After a spending sometime away working on other projects, I finally reach the point where I need to revisit my Infinite Axis Utility AI System, IAUS. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this project, I attempted to write an Utility AI System using DOTS for the #Devtober. Over the month of October, I wrote the base of the IAUS system and was partially able to get a completed system running. Unfortunately, at the time, my skills in Unity ECS were limited. The system required a lot of work with programmer side. The goal of the project was to create something that was simple and easy for designer to use with minimal support programmers. Ideally the programmers would design the state and actions once and designer would be a modify within reason. Similar to the system used in The Division AI system by Ubisoft.
The goals of the refactor are to majorly simplify the system and focus on designer editable behavior. On my first attempt, I focused to much on Archetype, ie grunt, soldier and Boss. This time I am focus on making states modular and flexible. Each State is broken down into 3 components, Consideration, Scorer and Action. Each state is made up of list of consideration to determine is score. Designer will not be able to change this considerations as it stands. But they will be able to change the weight of each consideration. The Scorer System goes and gets all relevant state data to determine a state’s utility score and determine the best state action. The action performs the action.
To Keep track of the latest work being done, Look at the refector branch