The struggle of not Understanding AI

This week, my objective was to craft a turret for my Tower Defense project. Little did I anticipate the labyrinth of challenges that awaited me. What initially seemed like a straightforward task to complete within a span of eight hours turned into a series of sleepless nights. I embarked on the journey with the intention of coding just a few simple lines to grant my Tower the ability to swiftly detect and engage enemies. Yet, as I delved deeper, attempting to imbue it with manual functionalities, I encountered an unexpected hurdle. Upon converting the code into a blueprint and integrating it with the model, my creation failed to perform as intended, resembling nothing more than a stoic golem staring blankly back at me.


    It was only through the guidance of a classmate that I stumbled upon the concept of Behavior Trees, leading to a pivotal realization: my AI lacked the rationale to maneuver or retaliate against adversaries, with its detection mechanisms sorely outdated. And thus, dear readers, I find myself once again immersed in the intricate process of refining my Tower's ability to aim and fire at incoming threats. Yet, amidst these challenges, I find solace in the fact that progress is being made, and momentum is steadily building.

Author: Guilherme D. Silva

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Wonder Of Navigation Meshes

Image
 Hello again! This week I'm here to talk to you about Navigation Meshes.  My story begins with the creation of our worshipers, little minions that are going to be the source of your power (and your tower's power).  I created these little guys so that they'll follow you around - only problem is that at first, they didn't. The first time I spawned my little stone golem minion, I thought I could control it with a simple velocity call.  I was completely wrong!  It needs the MoveToLocation() function AND a navmesh. I learned the hard way because our original navmesh looked kind of like this -  and the worshipers still didn't move.  I had to dive deep into the workings of the navmesh and discovered another use for the NavMesh Modifier Volume.  Up until now, we were using them to limit the navmesh.  I discovered that you can use them to add weight to various sections of a navmesh in order to persuade the AI to take those paths instead!  Our new...
Read more

My boy is ALIVE!!!

Image
 Guilherme Silva After numerous attempts, I finally grasped Behavior Trees. Through trial and error, I managed to make my character attack the enemy; a breakthrough moment indeed. However, amidst this progress, I encountered a crash that not only corrupted my blueprint but also rendered my UE5 project incompatible with the behavior tree. It took the entirety of the next day to transfer my files to my laptop and bring them to campus, where miraculously, they worked without any alterations. After reinstalling my project, everything seemed to fall back into place. Now, with his updated behavior tree I can start making his brothers!
Read more

Piecing Together The AOE Attack

Image
 Greetings! This week I'd like to talk about how I managed to stitch together the player's AOE attack.  I knew that I wanted something that was castable and would show in the world where it would hit.  With these two things in mind, I immediately thought of how I had already created something that required a button to be held down (the heavy attack) and also something that created a "preview" in the world (the building system).  I quickly got to work to see how I could combine the two systems. I wasn't able to re-use any of the buildable code, however I was able to re-use my weapon code in order to cast the spell.  As a child of the class that spawns the magic projectiles, I put this new AOE weapon in the player's other hand.  I only had to override a few functions by making them virtual in order to alter the code enough to do what I wanted.  As for the "projectile" that this new weapon was spawning, that is where I implemented the building code I ha...
Read more