Hey Party Panic! fans,

Chris here!

We've started month 3 of development, and I've been hard at work on a new minigame called Chicken. This week, I focused entirely on bringing this challenging, skill-based minigame to life.

Introducing Chicken

In Chicken, players need to cross 10 lanes of traffic without getting hit, all while racing against their opponents. This minigame combines both chance and skill, making it the hardest of all the Party Panic! minigames so far.

AI Obstacles and Solutions

I encountered a surprising number of challenges when working on the AI for Chicken. My initial plan was to use Unreal Engine's built-in AI sight perception, but it only detects pawns and character classes by default. While I managed to make it detect the cars, the detection was too slow to be useful – the NPCs would walk into the cars before detecting them.

To solve this issue, I designed an array of hitboxes around the NPCs to detect the cars. However, attaching the hitboxes to the NPCs caused them to rotate along with the NPCs when turning, which wasn't the desired behavior.

Ultimately, I found a solution by spawning the array at the player's location and moving it with the player. It worked like a charm! In fact, it works so well that sometimes the NPCs can complete the minigame on their first try. This just goes to show that Chicken is a challenging minigame where only the best can win!

Stay tuned for more updates on Party Panic! as we continue developing new minigames and refining the overall experience. Your support means the world to us!

Keep the party going!

Chris, Party Panic! Developer