Spear Fishing

For another game jam, I created a box2d slime monster that moved around by shooting ropes of slime that attached to stuff and made it possible to pull the slime forwards.

I now have a playable character and the slime blobs also hunt humans now, which is "cool" I guess. But the blobs are slow and have to get in close to start eating  and... well, it's kinda boring. I want something visceral...

...so how about the slime blobs shoot slimey tentacles at the humans and pull them in? To get out of such a pickle, the human would have to shine the flashlight on the blob, making it flee and severing the "rope" to it. 

This affects a lot of things, but mainly the AI system. I use my own home-brewed utility AI, which is simply a set of actions an agent can perform, actions that have a score function. At any given moment the agent will simply perform the highest-scoring action. 

So the action for hunting has been "FindAndMoveTowardsFood" which is a bit much for an action, making it way too complex. I will break this up into several actions, one that is "look for food", one that is "move towards food" and lastly, and the newest part of it, "chuck a spear at the food".

Oh, and lets not forget the "eat the food" one either...

It shouldn't be too hard to do this...