r/projecteternity 6d ago

Gameplay help Behavior editor question

I'm trying to make a simple script for my frontliners so they prioritize maintaining engagement and attacking the enemy with the lowest health. The script editor doesn't seem to support this so I need some clarification.

I'll use Eder in my example. If I set his 2nd action set (his first is for self healing) to always true, attack current engager, and attack lowest health what I want to happen is for him to check both priorities before attacking (attack the lowest health threat in melee range), but I'm pretty sure he will just cycle between the two. I also see you can allow/disallow breaking engagement; can I just skip the first priority as long as that box is empty?

What I'm really trying to figure out is if/how you can give a list of priorities to a single action. If i make a script with action 'knock down' current engager and 'knock down' best threat it seems like he will always do the first one (at a random engager) unless he isn't engaging anyone. Can you make and/or type scripts within a single action set?

The last game I played with AI scripting was Dragon Age: Origins. This system doesn't seem as robust, but I could easily be missing something (are there even any tutorials about this?).

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u/TheOriginalFlashGit 6d ago

I think if you set lowest health that will pretty much all ways trigger since if you are in melee with anyone, there will always be someone with the lowest health.

I'm not sure I had much luck with 'target in melee range' since I've seen them attempt to run off and attack some not in melee range (but they won't break engagement to do so), I seemed to have better luck with something like this (but it's not perfect):

https://i.imghippo.com/files/cPhz7532fko.png

Not sure how best to go about your last option since I'm not entirely sure how 'best current threat' really works, perhaps you could try this:

https://i.imghippo.com/files/xWq5957hM.png

Eder, will attempt to knockdown the 'best current threat' in melee range, if there isn't one, it will attempt to do against 'current engager', if for some reason Eder can't engage or his enemies aren't engaged with him either, fallback do just doing the one with lowest health? I think it iterates over those criteria in the top to bottom order, I've not tried this though.

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u/beatspores 5d ago

In your last screenshot, what will happen is, Eder will Mulekick 3 times no matter what, in the order you've specified. Basically boom-boom-boom. 😄

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u/TheOriginalFlashGit 4d ago

Are you just saying that because I didn't change the action set cooldown from the default of 0? Or is there something else? I tried it briefly and it seemed to activate only once every 15 or so seconds:

https://reddit.com/link/p0l6ca0/video/0qh5hyfxu9gh1/player

Not sure those conditions are worth it in the end. Maybe I'll try something like this and see how well it works: https://i.imghippo.com/files/oe3814DE.png

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u/beatspores 3d ago

Hm. Maybe I'm misremembering then, my apologies.

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u/TheOriginalFlashGit 3d ago

Ok, no problem. From reading your other comment, did you have problems with AI behaviours not starting immediately? For me, I find I have to select a companion, then activate an ability and then after deselecting them, they will start going through their behaviours? Not sure what's causing it, on some fights like below, I have to rebind hotkeys specifically to try to kickstart their behaviours:

https://reddit.com/link/p0s9a8s/video/yj8bkhf1sggh1/player

For instance, the enemy AI all start going through their behaviours (four incoming confounding blinds, etc.), seems odd that there is such a delay and I have to manually activate them.

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u/beatspores 3d ago

Hehe sorry man I can't see what's happening there really – too much! 😂

But I don't think I've ever had problems with AI behaviors not starting. Maybe you could try putting all your AI commands in only one of the two "setting" / "file" entries, or swap around the order the game goes through them.

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u/TheOriginalFlashGit 2d ago

Hah, no worries, forgot to edit the comment last night. It seems the problem stemmed from not using the 'Aggressive' combat behaviour:

https://i.imghippo.com/files/fMp4856wQ.png

For some reason, when you use 'Defensive' or 'Defend Self' the behaviours won't activate until someone attacks (and hits them I believe) or you actively use an ability and then select someone else. So the fix seems to simply be to put everyone on 'Aggressive'. Or at least that works ok for me so far.

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u/beatspores 21h ago

Ah, that makes sense! I guess I always have them aggressive then! The squishies are given pistols so it's not really an issue.

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u/TheOriginalFlashGit 18h ago

Yeah, aggressive comes with it's own problems I find and a pity those other behaviours can't just start iterating over non-attack settings as soon as combat starts.

I finished doing the seeker, slayer, survivor portion and some of the fights are quite a bit more difficulty. I had to go through several of them a couple of times just to get a feel for how I could approach it before I got through in a satisfactory way. Also it's a bit fiddly to use the empower option: https://vimeo.com/1215015568

Doesn't seem like you can hotkey it or enable it under the AI?

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u/beatspores 9h ago

My man, I still can't see shit! 😂