Archives March 2021

In the previous post I wrote regarding SolOTility I mentioned that I expected to be able to release a beta-ish-version of this program within a week’s time. Needless to say I misjudged the time estimate, alot of time this week has been spent working on Demox, and on top of that I found some bugs in SolOTility that needed to be fixed before releasing the first version aswell as some new features that were added!

Last but not least, another widget was added called “Message Board”. The message board will display the most recent messages or comments that have been left in an item, the idea is to have these messages act as a reminder.

All that remains before I upload a beta release now is to figure out how to create a setup / installer file. I’ve created such files before but all of them have been sort of broken in one way or the other, so this time I was thinking that I probably should do some research and get things right for once .__.’

And before we part ways, don’t forget to follow me on @Twitter for more news, artwork and whatnot!

Note!

This article is part of the, now deprecated, Demox development log. Demox was cancelled and is no longer in active development so this article can be somewhat out of context- however, I felt some information here could still be of use to someone, therefore it’ll remain for anyone to read.

.Factions

So to start things off, let’s go through my primary goals for the AI in Demox.

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.DPM

A check will also be done for the AI’s party members, to determine how many are wounded, escaped combat, have been killed and how scattered the party members are on the battlefield. These are the primary things that are impacting the decision, furthermore, each decision behaviour have tailor-made awareness checks.

To describe what these “decision behaviours” are, they are basicly instructions for the AI how to determine if the behaviour should be used, aswell as how it is to be executed by the AI. The instructions include simple things like escaping combat, changing target, changing position during combat aswell as more complicated tasks such as triggering traps and alarms, or aiding party members.

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.DPBS

When improving the AI awareness there were, as with everything else, some issues to solve, first and foremost- how would I make the AI select the most appropriate action? This morphed my old DPM system into what I now call DPBS, or Decision Point Behaviour System. And yes, again, why not just call it “Intelligence“? … I’m a hopeless case…
When the AI is calculating a decision, all decision behaviours are iterated and compared with each others. They are individually scored depending on the current situation and the best scored behaviour will be selected at the end of the process.

Below is an example from one of the implemented decision behaviours, multiple aspects of the current situation are checked and affects the score of the decision before said score is sent back to the member calculating the AI’s decision.

///<summary>
/// Gets the current score of this decision
///</summary>
///<returns>The score.</returns>
///<param name="agent">Agent Reference.</param>
public override int GetScore( CombatAgent agent ){
    int score = 0;

    if( agent.main.CurHealth > ( agent.main.stats.health * .5f ) || Time.time - agent.alarmAgent.LastEscape < agent.alarmAgent.minEscapeDelay ){
        return ImpossibleScore;   //If the AI is comfortable with it's current health value, or we recently escaped, return a score that prohibits the AI from chosing this decision
    }

    if( !agent.main.canAttack ){
        score += 5;    //If AI is unable to engage in combat, increase score
    }

    if( agent.main.CurHealth < ( agent.main.stats.health * .5f )){
        score++;    //If AI health is less than half of max health value, increase score

        if( agent.main.party != null ){
            for( int i = 0; i < agent.main.party.Length; i++ ){
                if( agent.main.party[i].IsDead ){
                    //For each member of the AI's party who has died, either increase score, or decrease it. (Enemies should be able to be enraged by their friends dying)
                    score += Random.Range( -1, 1 );
                }
            }
        }
    }

    if( agent.main.targetDistance < agent.safeDistance.Sqr() ){
        if( agent.main.CurHealth < ( agent.main.stats.health * .35f )){
            score += Random.Range( 0, 1 );    //If at unsafe distance from target, increase score
        }

        if( agent.main.CurHealth < ( agent.main.stats.health * .2f )){
            score += Random.Range( 0, 2 );    //If health value is critically low, increase score
        }
    }

    if( Time.time - agent.main.LastDmgReceived <= agent.DpmThreshold && agent.main.CurHealth < .4f){
        score += Random.Range( 0, 1 );   //If at relatively low health and recently received damage, increase score
    }

    return score;    //Return calculated score.
}

This improved handling of AI awareness also helped me improve the AI attack system, which has been created in a very similar fashion. To give an example, in LBKR enemies would always attack the player with the most powerful attack that was not in cooldown, they would take no regard to the distance to the player and only checked their maximum attack range to determine if they could not possibly hit the player.

