Ant AI Design

Now that we have been making more progress on the environment and have most of the ant assets done, we need to really figure out how we want to integrate those assets into the scene. In particular the ant. We have had a pretty good idea for some time on how we wanted the ant to behave in game so this week I worked more on designing more formally the Ant's behaviors.

The ants behaviors are fairly simple with it only transitioning between a few preset behaviors so a state machine is the most effective way to implement these behaviors. This week I planned out the different states and how they connect together. I used google draw to create a visual representation of the states with the basic transition criteria.

Essentially the ant starts off by navigating between two preset points, which would most likely be anthills. If the player gets too close to one of the ant, then the ant will begin chasing the player. If the player gets too far away the ant will 'lose' them and stop in place to look for them in case they move closer again. If the ant manages to catch up to the player, it will enter its combat state. With the basic structure and design of these states done, I'm ready to start implementing the state machine next week.