NPC Programming

NPC Logic & Behaviour
-For the first week of this course you’ll introduce logic to your NPCs using State Machine Behaviors and scripts to drive Animation system States. You’ll need to evaluate the GDD to determine the correct logic, and analyze your scene to make certain it’s all performing as expected.

Navigation & Pathfinding
-This week you’ll add in pathfinding by evaluating your game’s NavMesh needs. Navigation will give new complexity to your NPC’s behaviour by accounting for Area Costs, triggers, Obstacle Avoidance, and Off Mesh Links. By updating this dynamically, you’ll give players the sense that the enemy is adapting to the environment.


Raycasting
-Raycasting is an important tool in video games for determining line of sight and validating interactions. Simple in concept, but with the number of objects in a common scene it’s important to understand how they work, and how they can be made to work more efficiently.

This week you’ll evaluate your game for its required raycasting functionality. This will require you debugging various mask configurations and optimizing raycast performance.


NPC Spawning & Placement
-NPCs are often the most interesting problem to solve in any game, and the issue of when and where to spawn them is a top priority. A wrong solution to this issue can hamper gameplay by making things boring or too difficult, not to mention tax the system resources of your target platform. This week you’ll be spawning NPCs into your game after evaluating where and how often they should be appearing. Analyzing what will best support gameplay and what the target platform can sustain are critical.