With the basics set up, it was time to (finally) work on AI. s&box provided a `NavMeshAgent` component that could find paths and avoid collisions, but I encountered a funny problem—bots kept sliding around like they were on ice.After searching in Discord for advice, I ended up creating my own agent from scratch, directly interfacing with the NavMesh API. The task was simple: fetch a path using `GetSimplePath` and store it until an update was needed. I had to sacrifice crowd control features, but it worked.
A day later, I had an AI bot that could follow the player and shoot. By then, it was already January 8.One more note—I didn’t dive in headfirst. Instead, I decided to start with something simpler. I thought about mimicking NPC behavior from Half-Life 2—they never seemed particularly smart to me, but they also weren’t just standing around like statues. They’d either move around randomly or take cover. So this became both my first step and my "bare minimum" approach.
