Coding - Overview - John Howard

Initial 

My role within the group has now been changed to become a coder rather than a concept artist. And although I would prefer to have stayed as a pure concept artist the call has been made by the lead. I've been assigned one major area to code. That of the Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Overview

In regards to the AI I have been writing up and developing some initial ideas. The first stage of which was to decide the different types of AI. This means working initial combat setups and the required behavior.

• Golem
• Close combat
• High Health
• Searches 
• Archer
• Ranged
• Seeks cover
• Weak
• Skulker
• Close combat
• Low Health
• Flocks

Each of these will have a unique feel and function to them. And as such will have varying degrees of complexity to them. Now I haven't actually developed AI before and thus this project will be a new challenge for me. And due to this being an initial try and the fact that the group wanted it more I shall be focusing on getting the golem AI done first and then moving on to others if time permits.

Plan

The golem AI has a few major parts to it, listed below, and as such a plan of action must be made. Working out how to approach the code and which area to start with first. After a while of consideration, with many sketched flow charts, I have come to the following list of needed elements.

1. Patrol
2. Sight
3. Search
4. Combat
5. Animator

However i'm sure as time develops this list of 5 elements will become much larger as I'm forced to revamp different areas or add extra elements. Yet these core elements are the most needed for now. I look forward to this challenge.

Research

Moving into this topic I have had to research a lot of different sections. Firstly the general feel of the AI should work like that within Guild Wars 1(GW1). The enemy will react to an input, sight for mine proximity for GW1, and then proceed to chase the player until a condition is met. I believe a sight system for this would work better than the chase till distance reached that resides in GW1. This is because our level will be quite small and adding a distance chase would feel awkward. However being able to lose the enemy by dodging out of sight will allow us to keep a smaller level as well as adding the additional gameplay of sneaking around the sight radius. The unity forums and reddit will be a great asset for helping developing this as well as the unity Stealth tutorial from which i'll establish the first setup and code snippets.