Soulslike Enemy Combat: Enemy AI for Unreal Engine 5
Enemy combat AI plugin for Unreal Engine 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8: souls-like enemies that keep their distance, take turns, parry and dodge, set up in Blueprint with no C++, in single player and multiplayer.
At a glance
- Made for: souls-like, action RPG and melee action games whose enemies have to space out, read the player, take turns and fight back.
- Engine: Unreal Engine 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8.
- Setup: Data Assets, Project Settings and Blueprint nodes, with no C++ needed. The full C++ source is included.
- Decisions: the enemy runs on its own with no StateTree or Behavior Tree authored, or from a StateTree or a Behavior Tree you point it at.
- Attacks and hits: Gameplay Ability System abilities, swept weapon traces, and guard, parry and block rules.
- Multiplayer: the server makes every decision, in single player, on a listen server and on a dedicated server (Multiplayer Enemy AI).
- Included: a demo level with working enemies, weapons and a boss fight, card editors for movesets and reactions, and a guide that lets an AI coding agent build an enemy for you (AI Agent Guide).
- Not included: player combat. Your player character, its moveset and its camera stay yours, and the enemies fight any pawn you register as a target. Universal Player Combat is the player side of the same family.
- Get it: Soulslike Enemy Combat on Fab.
How the pieces connect
On possess, the controller resolves and caches EnemyAIConfig from the pawn or its defaults.
Start here
Getting Started
Installation, quick start, and your first enemy in 10 minutes.
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.
Guides
🗺️ Souls-like Combat: Where to Start
What a Dark Souls style enemy needs, and the page that sets up each part.
🔁 Enemies That Take Turns
One enemy swings while the rest circle and wait their turn.
🤺 Parry, Dodge and Counter
Enemies that see the player's swing coming and answer it.
🧭 Tactical Enemy Movement
Strafing, circling and spacing instead of walking straight at the player.
👑 Souls-like Boss Fights
A second phase, an arena, a boss bar and attacks that read the player.
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.
📣 Telegraphs
A montage announces an attack at the wind-up, or a state a character is in, so an enemy can answer it.
🎟️ 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 armor, 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.
🎲 Determinism
Seed every roll an enemy makes, so the same fight plays out the same way twice.
🌐 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 duelist, 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.
Credits
Support and Resources
Pairs well with
Soulslike Enemy Combat gives your enemies their fight. Universal Player Combat gives the player theirs: combos, equipment, targeting and finishers.