Game difficulty settings that change enemy AI

[Blinn]

Hi there!

I've looked around the forums for a bit for a script that lets you modify enemy AI behavior depending on what difficulty setting you choose. In my case, I want to put in 3 modes:

Monster Intelligence - Normal, Smart, Devious

Normal changes nothing.

Smart checks the monsters' stats, spells, and what to do under certain conditions (like using a drain spell when below 60% HP or healing an ally). Turn-based sequences, such as casting protection spells on the first turn.

Devious looks for weaknesses and potential knockouts when one of the player's party members is at 50% HP or lower, and coordinates the attacks of the monsters to go for that particular party member.

Any pointers?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Well, the thing is the enemy AI is done on the enemy editor of the database while a difficulty setting would be added either via eventing or scripting. The AI editor of the database cannot take into account these custom things. So for that to work, you'd need the difficulty system and a script that allows you to use RGSS3 logics to determine AI behavior.


You could take a look at my Ruby Action Selection, that's one system that allows you to use RGSS3 to define AI behavior

 

[Blinn]

Well, the thing is the enemy AI is done on the enemy editor of the database while a difficulty setting would be added either via eventing or scripting. The AI editor of the database cannot take into account these custom things. So for that to work, you'd need the difficulty system and a script that allows you to use RGSS3 logics to determine AI behavior.

You could take a look at my Ruby Action Selection, that's one system that allows you to use RGSS3 to define AI behavior

The thing is I'm doing everything alone right now and I have little to no understanding of how scripts or events work, and I'm not analytically adept. I could enter a typo and spend the next 10 hours trying to figure out what's going on (true story) and it's frustrating work. I might even consider hiring a scripter at some point if things get sticky, just so I can move on to the more important stuff.

Know anybody?

 

[Warpmind]

Actually, it is perfectly possible to make AI adjustments for difficulty settings - it does, however, require a substantial amount of Combat Eventing and conditionals, randomizers, etc. leading to Forced Actions on the enemies' part.
Personally, I'd set it up as a set of Events running each turn, dependent on a Switch for each difficulty setting (except "Normal", of course, which could be handled by the default AI settings), with a randomizer, a few conditional triggers, etc.

Assuming an "Easy-Normal-Hard" difficulty configuration, it'd be one simpler and one more complex event for each troop in the Database, but definitely viable - and no need for scripting.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, a lot of this (if not all) is possible to do via eventing.

The ones you've described for Smart intelligence can be easily done within the enemy attack patterns since you can assign various conditions for when to execute a certain attack. I usually determine what difficulty was selected via a switch. So if the player chose 'Smart' difficulty at the start, a switch will go on that's associated with it. Then I can use this switch for conditional branches in troop events. You can make the enemy cast protection spells on themselves on turn 0 in troop events. Just stick a condition for it to activate only when certain difficulty switch is active.

 

[Blinn]

Eventing is easier than scripting so I'll go with that for now. Thanks.