00:00Hello and welcome to another behind the scenes here at Rare. I'm joined by Andrew Preston, senior designer and software
00:05engineer Sarah Noonan
00:06who are going to take us through AI in Sea of Thieves and specifically Skeletons.
00:11So Skeletons went in in February 2017 in our Taming New Seas content update. Why did we choose to put
00:19them in at that point?
00:20Well I guess the Skeletons were at a point where on a design level they offered like a gameplay threat
00:25to the player
00:26and that was something we hadn't gotten in Sea of Thieves at that point so and then the second part
00:30was kind of a more programmatic thing.
00:33We wanted to test them at scale and make sure that they were kind of performant so it was kind
00:37of getting our early stuff in
00:38seeing how it played out on a gameplay level and seeing that we could make it work basically.
00:44Sarah you joined us when? In September.
00:47In September so but you've been kind of instrumental in making sure that we get these updates like through into
00:52the AI since then.
00:54Yeah so one thing we added was the different perception types so rather than just being able to see you
00:59they can hear you and they can
01:01realize and they've been damaged. If you're sniping a skeleton from far away and you damage him or he hears
01:05you
01:06he's not psychic he doesn't know exactly where you are so he just he turns around and he tries to
01:11look for you rather than knowing
01:12knowing where you are straight away.
01:14The hearing stuff is really cool as well because you kind of have this range of hearing so like
01:20the skeletons can hear you from a cannonball shot really really far away and turn around and try and investigate
01:25that area and then
01:26they can hear like the kind of projectile weapons slightly further away and then
01:30the kind of musical instruments if you're playing them they can hear them even closer and then eventually you kind
01:35of get
01:35these scenarios like you were saying earlier with the with the shovel like if you're
01:39if you're kind of digging around near a skeleton and you're in sound they're probably not going to hear you
01:43but if you kind of make a misdig and hit some rock then it'll make a loud sound and they'll
01:46turn around and receive you.
01:48And I just recently saw skeletons can now heal themselves right?
01:51Yeah so they can they're not just dumb and have a gun and just fire at you straight away they
01:56can react to the player so if they're
01:58damaged so much and they like they can run away from you or they can bring out their banana and
02:03eat it just like the player can.
02:04And that's like that's something we're continuing to improve improve right like through the animation system and stuff as well.
02:09Yeah definitely. Yeah we've looked a lot at the kind of hit reactions and stuff so before kind of when
02:15you hit a skeleton
02:16they just did a very small flinch whereas recently we've been putting in a system where you have kind of
02:21a directional damage system
02:22so if I'm kind of hitting a skeleton with the cutlass and kind of hit them left right left then
02:26they're kind of physically
02:27like turn left right left as they're kind of getting hit which looks like really really cool and really empowering
02:32for the player as well.
02:33And it's like we wanted to obviously try and take as much of the mechanics that a player had and
02:40give them to a skeleton right?
02:41And that kind of brought us on to like wielding like swords.
02:45Yeah definitely because that's the whole isn't that the whole story of these these used to be pirates
02:51and so it doesn't make sense for them to just have a gun not to be able to do anything
02:55that the player can.
02:56When the players got their flintlocks and their cutlasses and stuff the skeletons were just just left with their blunderbusses
03:03so now they can also wield the flintlock and then recently added the cutlass and the unarmed as well.
03:07Like you're saying we gave them the blunderbuss first which is the hardest weapon and players would be starting off
03:13their level one journey
03:14and they themselves don't even have the blunderbuss and they're against all these skeletons with the blunderbusses
03:19which is just so unfair so now they've given them the unarmed and the cutlass so they're kind of easing
03:23you into the threat of the skeletons.
03:25And I guess part of that is like you were talking there about easing you in and it's about the
03:30progression system as well
03:31it's about how we work the skeletons into that and how does that work for us at the moment?
03:36Yeah so as it stands we kind of have different skeletons of different kind of abilities so someone can be
03:44more proficient at aiming or they can move faster
03:46and all those kind of attributes that make them up kind of physically and then obviously they have their loadout
03:51as well
03:52in terms of what guns they're wielding so when arms are kind of in the early game and then as
03:57you kind of progress through the game
03:58they start wielding more and bigger weapons.
04:01So how does AI work into progression in Bounty Quest which is something we've just recently announced?
04:08So with the Bounty Quest we kind of built these new spawner types that we can use so that we
04:13can create a very kind of authored structure
04:16to how players interact with a bounty so we can kind of set up how many skeletons will be in
04:23a specific wave
04:24and then how many of those skeletons you have to kill before the next wave emerge from under the ground
04:29and then what that second set will then be wielding and what rank they'll be and how much harder they
04:34are.
04:34Like manage the difficulty curve as you go through the quests.
04:37Yeah.
04:38Having a spawner where design can go in and they can specifically say what they want to spawn or what
04:43has the most chance of spawning
04:45and you can also change that not just in the Bounty Quests but also throughout the quests like depending on
04:52your level.
04:52they can really contribute to a compelling gameplay challenge and experience for the player and provide lots of variety.
04:59But going forward we definitely want to look at how they contribute to the whole Sea of Thieves tone.
05:04They're not just enemies that spawn because the player is around, they have a history and they live there.
05:09Yeah. After launch we're still going to have a team dedicated to AI so they'll be looking at improving the
05:15kind of baseline gameplay mechanics
05:17and then also adding new gameplay mechanics that are going to challenge players in different ways.
05:22And then of course we'll be listening to player feedback as well and making sure that anything that they kind
05:26of want
05:27we're kind of factoring that into what we're making next just like any other feature in the game.
05:31Awesome. Well, thank you very much. That's amazing.
05:34Thank you.
05:36That was the worst.
05:39Give me the last line just like any other feature.
05:41Just like all the other features in the game.
05:43Awesome. Well, thank you very much folks.
05:45That's alright.
06:07Thank you.
Commenti