Spatial Fear Dev Kit » Guides

Scripted Pawns


Introduction

Since Spatial Fear is a single player game, we need to use single player AI. Unreal Tournament already includes the ScriptedPawn class which is designed for Single Player use. The Spatial Fear creatures are a subclass of the scripted pawn, thus they work just like a Scriped Pawn does. A number of guides an tutorials exist which tell you how to work with scripted pawns, so I won't go over that in this guide. What I will do, however, is go through a few techniques that we keep internal to the team, somewhat as "tools of the trade." (note: in this public release, we are not going to reveal all of our techniques). Let's run through them.

Custom CreatureFactory Spawning

As you are probably aware, there are several advantages and disadvantages to using a CreatureFactory to spawn creatures. It allows you to add them only when neccessary, keep them hidden until needed, and allows for better control of their exact behavior. However, you cannot customize the creature's every feature, as the class' default properties are referenced instead of a customized actor.

To get around this, you can create a new subclass, change it's default properties, and reference that class in the CreatureFactory. I'll go through the required steps here.