Awareness¶

Overview¶

Awareness decides how long an agent has to look at something before it reacts, and how long it keeps believing once that something is gone. In motion, this is the difference between an archetype that turns on a target the instant it spots it and one that needs a good look first, and between an archetype that gives up the moment it loses sight and one that keeps hunting for a while after. Reach for it once Sight is already telling agents when they notice a target, and you want to shape how they react to that.

Lives on the Perception Profile, and runs regardless of the Behavior Profile

Awareness is a section of the archetype's Perception Profile asset. It rises and falls every step for any agent carrying a profile, whether or not Approach & Press is enabled on the Behavior Profile: the value it produces, Target Awareness, is read by Idle Motion, by TryGetAgentTargetAwareness and by the Swarm Debug window. The recovery ladder does not read it, and runs off the target the agent knows about instead.

The Simple and Advanced grouping used elsewhere on these pages does not apply here. Both fields matter equally and there is nothing to leave at a default.

Parameter Reference¶

Simple Parameters¶

Both fields shape the same curve, from opposite ends

Acquire Time¶

Visible effect: How long an agent has to keep seeing a target before it reacts. Until that time is up the agent has no target: it carries on wandering or resting, with Idle Motion fading out as its awareness climbs. Then it turns and chases. At 0 it reacts on the very step it spots something.
Gameplay effect: This is the reaction delay. A player who crosses a gap or peeks round a corner for less than Acquire Time is not chased, and not searched for afterwards. In a crowd it staggers the reaction, because each agent starts counting when it first sees the player, so a horde wakes in a wave and not all on one frame.
Increase when: The player should be able to slip past by breaking the sightline quickly, or the archetype should read as slow or half asleep.
Decrease when: Any sighting, however short, should start a chase. Robots and sentries read well near 0.
Pitfalls: Only a first sighting waits. A noise, a hit, an Alert Spread call, EmitStimulus and NotifyAgentStimulus are acted on at once, and so is a target the agent still remembers. With Alert Spread on, the first agent to finish its Acquire Time calls its neighbours and they come straight away, so in a tight crowd you see one delay and not one per agent. A look cut short is not thrown away either: the awareness it built fades at the Forget Time rate, so two glimpses close together add up, and a long Forget Time makes that window long. Lastly, the agent has to keep the target in its Field Of View for the whole time, and an idle agent wanders and turns, so a narrow cone with a long Acquire Time notices late.
Technical effect: While Sight is detecting a target the agent does not know yet, awareness rises toward full at a rate of one divided by this value per second. The agent learns the target, and can select it, on the step awareness reaches full. Until then Target Awareness shows the climb and the Swarm Debug window reads Noticing A Target. At 0 it learns the target on the same step.

Forget Time¶

Visible effect: How long it takes an agent's awareness to fade, and its memory of the target's last position to release, once nothing is detecting the target any more.
Gameplay effect: Decides how big a break in contact this archetype shrugs off. A short value makes it forget the instant it loses sight, reading as short-sighted. A long value makes it keep hunting for a while after losing contact, reading as persistent.
Increase when: Enemies should hold a grudge and keep hunting for a while after losing the target around a corner.
Decrease when: Enemies should give up quickly and return to their default behavior once contact is lost.
Pitfalls: This is also the entire clock Searching runs on. Searching has no timer of its own: it walks toward the last seen spot until awareness has faded to zero. An agent that saw its target searches for the whole of Forget Time. One that was only told about it, by an Alert Spread call or a noise, starts from that call's Strength and searches for that share of it. At 0 that share is nothing: a call or a noise is forgotten as soon as it lands, so Alert Spread and every noise do nothing for the archetype. Raising Forget Time to make an archetype hold a grudge longer and raising it to make Searching last longer are the same knob, not two separate ones.
Technical effect: While nothing is detecting the target, awareness falls toward 0 at a rate of one divided by this value per second. Reaching 0 clears the agent's known-target state and, unless a stimulus still holds a position, its last known position.

Practical Usage Guidance¶

Tune Awareness for any archetype where a player who ducks out of sight early should get away with it, or where losing a pursuer around a corner should feel like a real escape rather than an instant reset. It pairs naturally with Sight: a longer Range with a longer Acquire Time gives an enemy that can see far but needs a proper look, while a short Range with a near-zero Acquire Time gives one that commits the moment anything enters its view.

Skip tuning it, and skip a Perception Profile entirely, for a boss or a scripted always-aware enemy that should never lose the player. Awareness exists to make noticing and forgetting gradual; an encounter that should never do either does not need it.

Gameplay Interpretation¶

Acquire Time is how good a look the enemy needs. Near 0 any glimpse starts a chase; higher values let the player cross its view if they are quick. Forget Time is its memory. Short values read as an archetype that loses interest the instant it cannot see you; long values read as one that remembers where you went and keeps checking.

Quickstart: tune in this order

Set Forget Time first. It decides both how long a chase survives a broken sightline and, if Searching is on, how far that agent is willing to walk to check.
Set Acquire Time to the longest look the player should get away with: near 0 for an enemy that reacts to anything, a second or more for one the player can sneak past.