Ranged Combat Management
Ranged combat was another crucial aspect of the AI system in Marvel's Spider-Man, and it required a fair amount of iteration to get right. The initial approach was relatively simple but fell short in providing an engaging and fair experience.
Step 1: Initial Setup
The ranged combat manager started with the following setup:
- A cooldown window where no shooters could receive attack jobs
- An attack window where shooters could receive attack jobs
- A maximum number of simultaneous attack jobs
- A delay that prevented the manager from giving out jobs too rapidly
While this setup kept things from becoming chaotic, it led to situations that felt unfair for the player, particularly when being shot from off-screen.
Being shot from off-screen with little warning or opportunity to react was a major source of player frustration.
Prioritizing On-Screen Enemies
To address the issue of off-screen attacks, the ranged combat manager was updated to prioritize giving jobs to on-screen enemies whenever possible. This ensured that players were primarily engaged with enemies they could see and react to.
[Diagram to be made of the on-screen prioritization system]
However, there were still times when all valid shooters were off-screen, leading to potential unfair situations.
Delayed Off-Screen Attacks
To mitigate this, enemies were made to take longer to fire when they were off-screen. This gave players more time to notice the Spider-Sense warning and react accordingly.
- On-screen enemy attacks had a warning duration of 0.75 seconds
- Off-screen enemy attacks had a warning duration of 1.5 seconds
[Diagram to be made of the delayed off-screen attack timing]
Handling Melee Enemies
As the game progressed, encounters often involved a mix of ranged and melee enemies. To account for this, the designers were given the option to specify a separate set of values for the ranged combat manager when melee enemies were present.
- Shorter active time for ranged attacks
- Longer cooldown periods between ranged attack windows
However, this led to a new issue where ranged enemies felt unresponsive during air combat sequences, as the slower timing values made them seem unresponsive for several seconds at a time.
Air Aggression
To address the air combat responsiveness issue, the concept of "air aggression" was introduced. Once the player performed enough actions in the air, there was a 50% chance that the ranged combat manager would immediately exit the cooldown period and become active again.
This ensured that ranged enemies remained responsive and engaged during intense air combat sequences, without punishing the player for utilizing Spider-Man's aerial abilities.
[Diagram to be made of the air aggression system]
Canceling Cheap Attacks
Even after all these iterations, players still felt that there were instances where they were attacked unfairly or "cheaply." To mitigate this, a list of player actions was created that would cause the managers to cancel any attack jobs that had not yet started.
These actions included:
- Web throwing environmental interactables
- Web striking a new target
- Using an air launcher on a target
- Dodging or perfect dodging an attack
- Using a finisher
- Jumping off an enemy
- Jumping or landing
- Being hit by an attack
Unless the player abused these actions repeatedly, the incoming attacks would be canceled, ensuring a fairer combat experience. Special exceptions were made for boss fights, where the jobs would persist to maintain the intended challenge.
By continuously iterating on the ranged combat manager, the team at Insomniac Games was able to strike a balance between challenging and fair encounters, ultimately creating a satisfying ranged combat experience for players.