This is amazing work, so much possibilities, I am so looking forward to this !
A few questions and ideas popped into my mind as I was watching your devlogs:
Would it be possible to make a predator disengage if it got too far from it’s “home”, as to not have a free roaming prey lead him all across the map, like it’s giving up the chase ?
About fishes, you stated that they were quite expensive, and therefore added the option to disable them, for example if the player isn’t in the water, but they totally stop in place.
Can it be that they would, like my previous question, remember their “home” and basically return to it if they are disabled ?
Getting from the position at which they were when disabled to home should be a lot less expensive while still giving some “life” to the fish.
But there is still the issue of collisions if it is an A (position at disable) to B (home) path, while the fishing might have avoided obstacles on it’s way to A, going back to B while having no “intelligence” might cause it to go in a straight line, bumping into or clipping through everything in it’s path.
So why not have the fish “drop” waypoints at regular interval, and basically have the return trip for free, with minimum collision issue from it’s environment ?
A waypoint system could also be used by the player to set patrols for companions and expand the “Go there” command by having multiple points and looping them. Which would also tie in into your companion’s behavior, by a way of the player setting whether it’s in passive, defensive or aggressive mode similar to warlock/hunter pets in World of Warcraft, you could have your companion patrol a perimeter and kill everything in sight, have it only fight if engaged by attackers or just do laps.
Anyways, I’m exited to see what’s new in devlog 6, the teaser was great
Predators Disengaging - This is a good idea. I currently have the predator automatically disengage if it doesn’t get to melee range of its prey after certain amount of time (you can specify in seconds). This already prevents the predator chasing all across the map. However, you can still exploit it by having the AI get into melee range and then running away again over and over. I like your idea because it adds a max distance from “home” and it cant be exploited as easily :). I’ll add it to the feature list! This reminds me of the old Vanilla WoW videos of Frost Mages kiting mobs all across the map lol.
Fishes - This is an interesting idea, though it would still “cost something” to move the fish back (though not as much). I’ll think about it and see if there is a cheap way of doing this
Btw, your idea of the Way Point system is very interesting for companions and would add some interesting possibilities (like setting a patrol path for example). This would be really cool, but I have to think about how I would do this (like how the Player would drop these waypoints with the mouse or gamepad and then they are assigned to the companion). Its probably something I can add at a later update since it requires a lot or work .
Thanks and let me know if you think of something else to improve the kit!
Implemented as an Actor Component to keep things modular
Customize the frequency and search radius of animals looking for potential mates
Easily specify the name and skeletal mesh for the males and females
Includes ability to add the Natural Death component to the offpsring - this component acts as a “Time to Live” for the animals and kills them after the timer expires
I’ve been moving the current code to different components and recently finished the Need System component. I’ll be working on a Custom Need component like you suggested. Can you give me a few examples of what custom needs you may need?
I have an idea of a generic component where you choose a location / actor and the animal will go there after the time expires (basically a generic Hunger / Thirst need but you get to specify the actor in the world). But, before I get working on this I wanted to get your opinion to see if Im missing something.
