The Trick I Used to Make Combat Fun! | Devlog 

NOTE: I'm not using this as a replacement for path finding. The purpose of this is to control how the AI behaves in its local environment. ie avoid clumping together, strafe the player, flee from the player but don't get stuck on walls. NOT get from point a to point b. The fact that it can avoid simple obstacles is an emergent behavior that came about naturally from this system, but not the primary way of avoiding them. Without proper path finding, the ai will get stuck if there is a wall between it and its target. However, you can combine this with a pathfinder, if you have it seek along the path instead of directly at its target. :) Follow the project on Kickstarter to get notified when it launches: www.kickstarter.com/projects/gameendeavor/zatcd

I have literally no idea what you're talking about, and I still love it

Maybe keep the "gets stuck in a corner" pattern for some enemies and give them a "panic" modifier to their appearance. Stupid behaviour in stressful situations is not unrealistic.

I've been tricked into learning math

7:21 holy smokes that is awesome haha

Holy crap those enemy battles look amazing. I'd love to stumble across some enemies fighting randomly and help out a side!

That’s a pretty complex AI system, glad it works!

Imagine this situation: Enemies start to fight each others. "Awesome!" Enemies start powering up as they kill each others "Oh no!"

I remember vividly a full-scale battle between sentient hostile creatures in the first zone of Van Helsing I, redcoats against werewolves. It stuck with me ever since. It's unexpected and makes you feel less destined and more like a piece on a larger board. I recommend you play with that discovery!

This AI looks smooth AF. I tried to make something like this a while ago and failed miserably. But I'm feeling inspired to try again now.

"I spent an hour fighting skeletons" oh man... I remember those days. You implement something and enjoy it so much just to see it working. It's also why I've logged more hours in my own game on Steam than any other game I own.

One thing that could make the Enemies look more convincing in their environment, is that they could probably have a “environment interaction animation” such as the seed enemies eating the grass, playing around. Or the skeletons looking around suspiciously, or their arms fall of and they grab it back. Something that adds flavor to them and would make the ambience feel more natural and lived in.

2:45 "subliminally clicking blue thumbs" is pretty clever

7:50 hey look that's me

The mathematics pays off in the end. This looks good

I could see this AI being very scary when combined with a speedy enemy that wants to zoom around the player to disorient them before engaging

That skelly newton's cradle at the beginning was hilarious.

YEEESSSSSSS NEW GAME ENDEAVOR DEVLOG This combat looks SO good. Thank you so much for sharing your progress, all these devlogs are super insightful!

Vectors are so useful for giving entities a sense of intelligence and you demonstrate this so well and your results are so natural and fun to watch. You use vectors like an artists uses to paint to make something come alive. Love it all!

Would be cool to have a wolf type enemy that only attacks when they are multiple, and circles the player like real wolves would. The wolves will be much more likely to attack the back of the player, meanwhile other wolves will feign attacks and cancel them. Only one wolf attacks at any one time, but many wolves can feign attacks. Any wolf that is chased by the player would escape and return to circling

It was surprisingly refreshing to see you explain the math of the functions in such a straightforward and useful manner. This kind of logic seems as though it would be incredibly useful in a wide variety of games. Thank you.

This was an incredible breakdown of your enemy AI. You explained the process extremely well. Awesome stuff!

I’m glad this video popped up in my recommended. Your commentary is very charming and explains some of the more complex mechanics efficiently. I hope your channel and your game become more popular!

Wow. I recently started with my gamedev journey and boy am I both overwhelmed and inspired. Great work and I'm looking forward to playing your game!

That is a really cool movement system you came up with. It is amazing how even just a small collection of simple rules playing out can lead to such emergent complexity.

Been looking at this a couple time, but this was the moment I decided to subscribe. That enemy movement really looks immersive!

I've been watching this video at least four or five times, this is gold! Thank you for sharing it and good luck with your development

This was fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing your different experiments!

This devlog is so helpful!!! I quitted on developing my own game years ago, this brings back memories and motivation to try again! Thank you!

I know it's early in the game, but you might consider some alternate art. Giving the enemies "random" characteristics like a hat or club instead of sword adds a lot to combat. You can't remember who you already damaged if they all look identical.

This is by far the coolest devlog I have ever seen man amazing job. this video is truly an inspiration.

This is so cool. This video just randomly showed up in my feed and about halfway through I subscribed. Keep up the great discussions like this love the breakdown in your thought process.