This created a weird behaviour though where AI’s with ranged attacks would fire at the player from point-blank range alot. With DPBS I’ve implemented a ‘Reposition‘-behaviour that will determine if the AI is at the most appropriate distance from the player, taking in considering a whole lot of properties ranging from current situation as described above, aswell as presets of what ranges the AI is most and least comfortable with aswell as check if they have a clear line of sight to their target. Hence, the AI will adapt their position continuously.

This alone didn’t solve the point-blank ranged attack issue described though, since the AI only make use of the Decision Behaviours at certain intervals. But as I structured the attack system similar I, among other things, added attack range limits and preferences for each AI attack to prevent them from beeing used in certain situations. Also all AI with ranged attacks have a minimum of one melee-attack to allow the AI to attack in close quarters if repositioning is not possible.

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.Party interaction

Take the “Escape” behaviour for example, if the AI for some reason become scared and decides to break contact his action can be either to run away and try to hide, or if the AI know about nearby party members who are not in combat, the character will escape to those party members and rally them, then returns to the battle with his fetched friends.

The combat role assigned to the AI also determine how much it will interact with it’s party, the roles I’ve currently implemented are classed as “Assault“, “Ranger“, “Support” and “Berserk“. Assault characters will most commonly only use the party to find AI to help them when they’re in trouble, ranger’s will be more bold when Assaulters are nearby. Support are generally the most party-fixated characters, they will keep a close eye on it’s party members to know if they require their attention, eg. resurrection or healing of a party member, or summoning new minions. Berserkers pay least attention to it’s party, they are focused entirely on destroying their enemy.

Spent ridicilous amount of time, mashing code like a madman, for my new program SolOTility this weekend. I did make some good progress though! I’ve begun some more intense testing of the program today and I think that I’ll have a functional build released next weekend. I’m going to resume work on Demox this week aswell though, and I still got my day-time job so I’ll make no promises! 😉

I’ve had a break from working on my primary project “Demox” the last two weeks in order to work on a side-project that I call “SolOTility” (or Solution Organizer Utility).

I’ve wanted to try create a non-game application for quite some time but haven’t really made the effort to actually start, or decide what the program’s purpose should be either for that matter, until now, that is!

So what can SolOTility do and what are my goals with the project?

It’s basicly a program to maintain order for my personal projects and my (and anyone who find interest in it aswell, for that matter.) game design documents along with concepts, ideas, issues and tasks. My goal is to make it easy to use and with a fast workflow. There already exist a whole lot of great programs and web applications that serve the same and/or similar purpose though, so to double back, my main purpose with this program is to code something else than a game- in case anyone would find use for my application aswell that’s a bonus!

Solution Catalog Tree
The project/solutions are structured with tree-node lists, the user has full control of catalog management.

Work Item Editor
A text editor for managing and creating work items. The user can add tags to the text to format or colorize encapsulated parts of the text with customizable controls. The editor also include a dialog to link related work items for quick access from within the editor dialog.

Work Item List
The list that display all items placed within the selected catalog. Work items are color-coded depending on the type of item and the item icons also display what state/progress the work item is in. (eg. Inactive, Prioritized, Completed etc.) The user can also filter items by item type(s) and item state(s)

Work Items
So what are these work items actually? There are currently two primary types of work items- text files and mind maps.
The text file work similar to regular text files, you enter text into the “Content Writer” panel- the text can also be colorized by certain special characters. The text-type work items are split into four sub-types aswell, “Bug“, “Feature“, “Task” and “Note“. While the editor does not handle these types any different from one another, the sub-type help identify the item in lists by changing icon of the file.

Mindmap items are node-based objects that allow the user to draw mind maps! (… who could’ve guessed? -__-)
The editor will allow the user to drag and drop shapes into the editor panel, add some descriptive text to them, and connect them with one another.

I’m soon done with everything that I’ve intended to implement for v0.0.1, and will implement the tool into my workflow for “Demox“. A beta version will be available to download when I feel that the program work good enough! I’ll also create a page here on my website dedicated to this program soon, for further updates aswell as more in-depth information regarding the program’s features etc.

Until then, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!