This weeks task was all about the game’s Ai (‘Charge Burners’ and the ‘Burner emitter’)
A Charge Burner
A small enemy object that wanders the playable area of a level. Its purpose is to collide with players resulting in a 'hit'.
Burner Emitter
A large object that patrols the outer edge of the playable level. Its purpose is to spawn CB's and seek out players to apply CB focus to. The emitter is fitted with a spot light that sweeps a small section of the playable game level that it is currently paroling near. Should a player enter the beam of this light then they will be the focus of every CB in the game for a short amount of time.
- The CB’s now patrol all three charge zones.The zone that is patrolled is determined by a percentage chance : high zone 50%, mid zone: 40%, low zone 10%.Each zone position definition has a fixed centre point along Y but a random point along X, which will help spread out the CB’s.In case the CB’s happen to bunch up in one area (due to a lot of random values being similar), the CB’s will each randomly switch which zone they patrol every x amount of seconds.
- The focus state has been implemented for both modes but has had its requirements changed. The player in the lead will now be the target of ‘focus’ when they have at least 50 charge points. If no player has 50 or more points, then the CB’s will patrol as normal.
- The emitter & searchlight weren’t added as described. When I added an emitter that patrolled the perimeter of the map, it really became overcrowded and I felt that adding another Ai element would probably confuse gameplay rather than make it better.However, since I had already made the code for the emitter to travel around the level, I used its position to spawn CB’s but kept the emitter as an invisible object. CB’s now fade in when they spawn.