Im a developer (but not for games) and found this really fascinating. I liked that it had enough technical detail so that I could probably implement this myself if I wanted and enough visualizations to understand exactly whats going on and why you made the design decisions that you did. Subbed. Keep it up!

There’s a game called Archvale which is similar to this and started development 3 years back. I was wondering if this was an inspiration at all?

Super cool to see your approach on this! Congratulations on the results

I like how in depth you explain your decisions. Subbed and will be watching with great interest.

This all seems really cool. And it's also really putting into perspective the difference between game design by Google troubleshoot VS actually knowing how to program hahaha. One cool thing I'd probably add is some chance for the enemies to take a fast attack at you if they are at your back, exposed, and you're facing another enemy. Like a sort of backstab manuever that serves as a punishment for getting surrounded.

This is one of the coolest 2D combat AIs I've ever seen. Looks amazing when they fight each other. And it seems pretty simple as well. You should definitely implement a spell which will make an enemy attack other enemies (mind control). I think it would fit extremely well with the AI. Saved the video for future references. I might implement something similar.

This is fantastic, I appreciate how deeply you describe your design process and decisions! Good luck with your game!

Man, this looks so great! Good job!

Damn! This looks amazing! A lot more games could benefit from using similar combat ai cuz it looks really smooth

Just returned to this video for the hundredth time or so, and now, since I'm quite a similar processing of implementing context-steering behaviors to my game, I couldn't help but notice that your implementation of the collision avoidance behavior is MILES away better than anything I could ever come up with for mine. I'm currently using a combination of the navigation 2d plus a standard context-steering-behavior (started from the kidscancode tutorial and built it up from there). So far I've already implemented both chase & flee behaviors (and a "standby" one for middle-ground)... But no matter what I do, I always end up with enemies either overlapping themselves WAY too much - especially when they "enter" each others' collision shape, they kinda get stuck in there since it kinda disrupts the raycasting - or they keep getting stuck in those infinite search-cycles of spinning around. (I'm using the direct_space_state for multiple raycasting) Should I turn collisions on for enemy vs. enemy? Or should I keep it only via the raycast (so they won't get stuck when high in numbers)? Tried to mess around with flocking but I think it's kinda over my head... Thus I heard performance is not the greatest; that and I simply do not whether it'll produce any kind of superior result than the standard context-steering behavior. Any kind of resource on the area (specifically for Godot + actual pathfinding application of it) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! for reference: I'm currently utilizing the addition of the danger to its opposing interest. At first with it, I got into that infinite circling situation, but after applying a curve normalization to the interest array, it went away... Still, enemies are simply overlapping each other way too much.

Hi there. I jus tbinged through your dev logs and this is truly an instant sub. The game so far feels adorable and yet adventurous the artstyle makes me smile and it's genuinely interesting to watch you create it. Great job so far.

I just found this channel and I immediately got it exited when he started talking about this game. I can’t wait for it to come out.

I love that you made the behavior emergent instead of scripted. It looks amazing!

You are too smart, damn this is amazing!

hidden gem. You should have a LOT more views. This is outstanding work and as an aspiring game dev student I'm totally in awe over how good this looks!

This is very helpful in a conceptual level. Thank you!

Good news: I found your channel and I enjoy it! Bad news: I watched all your videos in one sitting and now I have no content to watch

I see the algorithm brings us together once again

I had a little trouble following what you’re talking about but I appreciate the time you spent on the iterative process for NPC combat. Can’t wait to check this out!

this is awesome and inspiring. your really cleanly break down how you used the different tools at your disposal to generate really complex behavior! you're a great teacher! also, the visualizer you made for the weighted movement options is a genuine piece of art by itself. i feel like you managed to make the game development process into a game itself. cheers!

I'd love a tutorial on this! Keep up the good work!

I suggest that when enemies are fighting each other, when the enemies in their group start to go down (say skeletons defeat 3/5 sprouts in a herd) then the losing side starts to run away.

Very impressively detailed ressource on enemy movements! Thanks for sharing!

Awesome video and very helpful, thank you!

What I personally find fun in fighting AI, is when they can tactically coordinate with each other, for example Combine Soldiers from Half Life 2.They feel more real and are quite challengingly fun to fight against.

that reminds me of two AI ideas I had for an MMO I may or probably make once I motivate myself to learn coding: 1. Enemies of the "Undead" type will always move toward each other when not having spotted a player to attack, this can snowball until it riggers the "Zombie Apocalypse" world event, 2. there's a pollution system similar to Factorio, this will give players who focus on building stuff something else to do by having their building attract nearby monsters. are those good ideas? I don't know yet how they would interact.

