Smart Enemy AI | (Part 13: Mage Enemy) | Tutorial in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)

[@LegendOfCalvas]

I've said it a few times, and I will say it again: this guy is the best UE teacher on KZbin, hands down!

[@kellowattentertainment]

Agreed.

[@greatoni8452]

You right! Ali is the best

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you so much for the support and thank you both as well. I'm just happy that this content keeps providing value for you 🙏❤️

[@greatoni8452]

@@AliElZoheiry my dear friend it's true. Everything loves you. Thank you Dante. I know about your channel. Your AI is better and amazing and first time I can see projectile tutorial. It's just awesome

[@motivation_nation_yesterday]

K hes good but what about gorka games ???

[@Yggdrasil777]

Not going to lie, @39:20 that is some of the coolest teleporting effects I've ever seen. I may have to try this and keep it in. Loving the circling effect.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hahahah yeah it was really cool! Too bad it was a bug 😅

[@kellowattentertainment]

Finally... I've waited so long for another episode. This guy is amazing

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you, I appreciate the support 🙏

[@mebessusn]

I love the idea of using actual character movement instead of teleport to move the Mage enemy. Very cool hack to turn her into a ball and leave a trail too. Thanks so much for this series!

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you! Indeed this method helps overcome some issues because it still uses navigation to teleport, so if there are walls or obstacles, then the teleport will go around them ;)

[@PaulHousego]

Another excellent UE5 tutorial by Ali.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you Paul 🙏 I will be uploading the new projects files to Patreon shortly

[@XvirusX]

thank you for the tutorials i gave up on my dream on making games and i want to start again in the future you are the best that i found on youtube :D

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you so much! Glad that you like the content, and I wish you the best of luck on your game. If you enjoy the process, then dont quit and just keep having fun with it

[@DouyeWilliams2696]

Watching your tutorials is giving me joy. Thank you Mr Ali. Also I sent you a message via discord.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thanks again Deji! I'm very glad that you are enjoying it 🙏

[@vyshnavk1117]

Love from India, You are so Amazing!! Thank you for your tutorials

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you for watching and for saying that. Glad you liked it 😊🙏

[@Noob-nc5jq]

You tutorial series of AI is so good ❤❤

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you for the support, I really appreciate it 😊🙏

[@ProgramProgra]

Finely Part 13 😂❤ I've been wondering why you can't do two videos on the one week?

[@AliElZoheiry]

For part 14 I've already finished it, just uploaded it now, you can get early access here kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5ysaXiBrrqmb7M I will be putting live for everyone shortly. Generally though I can't make 2 videos every week because it takes a very long time to plan, record and edit each video

[@potasmash]

For everyone, idk if thats a 5.3 thing, but i also had to set the fly braking deceleration to 99999, otherwise the teleport brakes and goes really slow :)

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, thanks for sharing that tip! It's always helpful to have these little tweaks to ensure everything works smoothly 😊

[@kingswood81]

Hi, I need someone's help please. The Mage does not teleport for me. At 39:22 is the first time she should teleport. But when I get out of her line of sight she just sits there and does nothing. I have redone the tutorial about 4 times now and I can't see what I am missing. She will chase and shoot at me when I am in her sight, but when she loses sight the Behaviour Tree looks for BT_Enemy_Ranged seems to be stuck with ROOT being highlighted in yellow.

[@kingswood81]

Actually I think I worked it out. The Attack Target Key in the BTD_CanSeeTarget decorator in BT_Enemy_Ranged got randomly changed to Self. Changed it back to AttackTarget which fixed the issue.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey! Glad to hear you fixed it 🙏

[@UNDERKING_UDK]

Wow~! This is a great, complete tutorial!

[@AliElZoheiry]

Indeed, everything you need to create an enemy from scratch. Glad you enjoyed it

[@TheZumer]

We need an animation tutorial pls u r great

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, thank you for your suggestion! I'll definitely take it into account for future content 😉 Do you have any specific type of animation tutorial in mind that you'd like to see?

[@ambvil3222]

​@@AliElZoheiry Wssp Ali, it's a good suggestion from @TheZumer. A strong video as you always did on create an animation (Blender,UE?) and use it like a normal anim. Thanks again for all the knowledge bringed to the community.

