eRATicate

Project 7

Project Overview

Genre: Third Person Adventure
Platform: PC
Engine: Group made Engine

My Contributions

Behavior Trees

Making behavior trees for the first time and working with them on my enemies was what I spent most of my time on during this project. Previously I had mostly used state machines so it was interesting to build and try something new.

I found the strengths of behavior trees fun to work with like the ability to quickly change the structure of a behavior tree and thereby creating new types of behavior. Also, it is easy to add behaviors that are activated when other behaviors are cancelled.

In conclusion I found the structures fun to work with, I learned a lot about how to use behavior trees and what strengths & weaknesses this method has.

Swarmer Enemy

A enemy that attacks if close enough, patrolls, and moves around in crowds. This enemy was added to have a one shot enemy with easy behaviors.

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Zoomer Enemy

The Zoomer is a enemy that can charge, patroll and do normal melee attack if the range is close enough.
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Both Enemies

Alert and Patrolling behavior both enemies posses

Patrolling behavior

The enemies went back and forth from being idlee and walking to a random postion in its patrolling radius. This was done by finding a random close point on the navmesh, walking their and then being idlee until the player was spoted.

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Alert Condition

When the player is close enough or it has been shot by the player the Alert condition will activate. This means it will go from patrolling to an attack mode. This makes the enemies feel more alive and intelligent, as well as making the gameplay more diverse.
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Conclusion

I spent my time:
• Designing behavior trees and remodeling them acording to the changes weneeded
• Working with PhysX and navmesh navigation to get the behaviors correct
• On gameplay deisgn, play testing and polishing for the enemies purposes