Car problems/AI implementation

This week, I concentrated on enhancing our game’s AI, focusing on pedestrian reactions and implementing vehicles that zip around the map.

Pedestrian AI Improvements
I revamped the way pedestrians respond when they shove the player. Previously, after pushing the player, the AI would simply resume its patrol. Now, once a pedestrian pushes the player, it pauses, turns to face the player for a few seconds, and then continues roaming. To keep the player’s location up to date while they remain in the vision cone, I added an Event Tick node to the behavior tree. This constantly updates the player’s position each frame. I did encounter a bug when the player enters from one side of the vision cone, gets pushed, and then exits out the other side: the player’s location wasn’t updating correctly. This turned out to be caused by having two separate variables tracking the player—one set on initial detection and one updated each tick. To resolve it, I’ll remove the initial-detection variable and rely solely on the per-tick update for both initial targeting and ongoing tracking.

Vehicle AI Prototype
Implementing car AI presented its own challenges, since most tutorials assume the use of Unreal’s Vehicle Package—something I wanted to avoid. Instead, I attached a Floating Movement Component to a basic vehicle actor to handle propulsion. Once I had reliable movement, I used splines to define driving paths around the map. The vehicle reads its assigned spline and rotates to align with the spline tangent, creating the illusion of steering. At high speeds, this method sometimes produces a drifting effect: the car’s orientation lags behind sharp spline curves, which can look unintentionally “slippery.” I suspect that refining the spline tangents—smoothing out abrupt angle changes—will eliminate the drift and yield a more natural drive animation.

Overall, these AI enhancements have made pedestrian encounters feel more dynamic and given our vehicles a believable, spline-driven patrol. Next steps include consolidating the pedestrian-tracking logic and polishing spline geometry to eliminate drift.