[@lonewolfenock3527]

Best AI tutorial I've ever seen. 👍 (Others are 'make AI follow you. The end'). I noticed something 'annoying'. When the AI strafs, they pass the player (1:07) to go to the target location. (Which makes the AI very vulnerable to player's attack). The teleport is okay because it bypasses the player completely (1:06). What would be a good practice to have the AI avoid the 'players attack zone/range' when strafing?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you, glad you liked it 🙏❤️ Indeed the strafe for the ranged (and now the mage) enemy is annoying me as well, that's because we pick the point that's furthest away from the player and tell the enemy to go there, a better solution would be: Pick the point that's furthest away from the player, but closest to the enemy, that way we ensure that this point is never across from the player, because that will always be further away from the enemy.

[@RyanCSUMB]

Hey Ali, great tutorial as always! Just one issue for me. Around 46:31 when we edit the collisions of the projectile this did fix the enemy hitting itself, but now my player cast always blows up on my own player. Any idea where I might have gone wrong for this?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey! Glad you enjoyed the tutorial! 🙏 To prevent the projectiles from colliding with the owner, I use the "Ignore actor when moving" node on both the projectile and the character capsule, that is what prevents that. You can also checkout my dedicated "Shooting projectiles" tutorial to learn more

[@legenderry25]

bro... I wish everybody would create their tutorials with custom chars. Using the unreal mannequin especially when dealing with animations is pure deception.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Glad you liked that. Indeed I wanted to avoid using the mannequin to tackle any issues that have already been fixed in the mannequin without us knowing

[@ДинарВасильев]

Прекрасно как всегда👍

[@AliElZoheiry]

Спасибо большое за ваш отзыв! Рад, что вам понравилось! 🙏

[@DavidGWilliams1981]

I switched to "LeftHand" for the get socket location for magic spell in BP_enemy_mage b/c when i was using the "RightHand" location, it kept hitting themselves when firing sometimes, hope this helps someone. The teleporting and effects are awesome, love it, thanks!

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you for sharing your solution, if you are still hitting yourself you have to make sure to call ignore actor when moving on the projectile and the capsule

[@stuartfrohna7470]

This is by far the most helpful UE tutorial I've seen. I finished the series but have one issue that has persisted, in my file, the teleport speed is much slower than in the project files, the code is exactly the same and after still having the issue copied the code over from the project files directly but still the boss and the mage move mores slowly in my project vs the project files. Does anyone have a solution for this?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey there, glad you're enjoying this series and finding it useful! The only thing I can think of for why your teleport speed is slower, is the character movement settings on your enemy BP, there are a few factors that can slow down your character, that's ground friction, max acceleration and max speed. Check these values and make sure they are not too high or too low.

[@DavidGWilliams1981]

Make sure you set the correct movement mode in the teleport event in BP_Enemy_Mage from the character movement component. I accidentally had mine set to falling, when I thought I had it set to flying. That may be the problem.

[@medricss]

First of all your tutorials helped me a lot! I am new to unreal engine and startet creating my own game with the help of your tutorials. Thanks! Right now i am stuck at an architecture related question. Maybe you can help me out with your knowledge and experience: I have implemented an Attacks Actor Component like you have and have some attacks already implemented in there. While implementing the attacks inside the component i started to include more and more general variables to modify the attacks through the event parameters as much as possible. For example: adding spawn sound, spawn effect, trigger effect and trigger sound variables… now i have very generic attack events but the event itself has like 20 parameters. i dont think this is the best way. i was implementing it like this, because i have many different player actors (different heros) that dont have the same attacks but often only the effects and sounds are different. Now i am wondering if it would be best to have a lot of attack events in the attack actor component, that are almost the same and only differentiate in the events and sounds played or if i should have a lot of attack actors that have the correct effects and sounds already set and can be selected in the specific attack events in the attack actor component or if my current way is a good way to implement a lot of different attacks? I also thought about putting only the attacks in the attack actor component, that the heros and enemies share and the hero specific attacks inside the hero BP. The only concern i have with this is, that it also would be a lot duplicated code.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey! I’m glad to hear my tutorials have been helpful for you 🙏 As for your architecture question, it sounds like you're on the right track thinking about code organization. It might be beneficial to explore a mix of your current approach and the other options you mentioned. Having shared attacks in the component while keeping character-specific variations in their respective blueprints could help reduce duplication while still maintaining flexibility. You could also consider creating structs or data assets for your attack parameters to keep things manageable. Alternatively, you can pick up a different approach. By taking the common part of the attack (like the trace or projectile) out of the attack itself and it it's own funciton, then you can use the "composition pattern" to compose your attacks. I did something similar in part 18 of this series, check it out

