[crowds cheering]
[intense breathing]
ROOOARR!
It's been a while guys but today - it's time for another devlog!
HUGE updates today so put your diapers on get, your formula ready and let's do this!
So far we've made boxing dudes, we can fight, added multiplayer..
Started over a couple of times...
Made a free demo, added some physics - everything is looking great except...
It's not fun.
It's time to tackle the most difficult task so far on this epic game dev adventure. Today we're
gonna start putting the single player together and make a boss we can actually play against.
How's it going everyone I'm Pontypants. Welcome!
Uuuuh...
I make games.
Yeah..
Hah!
[Intro Playing]
Ok here's what I'm thinking:
We can move around, we can throw different attacks, dodge, block - all that good stuff but
unless you have a friend to play with - which I mean come on let's be real here you probably ... *unaudible*
a game needs a single player mode maybe you just want to practice or perhaps you just like single
player games better i've been gathering references and writing down ideas for a while that i think
could be fun for a single player campaign the tool i'm using for this is called Milanote
who were also kind enough to sponsor this video thanks so much for supporting our community guys
i really appreciate it! For the single player - the idea is that the player will enter
leagues of varying difficulty and face off with different bosses and make their way to the top
each boss will have its own special attacks and weaknesses so rather than just fighting opponents
that just get harder and harder - each fight will be unique and feel more like a boss fight where
you have to figure out how to beat it in order to continue to the next stage. I've been using Milanote
for about a month now to organize Punch A Bunch and it's been such a huge help during this process
I am 100% hooked. It's super simple if i find an image that i like online i can simply copy it, paste it
into my board, write down some ideas, make to-do lists and so much more. It's easy to move things
around, you can stay organized by using different boards and the sky really is the limit in terms
of what you can use this tool for! Anyways give Milanote a try for your next project. Show those
guys some love for supporting the channel! You can sign up for free using the link in the description.
i'm gonna keep using it and i'll show you some more cool stuff i did later in this video
Okay.. Here's you
and here is the boss.
The problem is he doesn't move... It just stands there
So how do we make him move and perform attacks and stuff?
yeah see that's what i didn't know either which is
why it's been three months since the last devlog okay so a few different ways we can do this
one way is using a neural network - It's similar to how your brain works....
if you had one...
Enough with the stupid jokes! Please don't unsubscribe!
Neural Networks - similar to how our brains... lol
Neural net.. net..
You just give the computer some basic things like punch, move, dodge
and give it a goal which in this case is simple:
win
and then you just let it play
against itself over and over - and over time it'll start learning how to play all on its own!
In theory...
which means that I won't have to do anything! And I like that! Let's go with that.
you might have already seen this but a simple example of what i'm talking about here is this
browser game by kiwan where you put together a creature with bones and muscles however you
want and its only goal is to learn how to move forward. It will randomly just squiggle
around without much success until it finds a pattern that makes it go forward... sound familiar?
It then tries to build upon what worked the last time in an attempt to master the art of walking
Come on toby!
look!
it's starting to walk upright
freaky.. so i started looking for a plugin for unreal engine that would just automatically
teach my boxer how to play. To my surprise -
that doesn't exist
so okay i'll just make
this thing myself i mean how hard can it be it's sort of like training a dog right
Ziggy - SIT!
So i found this thing online with instructions of how to get this thing set up in Unreal Engine
[Music Intensifies]
Change your plan guys. I took a break and i worked on some cool collectibles for the characters
instead! Cool cap, straw hat..
Heeeey the official Ponty hat!
And something to remember the times by *sigh *
i'm thinking that each boss will have its own look in clothing and whenever you beat one
you unlock something. I've also gotten some awesome inspiration from you guys in our Discord Server
so much amazing fan art.. Speaking of discord - it's time we put some new additions to our
epik pegboard - Lester's looking a little lonely. I want to give a massive shout out to our amazing
wonderful super awesome discord mods for sticking with me for so long!
welcome to the epic pegboard
Oh and speaking of the epik pegboard - did I tell you about the new menu?
NO?
Let's check it out!
I've been secretly working on a new menu for the game since the old one looked like a five-year-old made it
behold the new punch a bunch menu...
the epik pegboard IS the menu! Look look here you are, IN the game!
And also, i'm snatching the Fan Art
that you guys are making in the discord server and i'm putting it up here like little posters and
cards and stuff. I just appreciate you guys so much and i wanted to somehow put you in the game
as a huge thanks for all your amazing support so now if you want to be and punch a bunch join the
discord make some epic fan art or surprise me with something really cool for a chance to land
a spot on the mythical, epik, pegboard!
But hey!
we still got a boss to make!
