Hey guys, I’ve google around and haven’t found an answer or any leads to this. Is it possible to have a large cube AI character that’s made of multiple small cube AI characters? I’m looking into doing this as a boss that can break apart after so much damage is taken, then regroup into the large cube formation after a delay, with different AI behavior from the smaller cubes. Thanks for any help you can offer!
Yeah, absolutely you could. I’ve just been building a squad based system where the player-controller is “in charge” of four AI controllers. The player controller receives the input from mouse and keyboard events and then based on its own internal logic calls the appropriate events or functions on one or more of the AI controllers. It’s like having an officer giving orders to the individual soldiers.
You’d want to do something similar where there is a single AI that controls the behaviour of the boss (regardless of which form it’s in), and then have it send orders to the individual cubes in order for them to do whatever they need to do as part of their functioning. The great thing here is because each individual cube AI has all the AI functionality of its own, the “officer” can just give it a very general order. It might just tell it to move to a spot or attack a particular enemy, the individual cube can then calculate how best to achieve that goal based on its own behaviour tree or programming.
Edit: Here’s some things to help show how this can work. I’ve got a test video of the very basic navigation system, showing how they can be ordered to move collectively or individually. I’ll also put some screenshots of the blueprints that are driving this functionality.
Ok, I think I understand. So I would need to use a behavior tree to have AI controllers for when they’re all combined and for when they’re separated. If I wanted them have have independent HP, and a shared boss HP for when they’re all combined, what would be a good way to go about that? For example having a large cube thats made of 2x2x2 smaller cubes, should I add all 8 of them to the level, and use a blueprint to contain them all?