Eyeofterror Minibrain

Based on game build 714014 | Last updated: 2026-02-27

Overview

The EyeOfTerrorMiniBrain is a mini-brain component responsible for governing the behavior of the Eye of Terror enemy entity. It implements a hierarchical behavior tree (BT) that prioritizes responses to environmental and combat threats, including panic triggers (electric fences), wall attacks, enemy chasing and combat, food acquisition, and wandering back to a remembered spawn point. This component adheres to DST's Entity Component System and extends the base Brain class, relying on components like eater and knownlocations to make decisions and interact with the world.

Dependencies & Tags

• Components used:
  • eater: Used to determine edible entities via inst.components.eater:CanEat().
  • knownlocations: Used to store and retrieve the spawn point location via inst.components.knownlocations:RememberLocation() and inst.components.knownlocations:GetLocation().
• Tags checked/used:
  • "busy": Checked to prevent action initiation during non-interruptible states (inst.sg:HasStateTag("busy")).
  • "outofreach": Used in search filtering to exclude unreachable food items.
  • "INLIMBO": Excluded from valid food candidates (typically indicates non-solid or non-spawned states).

Properties

No public instance properties are initialized in the constructor beyond those inherited from Brain. The only constants defined are:

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
FOOD_DISTANCE	number	20	Maximum radius (in units) within which the Eye of Terror scans for edible items.
EATFOOD_CANT_TAGS	table	{ "outofreach", "INLIMBO" }	List of entity tags that disqualify an item from being considered edible.

Main Functions

OnStart()

• Description: Initializes the behavior tree upon activation. Constructs a priority-based root node that evaluates conditions in order of urgency. The tree first checks if the entity is not in a "charge" state before proceeding to evaluate lower-priority behaviors such as panic avoidance, wall attacks, enemy targeting, food consumption, and wandering.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: None. Sets self.bt to an instance of BT initialized with the constructed root node.

OnInitializationComplete()

• Description: Records the entity's current spawn position (x, z with y clamped to 0) under the name "spawnpoint" in the knownlocations component. The dont_overwrite flag ensures the location is only set once and not overwritten later.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: None.

EatFoodAction(inst)

• Description: A helper action function that locates and returns a buffered action to eat a nearby edible item, provided the entity is not currently busy and the item meets viability criteria (edible and on a passable point). This function is invoked by the DoAction behavior node.
• Parameters:
  • inst: The entity instance attempting to find food (type: entity).
• Returns: BufferedAction if a valid food item is found and the entity is not busy; otherwise nil.

GetSpawnPoint(inst)

• Description: Retrieves the remembered spawn point location from the knownlocations component using the key "spawnpoint". Used by the Wander behavior to guide motion back toward this area.
• Parameters:
  • inst: The entity instance (type: entity).
• Returns: Vector3 (or nil if no spawn point is stored), representing the spawn position with y normalized to 0 during storage.

Events & Listeners

None. This component does not directly register or fire events. Behavior triggers rely on the state graph (self.inst.sg:HasStateTag()) and the active behavior tree evaluation cycle.