Jacquerel
9968f94721
## About The Pull Request Since #90505 added another entry to it the Regal Rat Riot ability, which turns maintenance creatures into versions loyal to the rat, has become sort of unmanageable (and to be honest it was a bit gross to start with). Instead of having a big if/else list (which was making the same range check multiple times...) that sets stats on a bunch of mobs, I delegated it to the mobs themselves and instead of changing some stats of the existing mobs we just turn them into a new mob which can be spawned or placed separately by mappers or admins if they want. Other stuff I changed: Riot (the ability which transforms mobs into minions) no longer spawns a mouse if it fails to find anything. Instead you have a chance to fish mice out of disposals bins while digging out trash and items. Domain is now a toggle which activates itself every 6 seconds rather than a button you manually click every 6 seconds. Riot makes a visual effect when used. Rare Pepe randomisation is done via a random spawner instead of the mob modifying a bunch of its own properties in Initialise. A bunch of mobs now automatically follow you after being tamed. I wrote this assuming I was going to add it to the rioted mobs but then didn't end up doing that because you might want them to immediately attack someone. My rule of thumb is that if I think you'd want the mob to attack someone the moment it is befriended I didn't add this and if you wouldn't I did. I changed some of the regal rat minion names, and some of them can now spawn from gold slime which couldn't before. ## Why It's Good For The Game This proc sucked and now it's nicer. As for the other changes; - A tamed mob immediately following you is nice feedback and saves you a click as it's likely to be your first action. Also removes some admin panel shitcode I added. - I changed Domain to a toggle because you generally want to use it on cooldown and someone suggested it on this PR and it sounded like a good idea. - I saw someone in Discord complaining that the previous flow of recruiting rats by hitting Riot with nothing around to summon one, waiting, hitting it again to convert one rat, and waiting again was tedious and annoying which I agree with. This method improves the quality of life by separating these two actions but _also_ as a side effect reduces a regal rat's ability to secretly stockpile 50 rats in a hidden maintenance room because most disposal bins are in slightly more visible areas, they'll actually need to go and make a mess somewhere someone can see them. ## Changelog 🆑 balance: Regal Rats can now grab mice out of disposal bins, and no longer spawn them with the Riot ability. balance: The Riot ability no longer needs to be used once for each slightly different kind of mob in your radius. balance: The Regal Rat Domain ability is now toggled on and off. balance: Several kinds of mob will immediately start following you once tamed. balance: Rats, hostile frogs, and evil snails can be created via gold slime reaction. /🆑
AI controllers
Introduction
Our AI controller system is an attempt at making it possible to create modularized AI that stores its behavior in datums, while keeping state and decision making in a controller. This allows a more versatile way of creating AI that doesn't rely on OOP as much, and doesn't clutter up the Life() code in Mobs.
AI Controllers
A datum that can be added to any atom in the game. Similarly to components, they might only support a given subtype (e.g. /mob/living), but the idea is that theoretically, you could apply a specific AI controller to a big a group of different types as possible and it would still work.
These datums handle both the normal movement of mobs, but also their decision making, deciding which actions they will take based on the checks you put into their SelectBehaviors proc.
If behaviors are selected, and the AI is in range, it will try to perform them. It runs all the behaviors it currently has in parallel; allowing for it to for example screech at someone while trying to attack them. As long as it has behaviors running, it will not try to generate new plans, making it not waste CPU when it already has an active goal.
They also hold data for any of the actions they might need to use, such as cooldowns, whether or not they're currently fighting, etcetera this is stored in the blackboard, more information on that below.
Blackboard
The blackboard is an associated list keyed with strings and with values of whatever you want. These store information the mob has such as "Am I attacking someone", "Do I have a weapon". By using an associated list like this, no data needs to be stored on the actions themselves, and you could make actions that work on multiple ai controllers if you so pleased by making the key to use a variable.
AI Behavior
AI behaviors are the actions an AI can take. These can range from "Do an emote" to "Attack this target until he is dead". They are singletons and should contain nothing but static data. Any dynamic data should be stored in the blackboard, to allow different controllers to use the same behaviors.
Guides:
Making Your AI: Quickly runs through how to make an ai controller for anything with a step by step development of one.