We continued our work on AI steering this week, making sure our beasts and terrors move more naturally while chasing players and avoiding those straight-line paths that make them too easy to hit. AI can now “head track” their targets if their targets are behind them and rotate in place if their target is within an acceptable range. The team adjusted their deceleration curve to improve how they look when blending out their movement. The cannibals will soon shamble with the grace of figure skaters when they’re out on a liver run.
We also fixed bugs where the steering AI’s movement direction and movement speed were frequently returning incorrect values in their animation blueprint and one involving UE4’s native “Braking Deceleration” functionality causing the steering AI to stop short of their intended destination. Nobody likes a monster who stops short. We’ve worked out most of the bugs with the deer and wolves. Bears and other heavy hitters are up next.
We addressed many audio bugs too. Uzi’s make the proper sound when being reloaded now. We also fixed an issue where 2d impacts were being heard by all players, a problem causing multicast sounds (reload/equip/etc) to play twice, and a bug where thirsty and poisoned sounds would never play if a player was hungry.
Lastly, we’re adding the finishing touches to the thatch materials for our player construction system. We added stair meshes this week as well as adding some polish to the overall form and function. As you can see below thatch buildings are looking amazing.
