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Trying to make fake people feel like real people
Super Nova Stadium’s unique gimmick of ricochet blasts will be a challenge for the player, but the aim of the AI is to help enhance the game feel in single player mode. Successful implementation will not only allow the players to practice, but also to encourage them to pick up the game even if other players aren’t in a lobby. Because our core mechanic requires the player to ricochet their lasers, players will most likely need access to a good practice range to get the hang of this atypical FPS; having responsive AI can facilitate this. Early in development, the AI simply stood still and with a health bar above their head. Now nearing our ship date, the AI moves around, requiring more thought into where the player is going to place their shots.
Players have a shield around them that gets shown when they get hit, causing them to lose if they get hit too much and overheat. The same should happen to the target dummies. I much prefer finding ways to have a diegetic HUD if possible so I would like to implement a color changing shield to the target dummies like shown below.
Having the color change will accommodate new and old players because seasoned gamers will have some understanding that red means low health, and new players should understand the concept quickly after the dummy dies after being red.
The AI will also need to move around, which will give the player better practice because it is much harder hitting a moving target, and most enemy players will be moving around while fighting. To achieve this we are implementing a navmesh into the game. To make each AI find the best route to a specific location. We can control if the AI is too big to fit somewhere and if they can’t climb certain surfaces or steep inclines.
Before we just had some movement scripts on the target dummies to move left x seconds and right x seconds to add movement but now we can have them move up and down hills, move in a squiggly line, move in front of and behind cover. To accomplish it, the code just has the dummy move to an invisible empty object at a specific destination, then when it reaches it, the dummy will return to where it was. If we want the dummy to move in a more complicated way, then we can add more empty objects to its pathing.
Giving the player a moving target like so will make players have to practice leading shots as well as thinking how to ricochet with walls provided. With the target going behind the wall as well, hopefully the player will figure out they can still hit an enemy even when they can’t see them.
Even after polishing these elements there’s more that can be added like flying target dummies or maybe even ones that shoot back. A reactive shield and complex movement should be enough to build a robust tutorial with a variety of environments for the player to practice with so getting those perfect is the most important aspect at the moment to improving the single player aspect. Since the game is mostly a multiplayer game, though, it's good to have a robust network system in place to make sure that players can actually go against each other.