in the image below.

Search / hunt when no player, if it can hear/see/smell (this one is in the AI part of unreal but I have read that it has massive issues) then it'll become either suspicious or search depending on how sure it thinks it is and if it's correct or see's player... It kills.

This is my next step.

 

Player Tablet

Whilst frustrated with the AI, I have been playing around with 2D capture cameras in a variety of contexts looking at both how it works on a HUD and in game objects. I have figured out how it works separately if it is on an in engine box and mesh to a created mesh made by me.  I have also looked at how this can be used to make skyboxes as well as how it can be used to render real time.

The next thing is too look at how this is working with relation to trigger boxes and how to make it work with visibility.  If it can work effectively than working on the idea of how the player tablet can show the enemy will be work well... Once I develop the AI more.