Modding:Entity Behavior taskai

This server side entity behavior runs one or more tasks for the entity. The tasks are assigned through the aitasks property as part of applying the behavior to the entity.

Tasks are either active (aka executing or running) or inactive. Each task is assigned a slot, in the range 0 to 7. Multiple tasks are often assigned to the same slot, but only one task can be active per slot.

Tasks are assigned a priority. The behavior will run the highest priority task that is able to run for the slot. When there are multiple tasks with the same priority, the task's order in the list is used as a tie-breaker, where entries earlier in the list are preferred.

Sometimes a higher priority task is initially unable to run, but later is able to run, which causes the current active task to be cancelled and replaced with the higher priority task. When considering whether to cancel an active task, its cancel priority is considered instead of its regular priority. Setting the cancel priority high allows an otherwise low priority task to run to completion once it starts.

For example, the locust has the meleeattack at priority 3 on slot 0, and seekentity at priority 1.5 (and cancel priority 1.5) on slot 0. Initially when the player is not in range, meleeattack is unable to run, because its ShouldExecute method returns false when the target entity is out of melee attack range. So the seekentity task is run first, even though it is lower priority. After the seekentity task gets the locust within range of the player, the meleeattack task is able to run. So the seekentity task is canceled and replaced with meleeattack, because they share the same slot. After the attack, meleeattack enters cooldown and becomes inactive. So the seekentity task resumes.

Debugging

Ram with the seekfoodandeat task active at priority 1.35

Turning on entitydebuginfo puts a text box above each entity. The text box shows the active tasks (along with their priority and cancel priority), emotional state, and currently running animations.

Entity debug info has to be turned on on both the server (with /entity debug 1) and client side (with .clientconfig showentitydebuginfo 1). With just the server side, the server sends the extra debug information to the client, but the client does not display it. With just the client side, it will display the active animations, but it will not get the task status from the server.

All Tasks

Task Name	Explanation	Example entities	Properties
bellalarm
butterflychase
butterflyfeedonflowers
butterflyflee
butterflyrest
butterflywander
cometoowner
eidolonmeleeattack
eidolonslam
fishmovefast
fishoutofwater
fleeentity
flycircle
flyswoopattack
getoutofwater
gotoentity
idle
jealousmeleeattack
jealousseekentity
lookaround
lookatentity
meleeattack
meleeattacktargetingentity
seekblockandlay
seekentity
seekfoodandeat
seektargetingentity
stayclosetoentity
stayclosetoguardedentity
throwatentity
useinventory
wander

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