After spending countless hours tweaking states, behavior trees and prediction systems I’m finally announcing an update with a surprisingly… OK AI..

I should have done my research beforehand and known that developing fighting game AI is on the far end masochistic pastimes. Its either too hard and unpredictable, or too cheese-able. Has ninja-style lightning fast reaction time or none-at all. For example, I implemented N-Grams to predict player inputs based on past input patterns. The AI either knew what you were gonna before your neurons even had a chance to fire, or was just straight up garbage.

Well, this new release uses some new techniques for the AI and can be kinda fun until you figure out how to cheese the AI. I hope until then, I’ll already have something better ready for you.

Patch Notes

• Implement coyote time when attacked. The player has a small time-frame to react to a connecting attack before the collision detection kicks in. Due to this, attacks that connect only for a fraction of time are not detected.
• Implement cooldown for changing stances, attacking and blocking after entering a stance.
• Parry attack while attacking. Simultaneous attacks from the same stance cancel each other out. This feature may change in the future.
• Fix projectile collision and stance detection in blocking logic.
• Expand enemy AI behavior and fix some issues.
• Update game assets.

What now

I think I’ll leave the AI system cool-off for the next few days and concentrate on actual gameplay and new assets for characters with animations. I feel like the animation of changing stances is going to be particularly important, as those will be the primary reaction cues.

Otherwise I’m thinking of implementing fighting multiple enemies at once, changing orientation, moving background and a nice camera system. Theres still a lot to do!