My AI was standing right there. The player was in front of it. But nothing happened.
This post is part of my daily learning journey in game development.
I’m sharing what I learn each day — the basics, the confusion, and the real progress — from the perspective of a beginner.
On Day 34 of my game development journey, I learned about AI Perception in Unreal Engine 5, mainly how AI Sight actually works.
What I tried / learned today
I created a Blueprint Character class for my AI and set its Animation Mode to use an Animation Blueprint.
After assigning the mesh and animation blueprint, I added AI Perception from the Components panel.
Inside AI Perception, I added a Sense Config and chose AI Sight.
I configured the sight settings:
- Sight Radius: 200
- Lose Sight Radius: 250
- Peripheral Vision Angle: 60 degrees
- Max Age: 5 seconds
I also enabled:
- Detect Enemies
- Detect Neutrals
Later, I learned that the player character is treated as Neutral by default.
I set the Dominant Sense to AI Sight and added another sense: AI Damage, which reacts when the AI takes damage.
To make perception memory work properly, I went to:
Project Settings → Engine → AI System
and enabled Forget Stale Actors.
What confused me
At first, the AI didn’t detect the player at all.
I was confused because:
- I didn’t know the player is Neutral by default
- Max Age didn’t seem to work
- The AI forgot the player instantly
- I didn’t understand what Dominant Sense actually does
It felt like the system was broken.
What worked or finally clicked
I finally understood that:
- Detect Neutrals must be enabled for the AI to see the player
- Forget Stale Actors must be turned on for Max Age to work
- Dominant Sense is the main sense the AI relies on most
Once everything was set correctly, AI Sight started behaving more like real vision.
AI Damage also made sense — it only triggers when the AI is actually hit.
One lesson for beginners
- Always check affiliation settings
- Sight Radius should be smaller than Lose Sight Radius
- Max Age controls how long the AI remembers targets
- AI Perception needs Blueprint logic to react
- Multiple senses can work together
Slow progress — but I’m building a strong foundation.
If you’re also learning game development,
what was the first thing that confused you when you started?
See you in the next post 🎮🚀
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