Greetings, Skyfarer!
For today’s Dev Diary, we will look into one of the important features of Airship: Kingdoms Adrift, which is the AI. In Kingdoms Adrift, players engage in thrilling airship battles high in the skies. The gameplay mechanics involve controlling and maneuvering airships in strategic combat scenarios. To ensure a challenging and engaging experience for players, the AI system plays a crucial role in creating dynamic and adaptable opponents. Without the AI's decision-making capabilities, the game could quickly become dull and predictable.. Our dev team had to design an AI system that could adapt to any player's actions and change tactics accordingly, while still offering an enjoyable experience.
Airships in Kingdoms Adrift features many parameters such as firepower, supply, morale, and more. The AI is designed to acknowledge these parameters and adjust their behavior accordingly. For example, when the crew is lost or the ship is damaged, the AI will choose to adopt new tactics accordingly. We also have different behavior patterns that were set up for each airship and encounter to match characters’ personalities. For instance, some may be scared and flee when taking certain damage, while some may be bloodthirsty and keep fighting until the very end.
To make sure that each AI is unique, we researched real ship combat and adjust it to match the logic of 2D space in the sky. Simulating angle of approach, ship direction, navigation, and more. The engagement angle to come towards each opponent, their attack range, and more all depend on the airship's characteristics. The AI needs to calculate the best position and the specific range in order to choose an angle of attack.
Developing the physics for AI was the most challenging aspect of the game. To determine the point we wanted the AI's ship to go, we had to calculate a precise position for it to stop, taking into account the inertia. Initially, it was just a forward and backward direction, but when we added more directions, it added more calculations. Tho this may look very simple in the game, but this process took months to develop until it was stable.
Then we have another great challenge which is creating a decision-making algorithm for AI. The AI needs to make a decision to turn and avoid depending on situations and obstacles on their path. So it was a crucial process for us to observe its behavior and fine-tune it until it reached a satisfying outcome and behaved sensibly. We had to observe many cases of the AI's reaction toward dynamic objects and teach AI to acknowledge it and learn how to avoid.
Overall, developing the AI system for Airship: Kingdoms Adrift was a challenging but rewarding process. We wanted to ensure that the battles were challenging for players and that the AI had the adaptive ability to respond to any situation, keeping the game interesting. We hope that players will enjoy our airship combat gameplay and the challenging AI we have developed, as they are an integral part of the skyfaring experience and allow players to seamlessly immerse themselves into the world.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597310/Airship_Kingdoms_Adrift/