Soulslike Enemy Combat: Full Documentation

Documentation Unreal Engine AI Tutorial

Complete technical reference for the SoulslikeEnemyCombat Unreal Engine plugin: tutorials, API reference, and examples.

Enemy combat AI for Unreal Engine 5.6 and newer: tactical movement, scored attacks, reactions, and coordination across a group. Each system stands on its own, so you can take the movement evaluator without the action scoring, or the melee traces without either. Runs on single player, listen server and dedicated server.
New here? Start with Getting Started for a working enemy, then Step-by-Step Enemy to build one properly. Already have a Character and an AI Controller you cannot reparent? Minimal Enemy is the six components that make one fight, with nothing inherited.

How the pieces connect

Config drives the controller, the controller decides, the pawn holds the movesets and runs the abilities. Switch to Full wiring to see every component, and click one for its resolution chain.
System Architecture
Content>Plugins>SoulslikeEnemyCombat
Step 1/4Load config

On possess, the controller resolves and caches EnemyAIConfig from the pawn or its defaults.

Enemy config → Combat hub· Cached on possession
Enemy config → Brain· Picks the brain
Enemy AI Config
Attacks, reactions, movement
AI Controller
Hub, brain, evaluators
Pawn
Movelists + abilities (replicated)
Step 1 of 4 · Load config
Config → controller (decides) → pawn (replicates). Click the outer edges of the diagram to step back or forward; the center is free for component clicks. Core Architecture

Start here

Getting Started

Getting Started

Installation, quick start, and your first enemy in 10 minutes.

Step-by-Step

Step-by-Step Enemy

Comprehensive guide to creating a complete enemy from scratch.

🧱

Minimal Enemy

The six components that make an enemy fight, on a pawn and controller of your own.

The systems

🎯 Movement System

Tactical positioning, strafing, distance maintenance, pawn avoidance.

⚔️ Action System

Scoring-based action selection, cooldowns, Ability/BT execution.

🗺️ Action Set Editor

Lay a moveset out as cards, wire combos, and watch the AI decide while the game runs.

📣 Attack Telegraphs

An attack announces itself at the wind-up, so an enemy can answer before the blow lands.

🎟️ Combat Tokens

Cap how many enemies may attack one target at once, so a crowd takes turns.

🛡️ Reaction System

Event-driven parry, dodge, and counter reactions to game stimuli.

🎖️ Combat Roles

Multi-enemy coordination with Attacker, Flanker, Waiter roles.

🎯 Targeting System

Which target an enemy picks, and who takes over when one dies in co-op.

👁️ Threat Detection

Track player camera attention and react when observed.

🧠 Awareness System

Per-AI perception memory; enemies engage only what they have sensed.

🗡️ Melee Trace

Frame-rate independent hit detection with swept traces.

🛡️ Defense System

Parries, blocks, invulnerability frames and armour, answering what an incoming hit is worth.

⚔️ Weapons

Equippable weapons that bring their own trace sockets, action sets and defenses.

❤️ Vitals

Health, stamina, and stance pools that gate and score what an enemy does.

🎬 Animation Integration

Gameplay tags wired to anim Blueprint bools, loose tags held for a montage window.

⚙️ Configuration Reference

All data assets: ActionSets, Profiles, Damage Configs.

🌐 Multiplayer

Replication architecture, server authority, and client-side state.

Reference

🌳 StateTree

The tasks and conditions the plugin ships, and the graph they run in.

🏛️ Core Architecture

The StateTree + Behavior Tree hybrid, and the map of every system.

🧩 Patterns

Recipes for a grunt, a duellist, an archer and a boss.

🔧 Troubleshooting

The symptom you are looking at, its cause, and the fix. Plus every debug switch.

📊 Performance

What each system costs per enemy, and which knobs bring it down.

📚 API Reference

Classes, components and Blueprint nodes the plugin exposes.

Support