Crimson Knight is a Souls-like action RPG built in Unreal Engine 5, featuring deep melee combat, emergent enemy behavior, and a scalable AI pipeline.
I designed The Absolute to recognize repeated habits, then used readable telegraphs, counterplay windows, and playtests to make that adaptation understandable and beatable.
About 100 players across two sessions
About 10% → about 35%
About 140s → under 2 minutes
For The Absolute’s Phase 1 and 2 encounter, I paired a modular State Tree with prediction and repeated playtesting. The goal was to challenge habits without creating a boss that felt omniscient.
PRIMARY BOSS STATE TREE
Every move returns to Root: clear the previous state, read the current context, choose a response, execute it, and evaluate again.
Reset movement, rotation, and gravity so each decision begins from a reliable state.
Read the predicted next move from the n-gram model. I tested n=2 and n=3, then chose n=3 because using the player’s previous two actions made the response feel more intentional while still leaving room to learn and react.
Gate the move pool by range, player health, stamina, and sword charges. Sword charges are the player’s primary way to heal, or they can be spent for additional damage, so reacting to them changes the risk of the next exchange.
Choose one scoped move, execute it, then return to Root. Short- and long range pools keep the available responses relevant to the current spacing.
To introduce a new attack, we add its distance or context rule, place the ability in the selector, and let the shared flow handle cleanup, evaluation, execution, and the return to Root. That made the encounter highly modular and easy to extend without rebuilding the decision logic around every move.
Each change had a clear job: make the boss easier to read, more strategically meaningful, or fairer to learn without removing the pressure.
01 / READABILITY
The Absolute’s projectile was difficult to read and dodge.
With limited animation coverage, I slowed the opening, smoothly restored its speed, and added a windup sound that players could learn.
Players recognized the dodge window and found several successful evasion routes. The cue taught a response instead of simply lowering the challenge.
02 / COUNTERPLAY
Players could not tell when the n-gram system was countering a repeated move, so they could not learn from the mistake.
I moved prediction from n=2 to n=3, so The Absolute needed a longer pattern of player moves before countering. I paired that change with eye and spear VFX whenever a counter began, plus a brief ignite effect if it connected.
Dodge spam could trigger a fiery stab toward the predicted dodge location. Repeated attacks could make her evade, deny damage, and reengage. Players could finally connect cause and effect.
03 / FAIRNESS
Early versions countered too many player behaviors, making Phase 1 feel relentless rather than intelligent.
With no tell animations available, I lengthened windups by 10% using cuts, slowed parts of existing attacks, extended recovery windows by 15%, and moved prediction from n=2 to n=3. Together, those changes gave players more time to react while preserving a boss who could learn their habits.
Across two playtests with about 100 players, I tracked time to kill, heals and buffs used, and damage in recovery windows. The windup, recovery, and prediction changes raised Phase 1 success from about 10% to 35% and cut average phase time from about 140 seconds to under 2 minutes without losing the fight’s challenge.
The encounter worked because the decision logic, combat abilities, animation, and production plan were built to change together.
I built State Tree flows for patrol, engagement, stun recovery, and evasion, then connected the prediction model to counter selection.
I designed sword charges as a meaningful choice between healing and extra damage, built the player’s moves and upgrades on a modular Abilities and Effects pipeline, then raised the damage boost about 15% and reduced healing about 5% after playtests showed players undervalued damage.
I scoped sprints, assigned work, reviewed code, and translated combat and level design needs into systems the team could build and tune.