Blog 17 – Enemy Placement

Here’s a post about another important part of my level that I’ve always wanted to put in them, enemies, drones, or bots. Giving the player actual physical resistance to stand in their way other than the environment. Obstacles that can stop the player through death! There are 13 enemies in this level, 10 of them throughout the level and 3 more in the last room where the exit is.

Here is a shot of a PlayerStart that the enemies spawn from through Kismet. (It’s on the left hand side of this picture)




Here’s a shot of the same area, but during gameplay. They will be shooting at me & hunting me down when I run. For most of this post I will be taking shots from the editor windows.




Here is the Kismet set up for spawning bots. Most of the bots spawn when the level starts up. The Level Loaded is connected to the Actor Factory where the AI, name, inventory, and etc. The PlayerStarts are the point where the bots spawn into the level when it is loaded.




Most of the enemies are nothing special that have the default inventory or maybe a different weapon to give the player a better fight. I placed bots to have UT Powers like Berserk and Damage. But with enough play testing it became apparent that these power-ups only last for a brief period of time. So, when the player encountered these special enemies they were nothing special. I came up with a solution on my own. I added “TriggerVolumes” to the level and if the player stepped within the “TriggerVolume” box the enemies will spawn and will have all its power-ups right then and there.




Using the “TriggerVolumes” allowed me to spawn powerful adversaries to give the player the idea that there must be something of value where it’s guarding. Like weapons, armor, and even keys.




I want to thank chrishm7 for his tutorial on spawning bots through level loading.

Next Post, I’ll do some work on placing checkpoints in the level.