Wow, did not realize how powerful A* Pathfinding was. Sounds like the AI you created for your game will really pay off in terms of enjoyment! Great work, Auro!
Another option: You can make "Brainpower" a stat for AI-controlled units, with the settings of low/med/high. If you do this, you can communicate to the player how intelligently the enemy units will move, and you can also mix things up even in the same match. Maybe the Berserker unit is a low Brainpower unit but the Mage is a high Brainpower one. But maybe you can get matches of only high or low Brainpower units. I actually appreciate when games have very smart AI, as it improves my own skill ceiling and makes me want to work harder to play smartly, rather than the enemies just cheating with better items and stats. That's never any fun.
Hey Auro! Here are some of my thoughts: - the AI does have to be dumb sometimes too! i'd rather have AI be smart in big arenas and elite fights and dumber in normal fights than having a difficulty setting - you can make the AI umb easier by having a counter and when the counter reacehs a specific number of enemy moves, the Ai will just chose randomly where to move and what enemy to attack( not all the steps the Ai does have to be random) -in the future you might have fire proof units and that is something you have to take into consideration! Also units that ignore ice sliding! Overall, realy great progress! Keep up the good work and see you on the next one :)
Thanks for the feedback! Those are good points and yeah, I still have plenty of special considerations to add to the AI when I add new perks, special items, skills etc :)
good stuff! just wanted to add that I agree with most of the comments here (and something say towards the end of the video): having different "levels" of AI in the game, from dumb to smart. At the beginning of the game we face off mostly dumb AI, then as we go up in rank/difficulties/challenges, the smarter AI begin to show up more often and in more numbers. This would help to balance it out for new players and expert players. Much like the "monster" concept from MG1, smarter AI could start appearing on higher ranked tournaments, and there could even be an option like the challenges from the previous game, which would make smarter AI spawn more frequently, to a point where the whole enemy team would be full of smart try-hard haha. Another interesting thing to consider is if you'll let players know which AI is which: this could be an indicator in the UI of the enemy, maybe an icon on the face picture when we inspect the enemies? When hovering the mouse on the icon, it tells the level of the AI, if it is dumber/dumb/normal/smart/expert. This would give good tactical information for players to strategic play around each type of AI.
I would like to see varying levels of smartness. Smart AI can be as boring as dumb AI if it always works in the same predictable way. In the beginning of the player's career, the enemy teams should do a lot of dumb moves. The more experienced the enemy teams become, the smarter moves they should do. There could also be character race specific things, for example some don't understand how the barrels work or they are not afraid of fire. I wouldn't tie the AI smartness to a difficulty setting alone.
Looks like you need to make the arena a bit bigger. In the original game, it was too easy for the ai to run its units across the entire arena on the first turn. It would inevitably mob whatever ranged character I had. No way to avoid. This is at very high levels, but still..
That's a real problem, agreed. I actually made a bigger map that I think will be showcased in next devlog. But I'll likely need to come up with some other solution for this problem.
When casting an AOE does the AI identify the best location to target for blocking the player when theirs obstacles like columns to take advantage of? ie if all tile targets are the same direct damage, which of those tiles is the best tactically to target.
Hmmh, I'm not sure if I understood the question correctly, but the AI is capable of accounting in the obstacles, whether it's with direct targeting skills or AOE skills. So it can hit enemies that are behind pillars with an AOE skill, even if it does not actually have line of sight to those targets.
@@AuroDev I meant positioning the aoe in a way to either maximize the # of tiles the player would have to walk through. So for example if the target is a melee fighter it'd be better to aim just in front so the fighter has to travel through more fire or go around. Also if the AI wanted to force the player to retreat, more of the affected tiles would be in front of the player, or if it wanted to force the player to the right, more fire might be to the left. Just a thought to make the game more tactical.
Wow, did not realize how powerful A* Pathfinding was. Sounds like the AI you created for your game will really pay off in terms of enjoyment! Great work, Auro!
