Posted October 20, 2018 by Zenith Productions
It's been more than two months since our last public update, but we're pretty excited about what we've done. In previous versions, creating the AI for your bot was tedious and difficult. With this update, we've completely overhauled how the AI Editor works. States are now split into three distinct sets of actions; Movement, Weapons, and Utility.
The Movement actions are pretty simple to understand. You select a targeting type to determine what the bot will move towards, and you select a movement type to determine what behaviour the bot exhibits to reach that point. There are nine different movement types that you can choose from; Exploration, Encircle, Mirror, Patrol, Drive-By, Ram, Chase, Flee, and Stationary. Exploration ignores the target and explores in semi-random patterns. Encircle will cause the bot to move in a circular motion around the target. Mirror will cause the bot to move to a position directly beside the target, resulting in the bot mimicking the pattern of the target. When Patrolling, a bot will navigate back and forth between two points. A Drive-By causes the bot to drive past the target, then swing back around to do it again. Ramming is fairly straightforward; the bot will attempt to ram the target. While Chasing, the bot will move to the target's last known position. Flee causes the bot to run away from the target. Stationary makes the bot not move at all.
The Weapons actions are also pretty simple. You can select targeting types for each weapon, or a single targeting type for them all. Each weapon will then attack that target.
Utility actions are basically everything else. The bot pieces you build your bot with can have unique functionality. When they do, you can use the Utility Action menu to activate that functionality. This part of the AI Editor works similarly to older versions of the AI Editor.
In addition to the three action types, transitions have also been split into categories; Generic and Piece Specific. The Generic conditions are conditions that can be used by any bot, no matter how it was built. The Piece Specific conditions are dependent on what pieces you used to build the bot.
As a heads up, previously created state machines are incompatible with the updated AI Editor, so be sure to delete the older files.
In other news, we've rewritten some of our Pathfinding and Weapon systems, and while preliminary tests have gone well, there may be a few kinks to work out. If you have any issues or find any weirdness, email SiegeBots@gmail.com with details, or tell us personally on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/67XB8Vf
We've also added the TestArena level to the selection of simulation areas. We use this area to test different bots, as well as the pathfinding and weapon systems.
Our team has also gone through some changes since our last update. Many of us were/are full time students and work full time jobs. As a result, we've lost some members of the team, and picked up a few others.
We’re also making an attempt to be more open about our plans for development, so I’ll use this opportunity to give you an idea of what we’re working on right now and what our long term plans are.
Short term, we’ve got some pretty big goals for our bot parts. We don’t want to add too many more at the moment, primarily so we can focus on polishing the ones we have, but we have a few in mind to add soon.
We also plan to add a lot of visual and audio flare. We have a lot of cool stuff going on, but most of it’s ‘invisible’. Some nice explosions and impacts should liven things up a bit. Environmental effects are also on the horizon.
One of our mid-term goals is to make the combat more cinematic. Unlike most games, the player doesn’t get to interact as much with the bots after they’re set to go. We’ve got a few ideas in mind, but some interesting camera work will be involved.
Our long-term goals are many. The problem with long term goals is that by the time you reach a point to start implementation, the goal may have changed. So, a few of our long-term goals, as currently planned, include a Conquest Mode, interesting challenges for Challenge Mode, and different game modes.