Weekly Roundup 80 - 10/09/2021 - Enemy Movement Design + Concepts (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone!

This week I have some design work to show off on the subject of enemy idling, detection, and movement.

1: What's New

The first half of this week was spent working on the design doc that a programmer will be using to create a custom script to handle how enemies idle, detect the player, then approach the player.

You can read this design doc here. 

Design docs aren't the most glamorous work when it comes to game development but writing one can help others who you work with to best understand how to create the desired feature.

The goal over the next weeks to months with this task will be to build out systems that allows the enemies in the environment to behave and move of their own accord. Something that'll bring a lot of gameplay in!

One of the first steps in that is getting Pathfinding set up in the editor.

Pathfinding by itself isn't AI: It's more like guidance to help NPC's navigate what is valid and invalid ground to move across.

For a game like Bindmancer that involves marking areas using tilesets that are the walls and obstables.

These don't show up in-game visually but they're always there to help define where an enemy can and can't move.

In this example video I show off pathfinding by having the enemy move wherever the mouse is clicked.

Once the logic is coded the enemies will move on their own and much like the player character in 4 directions.

Enemy Concepts:

In terms of enemies I also got a very short start on concepting possible new enemy ideas. 

I want to get a 2nd enemy type in the game so I can show off 2 different enemies with different behaviors and how it can challenge the player.

There's a few different directions I could go. There could be more humanoid enemies like the cultist, or more classic dungeon enemies like a less dangerous slime monster.

There's also more abstract enemies as well. Like a floating enchanted straightjacket design. 

I'll keep noodling away at them.

2: What's Next?

For next week I'll be working on further concepting and picking a 2nd enemy design and working on the in-game art assets for it to get in game.

I'll also create the start of a "Enemies" design document where I can layout enemy types as I create them. 

As for the Enemy Movement Logic: The design doc is done and handed over to a programmer. It may be a few weeks before we see any return on that side of development. But the pre-work that needed to be done is now done!

What do you all think of this enemy-related design work? :)

Cheers!

- Caroo