Lots of nitpicky stuff to get done before any real progress on the engine can be done. I really needed to put some time into the play creator screen to get everything working correctly. At least now I have something that's fairly stable, and transfers all the correct information to the engine.
Once I got all that done, it became obvious that my pocket movement AI was totally messed up. The QB would never get to his drop correctly, and would do some freaking out before finally throwing the ball to some random receiver. In the end, it was a mismatch between the distance a player moves in a frame, and the distance we count as being at his target. The move distance was more than the arrival distance, so the QB was just bouncing back and forth over his move target. ugh, dumb error.....
Once that was fixed, everything started working a lot better. I have a basic man defense AI in there, so the QB has something to read receiver openness against. Right now the QBs are still too good at reading defense. I'll have to find a good way to add a little more gunslinger into the mix.
In this shot, the QB was on his 4th read before he found the open receiver streaking up the middle.
I think there's enough here for me to spend a decent amount of time getting this AI right, before moving on to more AI. The things I want to lock in are:
- All the QB passing AI (reading and throwing)
- Receiver and defender adjustment to the ball while it's in the air
- Pass blocking
- Pass rushing
- Man defense positioning and reaction
- Various pathfinding
Also, the snow is finally melting so I can get out and work off some of this belly!