That's a lot of knowledge and experimentation results packed into

The explanations are very clear and easy to follow, and the presentation is great. Thanks for sharing!

The enemy battles look so realistic!

Would you be willing to show us the end code you are using? Both the idle and target? I think this looks nice and I would like to see it and play with the variables.

your commitment to excellence is evident in every frame!️

Your games are always wonderful. And I really enjoy the way you describe them.

I have a random ideia here: projectiles should get weaker the longer they travel. That way players would be rewarded for getting up close to the enemy and risk getting damaged. This would also make it so that projectile classes can't just camp far away.

This game looks sick man, i wish i was as talented as you are at making games

Awesome content! Thanks for the explanations

I love the way this video is made! It's quite in-depth, well-paced, and the glowing explanations are beyond awesome for nerds like me!

This game just looks so amazing - even I, who hate most game combat, think this combat looks fun ;) Can't wait to see where this goes!

An AI system built like that. It's got to be revolutionary for how smart it is turning out. I could imagine it even better if Monsters were the main focus of it, where you're a monster tamer raising a bunch of those into a fighting force. And you wanted your monsters to act semi autonomous. You could suddenly have a game for monster hoard battles!

Just discovered this channel today, instantly subscribed. You’re such a good programmer and artist, I love what you’re doing with this game.

I just discovered you thanks to RU-vid recommending this video. This not only is a beautiful looking game but I love the technical yet simple solutions you've developed to create enemy movement. You clearly have a lot of passion and creativity for your game and game development period. I'm very much looking forward to you finishing this game and will be following the progress. Good luck with the development!!

This looks amazing, I love the gizmo as well, it really helps visualise the 'intent' of the AI. Would adding a little randomness to those angles be a good design choice? If not, why not? Take for example Doom's character movement - they use a randomly generated number to zigzag towards the player. This means that no 2 interactions are quite the same, however at the cost of sometimes sub-optimal pathing. I'm wondering what the implications of changing your dot_away to have a little random factor in it (for example generating a factor between 60, 65) would mean for the enemy AI here.

what is this game's name?

OMG! I really like what you trying to do, actually looks like a great game to play tomorrow

Dude! So sick. I love the boids rationale as a starting point, and the places where you've tweaked it result in such a nuanced behaviour, given how straightforward the overall approach still is. Amazing stuff!

I came here from Griffpatch

Those who came from griffpatch: 👇

This random video popped up in my feed. And i gotta say i had a fun time. You've earned yourself a sub and i'll be looking forward to seeing more

This was so educational. Subscribed!

great video! all the diagrams were really clean and communicative as well!

This is awesome. Got my subscription for sure!

Dear lord I can’t believe I only just found this channel great content dude have been binge watching your stuff and learning a bunch!

Very interesting! Just now learning about Steering behaviors so its good to see how to take the next step from it.

This is so cool dude. You clearly have a genuine love and interest in learning and improving existing game concepts. Subscribed.

Great vid, thanks for sharing the ideas!

The faction system you did made me feel in awe. Its amazing how smooth and organic it was to see the npc fight each other, really amazing bro

Wow, I'mma have to follow this channel. Very good stuff.

The logic behind what you did sounds impressive. The game looks impressive. Good video, you just got yourself a new subscriber :)

Hey, I just found this video on my recommended, which is very convenient since I was trying to figure out how to make combat fun in my game! It'll take me a few to figure this all out, but thanks for the video! Very helpful :)

Definitely taking notes if I ever need a movement system like this!

Great stuff, thanks for sharing! Subscribed.

That looks super smooth. Nice work!

Lots of really great thoughts and concepts here. Thanks for sharing!

Love this, I have never seen anything like your video here and I am now very interested in your project. Beautiful art as well :)

This looks amazing! All the best for your game 👍👍

This game looks awesome. I'm working on my own game now, and I love the fluidity that vectors add to the game. The use of noise for random enemy movement along with the different enemy behaviors is really damn clever.

Your videos are so chilling to watch and interesting, you got me as a follower ;D

Opened my eyes to a whole new way to implement pathfinding! Great Video!

Your devlogs are really inspiring. Thanks for the good content.