Creating an ET (Extraterrestrial Thief)

Creating an ET (Extraterrestrial Thief)
Author: William "Chayse" Thenhaus
Date: 5/29/2025

  One of the tasks that I decided to work on this week was creating a UFO object that would hover above the player and steal the package from the player. It will then fly away and drop the package in a location that is further from the delivery zone. The idea is that the team and I want to add random events that interrupt the player's deliveries to add a little chaos and unpredictability to the game. This UFO is the first event that I decided to begin setting up. 
     I started by first creating the UFO model in blender. I followed a pretty easy to follow tutorial, shout out to Blender Study on YouTube, here's the link if anyone is interested in making a similar UFO: https://youtu.be/jYA9n6wBEzg. And here is a link to their channel:(736) Blender Study - YouTube. I had a little trouble getting the Knife Projection to work but in the end I think the model turned out pretty good. 

   
 Adding the functionality was the fun part. I first made a long capsule collider coming down from the UFO to act as a "Tractor Beam" and gave it an overlap event. In this overlap event I simply made it so that the player immediately drops the package and it begins traveling up towards the ship, stopping at a reasonable distance. This is where the problems arise. Unfortunately, I have yet come across a solution for said problem. Getting the AI set up for the UFO.    
 So far, I have the functionality I want, but I am unsure of what I should do to handle the UFO's movement. One forum post I saw mentioned using multiple nav meshes in the air, but I have yet to get it to work correctly. So, I am sad to say that this has not made it into the current build of the game but will for sure be up and running by the time we publish the next build of the game. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.