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Idle Motion

Overview

Idle Motion is fallback steering for agents with low target awareness. It picks a seeded random planar direction, keeps it for a time window, then changes to another direction.

In motion, this makes unfocused agents drift, shuffle, or wander slightly instead of standing perfectly still. It is subtle by default and meant to support believable crowd behavior when agents are not confidently tracking a target.

This behavior contributes polish rather than pressure. It helps the swarm look alive when awareness drops, but it is not a replacement for pursuit or recovery logic.

Parameter Reference

Advanced Parameters

All parameters here are advanced — leave at defaults unless you have a reason

Use Idle Motion

  • Visible effect — Low-awareness agents keep moving a little instead of freezing.
  • Gameplay effect — Makes crowds feel less robotic when idle, far away, or temporarily lost.
  • Increase when — You want ambient motion or better fallback behavior.
  • Decrease when — Idle agents should stay planted or behavior should be very explicit.
  • Pitfalls — On its own, this does not create purpose. It only fills dead air.
  • Technical effect — Adds the idle-motion pass. The effect is scaled by 1 - target awareness, so fully aware agents ignore it.

Idle Motion Weight

  • Visible effect — Higher values create stronger wandering.
  • Gameplay effect — More ambient life, but also more drift away from precise positions.
  • Increase when — Lost or idle agents look too static.
  • Decrease when — Random drift makes enemies look confused.
  • Pitfalls — Too high makes agents look drunk or disconnected from the target.
  • Technical effect — Scales random idle steering when awareness is low.

Direction Change Interval

  • Visible effect — Short intervals look twitchier; long intervals produce longer drifts.
  • Gameplay effect — Short values feel nervous, long values feel lazy or shambling.
  • Increase when — You want smoother shambling or subtle idle movement.
  • Decrease when — You want restless insect-like or panic-like motion.
  • Pitfalls — Very short intervals can look noisy, especially in a large crowd.
  • Technical effect — Seconds before the random direction is refreshed.

Timing Jitter

  • Visible effect — Breaks synchronization so agents do not all turn at once.
  • Gameplay effect — Makes ambient motion feel less artificial.
  • Increase when — The crowd updates in visible lockstep.
  • Decrease when — You want more regular beat-like motion.
  • Pitfalls — At 0, timing is uniform. At 1, timing variation is wide; combined with high weight it can look chaotic.
  • Technical effect — Randomizes each agent's interval around the base interval.

Practical Usage Guidance

Use Idle Motion for zombie hordes, shamblers, off-target packs, or any enemy set where low-awareness drift looks better than hard stops. It is especially useful alongside Approach And Surround → Use Out-of-Sight Fallback, because awareness can naturally drop when agents fall outside Sight Distance.

It works well alongside lost-target recovery because leader following can keep some motion going while idle motion fills the gaps when awareness is nearly gone. It is also useful in sample scenes where stationary agents quickly look fake.

Do not lean on this for active combatants. If an enemy should always know where the player is and always push with intent, keep this subtle or disabled.

Gameplay Interpretation

This behavior makes enemies feel less mechanically precise. Low values read as subtle shuffling; high values read as confusion or feral motion.

It can make a crowd feel more alive between strong steering beats, but pushed too far it also slightly reduces player readability.

Quickstart — tune in this order

Tune Idle Motion Weight first. Most of the time that is the only value that needs meaningful adjustment. Then change Direction Change Interval if the movement cadence feels too twitchy or too sleepy. Leave Timing Jitter near 0.5 unless you specifically see crowd-wide synchronization.