Run Away! Improving enemy behaviour.
With zombies popular so recently, I began wondering why other types of enemy in games are almost always so uninteresting or often outright frustrating. While actual AI, a program that learns and modifies it’s behaviour based on interaction, is a long way off in all but abstract senses, giving enemies more than the typical run towards player shooting behaviours that ruined Farcry 2 and many other games, and jars against the complex physics and visuals in todays games, would be a start.
First and foremost, giving enemies a basic sense of self-preservation opens up a whole range of dynamics. In a basic form, the enemy is given a health bar and some kind of panic meter. As the panic meter increases, the enemy’s program is changed to respond differently.
What kind of events affect the panic meter?
- Death of a teammate with no player in sight (Stealth kills.).
- Discovering a body.
- Taking non-fatal damage.
- Could even take effect when enemies feel bullets hitting around them.
- Explosions, fire and destruction.
- Being aimed at (Mexican standoff.).
- Seeing squad member being aimed at.
- Player neutralising or incapacitating either a number of the enemy squad and/or it’s leader.
Other factors to add in:
- Is the enemy facing towards or away from the player?
- Do they have their gun ready?
- Can they hit the player reliably (Shotgun vs sniper situation.).
- How notorious is the player?
- How far are they from help or cover?
- Is shooting already happening (Calm before the storm.)?
What does this open up?
- No longer is gunning down hordes your only option.
- Enemies value their own survival over killing you.
- Scaring enemies away through shock and awe tactics gives the player a way to feel even better blowing things up.
- Being able to take on a much larger threat using thinking instead of just more force.
- Feeling bad ass.
- No need to mop up after a fight. Killing the majority of a force will cause a retreat.
- Giving you time to loot and go before reinforcements show up.
- For a real challenge, players can attempt non-violent resolutions.
Note: Enemies should probably drop their weapons when running away.
Leaving you with these things to think about (Feel free to leave a comment.), this is Fred, signing off.
