As part of the overall environment for RF87, I had envisioned alien creatures wandering around. I wanted them to behave more like animals than traditional monsters, such that they may or may not be hostile, and that they would also potentially chase each other in predator/prey fashion. I also though about incorporating terrain passability parameters, similar to the global map simulator, but in real time. Again, there were no tutorials covering this type of behavior, so I had to develop an AI myself. I set up a state machine with various creature behaviors, but soon came to the conclusion that there were too many exceptions
in animal behavior to model with a single state engine, so I set up a couple of parameters. A creature would have a basic set of behavior like wandering, pursuing, fleeing and attacking,
however these would be modified by parameters like “creature mood” and “creature hunger.” That way, a creature that was hungry would behave more aggressively, or a powerful herbivorous creature might generally be harmless, but fight aggressively if attacked.
The project was successful, and I even added a few other features like a terrain speed – where my demo swamp slugs could move quickly in swamp terrain, and slowly on hard ground, but other creatures were the opposite. I also played around with a point and click interface, rather than the using the arrow keys to move like in my original RF87, and in the Witch of Darkmoore Forrest. You can click to select a character, and click again to move them.