[@medricss]

@@AliElZoheiry This sounds good, thanks. I will take a look in Part 18. I also read about the GAS being very useful when having a lot of Abilities planned in the game. Do you have any thoughts on that? Could this resolve my architecture question? There are not many tutorials on how to use the GAS in Blueprints only. Have you thought about making a series to that topic?

[@AliElZoheiry]

@@medricss Yeah GAS is made exactly for that, it has a steep learning curve though and is only useful if you have many abilities/attacks but I highly recommend it!

[@medricss]

@@AliElZoheiry Nice to hear! Then i will start learning it and combine it with the architecture you recommended me and show in your videos 👍 Have you planned a tutorial series for GAS?

[@AliElZoheiry]

I'm using GAS in my own projects and I really like it. Once i have a better grasp of all its use cases and downsides, then I'll make a series about it

[@LuinLuth]

ahaha Like a Boss Enemy ! I like it.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Good eye, exactly like that 👍

[@star0gamer0player]

I did all the things you did, for some reason my enemy stays in place when teleporting(okay i fixed it, there was no EQS before the teleport task XD )

[@AliElZoheiry]

Ahh that would do it 😅

[@sebastianmoran5966]

My mage enemy's projectile doesn't hit the target, but always going into a spesific location instead. Any ideas?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey! It sounds like you might need to check the logic for setting up the "Target" in the projectile, make sure you are passing a correct target

[@derakon4791]

Wow it's so cool

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you! Glad you liked it 🙏

[@dynamicplayz1897]

Hey so my enemy is sometimes flying up in the Teleport sequence which isnt causing it to vanish for a few seconds only to randomly interrupt the ai move to node, any idea how to fix this? I've tried using a timeline to fix its velocity of Z to be 0 at every update but that didnt help

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, not really sure what's happening there. but note that when we teleport the enemy, we set the state to "flying" in order to zero out any ground friction, that also means that the enemy can now move up in the Z direction, so make sure that the location you are telling the AI to go to is not in the air

[@dynamicplayz1897]

@@AliElZoheiry it is on a flat surface, and the end location is on the same level as I checked with a debug sphere but it just flies above it sometimes

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hmm.. very strange, the only thing I can think of that would cause the character to move up and not directly to the target location if there is negative gravity or something similar pulling the AI up@@dynamicplayz1897

[@dynamicplayz1897]

@@AliElZoheiry I fixed it by not changing the mode to flying instead just changed the normal movement params, no idea why this happened but its all good now

[@tonypauley6720]

I have similar issues. If my level has any locations not on the flat surface, the mage flies off, sometimes never to return. To fix this I simply changed the mode to walking. There does not seem to be any issues with friction.

[@twitchtutkunu576]

Hello Ali, I need a little help. The characters do damage to me but they cannot deal damage to each other and I checked this with print string and it says false. Where should I check?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey! I believe I answered your other comment

[@InnerspaceX]

Hi, another idea: If ai get big damage, fall with ragdoll, and then wake up from the actual ragdoll pose.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thanks for the suggestion Imr, I'm considering indeed something like other reactions to damage, i.e stagger, knockback, stun, etc..

[@roydash5657]

I am really so grateful for you. I wish God always helps you my dear friend. Thank you so much helping me. I am really don't know what say. You really very good person

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you Roy ❤️🙏

[@roydash5657]

@@AliElZoheiry I am really so gladly

[@greatoni8452]

Ali you can making damage system? But, multiple damage system just because player should damaged not only one enemy. I am mean like a projecttile damage system but, for Melee weapons

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, I'm not really sure what you mean, but the damage system works for both the player and the enemy, and for both melee and projectile attacks, but if you are saying that you want me to add a melee attack to the player as well, then yes, I will do that soon

[@greatoni8452]

@@AliElZoheiry Yes. It's I am mean. And I am mean character can damaged 3 enemies same time?

