Mike Pickton Meeting 7 - Making things more interesting

This week I shown Mike Pickton what I have been doing in the last week. I have been trying to create a simple game mechanic using AI inside of Unreal Engine 4.

The idea is to create a system where the player can approach roaming NPCs and interact with them using a dance mechanic where the player has to input the correct dance moves that the NPC responds to. The player can identify which commands to use by observing the NPCs walking around in the environment and respond accordingly.

I had some issues trying to work out the AI system inside UE4. I used a system called a Behaviour Tree, in which I could tie together a load of different tasks I have created in different orders, allowing me to customise behaviour.

Behaviour tree with my custom tasks which can be reusable for future projects.

After showing the demo to Mike he mentioned that the mechanic works well but I needed to actually implement it into a puzzle involving the NPC 'Monsters' Whether that involves them having some sort of special ability in order to solve a puzzle or perhaps something else.

Task for next week

For next week I should have implemented the mechanic into a workable puzzle that I can then playthrough, hopefully fixing the problem which I have had before where the NPCs don't react to each other, demonstrating the commands the player has to use. A puzzle is needed to actually show the idea as a potential game, and see if the mechanic can be interesting in context.

-James