Suppose you have animal AI that is following rules like this:
Based on a timer, move from one location to another.
At all times, there will be perception checks for player pawn, and at random intervals the perception may increase/decrease (i.e. animal stops, raises head, then perception radius is increased).
We might also have several states, which may be transitioned to from player detection, and/or timers:
Flee
Alerted
Normal
For simple AI like this, is it worth the trouble to dive into the blackboard system? It seems like I can do it all just with some enumerators. Then again, that may not be as easy to visualize compared to if I used a tool like Logic Driver Pro.
Then again, I don’t know if a system like this warrants a 200+ dollar purchase either.
Just curious what your thoughts might be on something like this - how might you approach it to make a system that is easy to interact with, debug, but doesn’t require a month to setup either.
Some additional info may be pertinent:
Multiple animal types? Yes, but only parameters change - no distinct behaviors per type.
Hi there, I would use a blackboard/behavior tree. Actually, there is a tutorial from Epic Games with a sample project for download that seems to be exactly the way you outlined. You can find it in UE’s YouTube channel. I’ll see if I can find the link and share it here. If I am not wrong, the title is ‘state of mind: AI’ or something similar.