The AI Behind Brackens

agmas website:
agmas thunderstore:

[alteregosocial]

IMPORTANT: The moment more than one player is looking at the bracken, he will immediately go into staredown mode (and both players are contributing to his anger meter which is why he will aggro so quick). Shoutout to @call_me_bread for finding this!

IMPORTANT: The Bracken’s retreat phase will last 23 seconds the first two times, then it will last 11 seconds the third time. This will repeat throughout the game.

IMPORTANT: If a Bracken is cornered or has nowhere else to go, this puts him in staredown mode. This is why he gets aggro'd so quickly if he's cornered.

[-SlingshotPhighting-]

The Bracken AI is more complex than it looks like

[TheIhtiander]

You forgot to mention he cannot track player if he's jumping, Bracken only remembers your last position on floor.

[theclown]

"There's a spy creeping around here" -me right before getting my neck snapped

[CaramelOnFire]

The AI is more insane then I thought, the fact they make sure you can't try to put them into phase 2 by changing direction in corners is something I never knew.

[Kiffer]

Following a retreating bracken usually helps you find loot rooms as they avoid dead ends and getting as far away from you as possible usually means going to the deepest point in the facility.

[carlosgonzalezfernandez]

Not a suprised zeekers made such a complex AI, he made It steals after all

[carparked]

That stalking AI is really cool, the bracken is easily my favourite enemy in the game

[agmass]

THATS ME IM THEM IM ThAT PERSON ON THE BIG SCREEN

also some smaller side notes:
- The bracken can only drop the body early if he is ~5 paintings away from his faviroute spot
- The stair room is a pure coincidence, there's no code for it (atleast that i could find).
- The bracken does not get aggro'd if it is cornered, but it is possible it's getting stuck in a loop of avoiding the closest player, which DOES slightly raise anger.
- the stare down chance stacks for every player looking at a bracken.

[nocturno]

The bracken feels alive compared to the other monsters, a completely different feel

[Amatheian]

Also when Bracken enters a place where he cannot retreat anymore, he directly attacks no matter what, it happend.

[Bonnie_.]

6:57 I like how he's carrying a beehive when saying this.

[lucasjuliard]

Before this one i saw SiniK's video on the Bracken. In it he discovered that the Bracken only reccords wherever the player last stand on the ground. If they jump (or stand on a shelf), the Bracken will freeze with no way of knowing where the player is.
This also work during Agro mode so jumping around while being hunted helps put some space between you and the Bracken👌

[Eek]

Bracken explained for cavemen:
Bracken is not the god of sea Stracken, however, he is very big and angry. If hear Bracken, turn around quick, quicker than running from angry thumper. If Bracken get seen by grok, he back up, you can look at him while he back up. However, if grok look at Bracken while Bracken stay still, just like statue that snake lady Agatha makes from human, then Bracken get angry like god of desert when desert gets no sacrfices.

[umgak_prime]

5:57 Stuns do not cause Bracken to instantly become aggro, but it does instantly spike his anger level to 6/11, which often causes him to become aggro shortly after.

Attacking him sets his anger to 11, then adds 0.1, which always causes it to become angered.
EDIT: Did some more testing and reread the code.

Stuns actually set his anger meter to 12 if the stun source is a Zap Gun or a Stun Grenade. Other stun sources instead set his anger meter to 2.

However, he actually can't enter Behaviour State 2 (Angered) unless he is NOT stunned. It looks like it attempts to add 0 to his anger meter every update while stunned, plus one update after. However, the condition required for him to become angered is buried in a bunch of conditionals - his "angerCheckInterval" must also be above 1, but the stun functions don't handle this, so the anger state can be delayed a bit. The next time AddToAngerMeter is called, if he is stunned with a Zap Gun or Stun Grenade and the angerCheckInterval is high enough, he WILL become angered, since the chance for him becoming angered is 0.09 * Anger, or 108% (it's clamped to 99 though).


The HitEnemy function sets his anger to 11, then adds 0.1 to it, and also increases the angerCheckInterval, which results in a 99% chance for him to become angered immediately.

An important note is that any effect which "sets" his anger to a value *overrides* his current anger, meaning that if you were to stun him with the Flash command on a radar booster, it would reduce his anger to 2, if it was already above 2. Also, any effect which "sets" his anger explicitly cannot cause an anger check.

[PhoenixFox]

So it turns out I was gaslit HARD with the Bracken. The info I heard before this was that
1) The weird Backrooms like Room is the Bracken’s room and he spawns and brings the bodies there.
2) He has the same low chance of spawning on every single moon (I just thought I had bad luck everytime I went to Vow)
3) To get rid of him you have to look at him but if you look at him for more than 3 seconds he will get angry.

[sanddry]

I always knew the Bracken AI was going to be interesting, but goddamn. It’s such a good way to have a stalker type horror enemy.

The fact that actively calculates where you’re looking to hide is terrifying

[WovenYT]

loving the idea of someone walking into the company, finding a bracken, and just charging at it while talking about ai nodes and anger meters while the bracken is like "dude wtf your supposed to run away now"

[LiamMorrison-luss]

They behave like an actual animal. Cautious and not always aggressive

This is the most likes I've ever gotten

[sstandby]

Fun Fact: Bracken is most likely a reference to a monster from another game called "It Steals", the monster is called Legs. Both creep up behind you, both retreat after being seeing, both become angry and chase the player after being looked and both know where you are looking and try to go another way.

Fun Fact 2: Both "It Steals" and "Lethal Company" are from the same creator :)