[@greatoni8452]

@@AliElZoheiry Ali I mean the player can damaged 3 or many enemies at the same time? Multiple damage

[@aryantzh2028]

can i implementing this blueprints on ue4 too?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thanks for your comment! While the specific features may vary slightly between UE5 and UE4, the overall blueprint concepts and logic should generally be transferable. Feel free to adapt the knowledge from this tutorial to your UE4 projects. Good luck!

[@saberfs7507]

A great tutorial, could you tell me what to do if the projectile does not change its original direction, although all the conditions from the previous video tutorials are fulfilled correctly, and when choosing a specific target through the BP of the projectile, the trajectory changes

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey there, it sounds like the velocity isn't updating, so either you didn't add a "Target" to follow, or you're not updating the velocity correctly. Can't think of anything else

[@maciejgrzegorzoprzadek7401]

I had the same problem! I fixed it by going to BP of the projectile, then on ProjectileMovement component I ticked "Rotation Follows Velocity". Hope that helps!

[@kellowattentertainment]

I have one question, can you please show us how to implement the bocking functionality for the Player Character using the damage system?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Indeed, I was considering doing that along with the boss enemy AI, to show how to block and parry the boss attacks, so I'll probably do it sooner

[@dustanschutte8724]

Hey there. I made my character have the blocking function just like the enemy melee. I literally copied the new blocking set up in the melee Enemy from part 12 and instead having events to call the Block, I just set a keyboard bind to start the block. So therefore, at any time you could block any incoming damage.

[@Yggdrasil777]

Yeah, you just do the same implementation from the enemy on the player. What I do is make a base character and have the player and enemy stem from that base. Put all of the goodies on the base and implement them on the enemy via functions and events and inputs on the player.

[@AliElZoheiry]

@@Yggdrasil777 indeed, having a common base for both the player and the enemy is a good approach, I would highly recommend it

[@jiwik731]

Hello. Awesome work as always. But is there a way how to blend animation montage by bone or something like in anim BP? Because when you are running and start to play animation montage the legs are overwritten by the montage and pawn is sliding. There have to be a way how to ignore or blend some bones in montages because stopping the whole movement in game once hit or something just to play the montage is too disruptive to gameplay. It is easy in animation BP with blend by bone but i have no idea how to do it via animation montage.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, thank you! Yeah you can blend the waiting animations with a montage indeed, but then you have to add an "UpperBody Slot" in your anim BP, then blend that upper body slot to the regular locomotion state (Using the 'Layered blend per bone" node) and then change the slot in the montage itself from default to upperBody

[@jiwik731]

​@@AliElZoheiry I knew there have to be a way. Thanks. It sounds easy enough.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey Jiwik, just wanted to let you know that I'll be covering this exact use case (blending upper body from a montage with lower body from ABP) in my next tutorial (coming tomorrow) so hope it helps you ;)

[@jiwik731]

@@AliElZoheiry Oh yes.... it would be awesome. :)

[@gavincole2015]

After creating a child of the base enemy and setting move speeds and ideal ranges, my mage does not stop moving around to attack. Carried on through part of the video and after adding blueprints to attack, still nothing. Any help would be appreciated

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey Gavin, I'm not sure I understand the problem. It's best to join the Discord server so you can ask your question there with some screenshots/videos. Link in the description

[@Smyyytth]

I have the same issue. The Mage is just walking around. It doesn't attack. It just jumps over the attack node in the BT and keeps walking around. Any idea?@@AliElZoheiry

[@AliElZoheiry]

If it just over the attack node, that it means it's succeeding but not attacking, but if it fails at the attack node, that means that something inside the node is not calling the finish execute. Just try to trace the code by adding breakpoints and see where it stops ​@@Smyyytth

[@Goatman480]

I'm not sure if anyone else ran into this, since this comment, but I have. I double clicked on attack start in the interface tab. By doing that, it is moved to the functions tab and overrode it, so the attack never starts. Just delete it from the functions tab.

[@Nucids23]

Hello, the animations of the mage loop while he walks, so he seems to teleport forth and back while walking, how can I solve this?

[@AliElZoheiry]

Not really sure what you mean, can you describe the problem more?

