AI Fun

Alright, so i've been in one of those slumps where you want to start over, try using some off the shelf asset store "fps" kits to race to the finish line.  Anyhow, tried a few of them and quickly came to the realization that, to be honest, my TPC framework is a LOT further along than I gave myself credit for ... in fact, more polished than some of the libraries (much less than others).  In the end, after whipping together a quick FPS demo, it became obvious to me that many of the "core" issues i'm running into with my own framework are not really resolved in any meaningful way by others.

One of the primary issues i'm facing is using a rigidbody character controller, instead of the CharacterController.  But as it turns out, using the built in CC has a host of issues in an of itself, which really brought me full circle.  Simply put, i'd rather deal with "sliding" on slope issues and having to fine tune grounding checks than some of the scene interaction issues that come with CC and how it reports collision events, etc.. (i.e. you attach everything to the CC or use a kinematic rigidbody as well which again, has its own issues yet).

So, time to take a step back from the TPC and make some more progress.

Couple game design aspects became apparent:

1. Weapons will allow for customization.  In fact, i'm going to narrow down the weapon types as planned initially (pistol, melee 1hd/2hd, shotgun, rifle and smg).  But one idea that appeals to me is that you can "level up" a weapon.  This will be implemented with kill xp on the weapon, which opens up upgrade slots.  Now one thought is to make this a crafting element ... but tbh, i'm not entirely sold on heavy crafting in the game right now - maybe down the road for a second iteration on the game.  So i'm thinking a skill tree of sorts.  Here's what is cool, this skill tree, will be more like a "wheel" ala TSW MMORPG.  So you can do cool things like, upgrade your pistol to a "shotgun" style ammo for a spread effect.  Maybe upgrade the trigger/firing mechanism to allow for full auto.  I'm thinking there will be a few main categories for upgrades: firing mechanism, barrel, sights, ammo type, secondary attack and effect.  The last will allow for DoT's, debuffs, etc... so Incindiary effect would perhaps apply a DoT on the enemy.

2. Player skill tree will interact with weapons.  So if you want, perhaps you'll setup a pistol with incindiary rounds, then skill up your DoTs so that now you're approach is to "tag" creatures and let em' burn!  Maybe you have a shotgun that debuffs their movement, allowing you to jump in and splash then back out of harms way, but with some survival skills to buff your movement and to enhance the slow effect, now the effect paralyzes small groups of enemies.

So, I'm going to focus now on building out a basic game to handle head, body and limb shots and some basic (playable) AI.  Ideally, I'd like to get it so you can give a beastie a limp or use a head shot to stun it.  Atm, head shots do 1.5x dmg, body shots 1x and limb shots 0.75x dmg.

Here's a picture of TheMan and TheBeastie together:

I'm not sure at this point if i want to go TOO crazy on limb shots.  I mean, one thing I could do is allow for blowing off limbs and they keep crawling towards you.  Maybe.  My first approach is a bit more simple : for stun shot pause their movement and play an "ow mah head!" animation or for limp adjust navmesh agent speed to 0.5x and use a different walk animation.  We'll see how that turns out.

Anyhow, most recent demo is up, excuse my budget blood effect :):

http://logicwell.com/nightfall/tpc.html