Simple NPC Monsters & AI

[bdjewkes]

Currently all entities are players, but we want the world to be filled with NPCs for the player to interact with and struggle against.

Proposed implementation:

• AI entities can use the same action_queue that players currently use. During process_tick, any AI actions in the queue can be evaluated using the same behavior as for players.

• as a separate step in process_tick, loops over each monster entity in the world, and decide what action to put in the queue. In the long run, we'll what to have customizable behavior for different monsters, but an initial implementation could use very simple rules, such as:

  • if there is a player adjacent, attack it
  • if there is a player in view, move towards it
  • if there is nothing in view, wander randomly

• for the initial implementation, a monster could spawn every x ticks if there are less than y monsters in the world