Clearly, I'm not smart enough to make a neural network but we could use a State Machine. It has a set of tasks to
do it executes them in order and then around it goes it works it's used in most games but
it often ends up feeling a little bit robotic
*game dialogue* "have you seen Armand Christophe?" "don't worry we'll get him"
but my boy morgan hit me up on twitter about some mysterious thing called Utility AI which
is supposed to be a little better and hopefully not too complicated to set up
you give your A.I a certain amount of tasks and it can then score each task based on the situation
it's in and then makes a decision based on the score
Do you understand? No? Yeah me neither which
is why i decided to start with something a little easier. Or shall i say...
Cheesier..
now pay attention!
What you're looking at is a mouse. Okay i made it myself don't judge..
to better understand about
this A.I stuff i decided to put a bunch of mice in this room that run around looking for cheese
okay easy but when you eat cheese there are certain side effects
okay but to keep things tidy we want the mice to go and do their business
in this box here so we need to make sure that the mice start heading to the box before there's
an accident... but also if a mouse goes too long without food it dies oh no
Hahaha!
and i'm thinking that this is the perfect scenario to put our new
Utility AI to the test. The mice will run around looking for food, if it's not hungry enough but
it's "needing to go" it'll make the decision to head to the box. But if it's failing to find
food it will prioritize finding food because it wants to stay alive and
this way the mice will behave a little bit more naturally. To my big surprise
it actually works and it's pretty cool the mice are able to decide when to go to the box depending
on how close to the box they are. If a mouse feels really full but it's kind of needing to go but
not urgently it can still decide to swing by the box in case it's close by and there are a lot of
different configurations i can do with this so i'm actually really happy with this and i can't wait
to try to implement this now and to punch a bunch and actually apply this to something uh useful
While it was pretty easy to set up the mice getting this working for our boxer is going to be a little
bit more complicated first thing was to just get some basics going like being able to move around
the ring. He also needs a way to defend himself so blocking is pretty essential. So the more you punch
him the more likely he is to start blocking so if you start mashing him he's just gonna turtle up
i can also adjust how aggressive or defensive he is, basically whether he'll be more likely
to attack or defend. Some bosses in the game will be very defensive while others will be
a lot more aggressive just to keep things interesting. We also need our boss to look cool
so i took a break and i made this cool bandana for him i think it looks pretty cool what do you think
after weeks of figuring this whole A.I thing out and almost giving up ain't gonna lie i finally
had something up and running that was working what i found really helpful was to first quickly
visualize how the AI would work using Milanote and then use that as a reference when building
it all up in unreal engine this gave me just a good overview to keep referring back to and to
not get lost in the details. Our dude can now lean, move around, block and fight us back and the cool
thing is that he's using all the same controls we are using - there's no cheating involved, he
has all the limitations that you have which.. well i think it's pretty cool! And of course as all bosses
he also needs to have a SPECIAL ATTACK because bosses need to have those.. so i made this super
epic ground slam animation and these smoke puffs inspired by Breath of the Wild. If you get hit by
it; you get dazed and take quite a bit of damage one thing that might be helpful in a boxing game
is to have a health bar the one we currently have looks like this uh yeah i quickly put something a
little bit better together that i think matches the style of the game, i'll probably go back and
change it later - i'm saving some cool references in this board for the final design but i think this
will do for now and i'll keep gathering references as i go. And before i go ahead and actually do the
first fight against the AI and get absolutely wrecked probably.. of course i need to put some
epic drip on my dude. You know what they say, losing is fine so long as you do it in style, am i right
am i right! And here is the result of three months of work for our first epic boss battle!
You wanna knock my thugz off HUH?
hehehe
it's really difficult right now, i had my friend play it and all he sent me was this screen grab
i'm guessing he didn't have a great time heheh. I'm really happy with how this turned out though
because i'm working on this game all alone and i needed a way to quickly make bosses and not have
to program every single battle by hand so this utility ai system i built is really gonna help
me out here and because i have a really difficult boss setup right now i can simply pull back on
the difficulty and start making more beginner friendly bosses and then kind of increase the
difficulty as you climb the ranks. If you guys have any awesome ideas for bosses, what they could do
and what they would look like - drop a comment below and if you want to make some fan art remember to
join a discord community and i'll put YOUR art in the menu! Make sure it looks good though hey
and guys remember to support Milanote for their generosity give it a try for your next project
i promise you won't be disappointed use the link below in the description to sign up completely
free of charge! And of course if you want to play Punch A Bunch when i release it head over to Steam
and give it a wish list. If you want to support the channel the best thing you can do is simply
watch another video - there's lots to choose from and it really gives the channel that
sweet algorithm juice in fact just leave a playlist running in the background while you play
fortnite or something i don't know okay that's it for me i'll see you in the next video bye