G'day!
This Dev Update will primarily focus on the games AI at a high level, and going through some of our thoughts behind their thoughts.
When the game was unveiled at PAX 23, the AI was rudimentary at best. If the ball was within X distance of an AI, they would run at it. Once they ran X distance away from their designated area, they would run back.
This caused instances where it would be a clump of AI players chasing after the player with the ball, with little much else happening. Since the AI is such a big part of the game, especially for the single player experience, we decided it was time to take a deeper dive into it.
AI Behaviour
Decision making
A lot of the changes will relate to the ability for the AI to make more informed and relevant decisions. Some of those decision groupings are:
Is my team on the attack?
Albeit an obvious thing to have included, the AI will now take into consideration the position of the players in relation to the ball and determine
- Is the ball in my forward line?
- Do I look for space in the 50?
- Do I need to clear the ball?
- Should I handball?
Is my team on the defensive?
As above, having the understanding to know they are on the defensive, and determine
- Where is my player to man-up?
- Move to intercept
- Get between player and the ball
General awareness
There are some actions that are not specific to either offence or defence, and having this in the decision making process will make the plays more fluid, and remove any harsh transitions of offence to defence. Also, it will help mitigate players learning any AI plays as they should be relatively random.
The more general decision making would fit under
- Where is the ball?
- Should I sprint forward? Support the carrier? Lead for a handball?
- If the ball is in the air, can I mark?
- Can I contest the mark? Should I contest the position, or move to try smother a kick?
- Should I use my offensive or defensive perk?
- Should I roam to try open up a play?
The above list is a good brief summary of the types of decisions we are looking to keep implementing, and setting it up in a way where decision making itself can be adjusted via difficulty. Even though the decision is there, sometimes the AI might not be able to react in time!
What variables do the difficulties adjust?
A more static approach to adding difficulties was to build their decision making on top of a base of hard coded variables, which lets players get what they're expecting at the easier difficulties. Examples of the variables that would be fixed would include
- Punch cooldown
- Special ability cooldown
- Smother distance and area covered by smother
- Kick accuracy variation
That's awesome, but what does that mean moving forward?
Well, great question! In breaking up each scenario into smaller individual decisions we will be able to work toward creating a more fluid AI, and even have external factors like weather, player stats, etc... interact with those decisions.
At the moment, the couch coop/PvP aspect of this game is where it shines as it's where we spent the most time. But we are currently working to make sure that single player will be just as fun (if not better!).