Thanks! I'm hoping so :)
Another option: You can make "Brainpower" a stat for AI-controlled units, with the settings of low/med/high. If you do this, you can communicate to the player how intelligently the enemy units will move, and you can also mix things up even in the same match. Maybe the Berserker unit is a low Brainpower unit but the Mage is a high Brainpower one. But maybe you can get matches of only high or low Brainpower units.
I actually appreciate when games have very smart AI, as it improves my own skill ceiling and makes me want to work harder to play smartly, rather than the enemies just cheating with better items and stats. That's never any fun.
Interesting idea!
Hey Auro! Here are some of my thoughts:
- the AI does have to be dumb sometimes too! i'd rather have AI be smart in big arenas and elite fights and dumber in normal fights than having a difficulty setting
- you can make the AI umb easier by having a counter and when the counter reacehs a specific number of enemy moves, the Ai will just chose randomly where to move and what enemy to attack( not all the steps the Ai does have to be random)
-in the future you might have fire proof units and that is something you have to take into consideration! Also units that ignore ice sliding!
Overall, realy great progress! Keep up the good work and see you on the next one :)
Thanks for the feedback! Those are good points and yeah, I still have plenty of special considerations to add to the AI when I add new perks, special items, skills etc :)
good stuff! just wanted to add that I agree with most of the comments here (and something say towards the end of the video): having different "levels" of AI in the game, from dumb to smart. At the beginning of the game we face off mostly dumb AI, then as we go up in rank/difficulties/challenges, the smarter AI begin to show up more often and in more numbers. This would help to balance it out for new players and expert players. Much like the "monster" concept from MG1, smarter AI could start appearing on higher ranked tournaments, and there could even be an option like the challenges from the previous game, which would make smarter AI spawn more frequently, to a point where the whole enemy team would be full of smart try-hard haha.
Another interesting thing to consider is if you'll let players know which AI is which: this could be an indicator in the UI of the enemy, maybe an icon on the face picture when we inspect the enemies? When hovering the mouse on the icon, it tells the level of the AI, if it is dumber/dumb/normal/smart/expert. This would give good tactical information for players to strategic play around each type of AI.
Thanks for the feedback! it's an interesting idea to tell the player how smart any given AI enemy is. Will have to think about it!
Thanks for making this video, I have to create the AI for my game shortly and it was interesting to hear your thought process.
Nice timing :)
I would like to see varying levels of smartness. Smart AI can be as boring as dumb AI if it always works in the same predictable way. In the beginning of the player's career, the enemy teams should do a lot of dumb moves. The more experienced the enemy teams become, the smarter moves they should do. There could also be character race specific things, for example some don't understand how the barrels work or they are not afraid of fire. I wouldn't tie the AI smartness to a difficulty setting alone.
Thanks for the feedback! That's something I'm still considering, whether to scale the AI difficulty within the run or not.
Looks like you need to make the arena a bit bigger. In the original game, it was too easy for the ai to run its units across the entire arena on the first turn. It would inevitably mob whatever ranged character I had. No way to avoid. This is at very high levels, but still..
That's a real problem, agreed. I actually made a bigger map that I think will be showcased in next devlog. But I'll likely need to come up with some other solution for this problem.
When casting an AOE does the AI identify the best location to target for blocking the player when theirs obstacles like columns to take advantage of? ie if all tile targets are the same direct damage, which of those tiles is the best tactically to target.
Hmmh, I'm not sure if I understood the question correctly, but the AI is capable of accounting in the obstacles, whether it's with direct targeting skills or AOE skills. So it can hit enemies that are behind pillars with an AOE skill, even if it does not actually have line of sight to those targets.
@@AuroDev I meant positioning the aoe in a way to either maximize the # of tiles the player would have to walk through. So for example if the target is a melee fighter it'd be better to aim just in front so the fighter has to travel through more fire or go around. Also if the AI wanted to force the player to retreat, more of the affected tiles would be in front of the player, or if it wanted to force the player to the right, more fire might be to the left. Just a thought to make the game more tactical.
@@diggerocean2000 Ah, I understand now! That the AI cannot do yet, but it's a great idea for future improvements.