AI Programming and Heuristic Analysis
Enemy AI is integral to a lot of games, and the functionality of said AI can make or break the main gameplay loop. Such is the case in Wobble Warriors, where fighting gobs is one of the main cornerstones of the game. When designing the functionality of the enemies, we considered who we envision playing our game, how long we want play sessions to go for, and what we want the experience to feel like. We designed an AI to fit certain criteria and could be easily adjusted as our game changes.
Where AI plays a role in Wobble Warriors
At this stage in development, most, if not all, of the AI for the game is completed (though I am sure bugs will appear). The first application of intelligent code is seen with the seemingly abundant enemy, the gobs. We needed a basic cannon-fodder enemy that can be thrown at the player in numbers to pose difficulty (albeit not too difficult), and with their current “brain” in place, they fulfill that role.
The other instance of an AI within the game is the “gob king”. We thought fighting endless hordes of gobs would get stale, and we needed a pinnacle enemy to fight to give the players a higher sense of accomplishment at the end. To fit this goal, the king is not only visually different from his subjects, but he is programmed to think and act differently, so players are still engaged by the end of the game.
Current State of AI
At this stage in development, all the AI for the game is practically done. Some of it actually got scrapped during development. At first, we had plans to also have a friendly computer player that would spawn in if there were less than four players. Ultimately, we found other ways to keep the game at a playable difficulty, as we decided having friendly AIs might result in a lot of scope issues. The remaining AI is currently in game and functioning, with small bugs that pop up every so often that end up being fixed within a day.
AI has been a fun experience for me personally to design, and as of right now, it has been in a state that the team and myself is very happy with. This means that it is very likely that anybody who has played our most recent build has probably seen the full extent of the final AI.
- Brian Bauch | Enemy AI Programmer
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