[@Nucids23]

@@AliElZoheiryTake the Walk Forward animation from Mixamo, for example. You can see the character going forward and then the animation resetting, resulting in the mage "Respawning" back in the first position and then repeating the animation. The same thing happens in unreal: the animation plays and the mesh goes forward, but then he goes back to the start of the animation over and over, resulting in it jittering while walking. Sorry if I didn't describe it perfectly and thank you a lot, you're amazing :)

[@Nucids23]

@@AliElZoheiryIt's basically the same thing you explained in the first minutes of part 15 of this series , still I don't know how to fix it

[@Nucids23]

@@AliElZoheiryI also followed the part 15 of this tutorial and my enemy keeps jumping over and over without landing and he also doesn't strafe anymore, sorry for disturbing so much

[@AliElZoheiry]

Ahh sounds like you downloaded the Mixamo animation without clicking on the "In place" checkbox, this forces the animation to be in place and removes root motion, you don't want root motion in your walking animation, otherwise both the animation and the controller will move the character forward @Leonardo-zb6ho

[@JoshNevel-i7s]

Thank you

[@AliElZoheiry]

You're welcome! I'm glad you found the tutorial helpful. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

[@Maxred-92]

Hi Ali, thanks for this tutorial...I'm improving every day thanks to you. I followed all of your instructions but when the enemy mage cast the 'fireball', isn't direct to the player, but always in the same direction (I don't know what is aiming, but it's fixed direction) I followed all the tutorial right now: I connected the target of 'magic spell' to attack target in the BP_EnemyMage, but when I go over the 'attack target' in 'event attack', it says ''current value=none''. Have you got any suggestions? It seems like the cast doesn't read the target

[@CCCRWWE]

I had the same problem

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey there, glad you're enjoying the content. If the attack target is null, make sure that you are correctly passing it from the behavior tree task where the attack function is called.

[@CCCRWWE]

I fixed it yeah, I ticked Rotation Follows Velocity and Initial Velocity in Local Space and it works fine now.

[@Maxred-92]

@@CCCRWWE I set both, the enemy cast is correct, but the player cast isn't correct and is directed to 0,0,0. have you got suggestions?

[@CCCRWWE]

@@Maxred-92 My character only has melee attacks

[@specops2925]

Niiiiceee amazing😍👍... Your skills are completely awesome thanks Ali sensei..... I have problems actually im using UE4 every thing good but when I reach Damage System Tutorial i got some issues in Enemy Base Widget

[@specops2925]

When I add create a variable Of Damage System and use it On begin play in Enemy Base the widget not giving me Self on Variable Damage System

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey SpecOps, thank you 🙏 really glad you liked it. Regarding your problem, I'm not really sure I understand the issue, so if you would like to post your question on Discord with some screenshots, that would be very helpful

[@Lifeequipment]

Hi bro plz make shooter enemy like call of duty

[@AliElZoheiry]

Hey, most of the techniques I showed in this series can be applied to a shooter, so you should be able to make your own using these tutorials as well

[@screenapple1660]

How can I create an AI enemy that can pick up a dead body over its shoulder and hide it in one of three different dumpsters, while being followed by a cop? If the player opens a dumpster and finds nothing. The cop should beat the player for lying.

[@AliElZoheiry]

Wow that's very specific 😅 The AI logic here isn't complicated, it's just finding the location of the dead body in the world and going to it, and dough the same for a random dumpster. But you'll need a lot of animations to make it look realistic

[@xenocreatives6456]

Coooooooooooooooooooooollll!!! :)

[@AliElZoheiry]

Glad you think so 🙏

[@Сма_йлик]

[@AliElZoheiry]

Glad you like it ;)

[@yingmo8041]

真强

[@AliElZoheiry]

Thank you 🙏

[@krzysztofbulicz416]

First 4:25 nice Then 6:31 meh

[@AliElZoheiry]

Any more specific feedback you can provide to help me improve?

[@krzysztofbulicz416]

@@AliElZoheiry Sorry you did well. However you telling that you will create this by yourself, and I was expecting to see an new interesting way. Then You just copied it from Unreal's Mannequin, and that was just disappointing. Especially that Epic sometimes changes its implementation and it can quickly become outdated.

[@AliElZoheiry]

@@krzysztofbulicz416 Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated 🙏