AI Controller
Let's discuss what the main difference is between a Player Controller and an AI Controller. Both of these actors derive from the base Controller class, and a Controller is used to take control of a Pawn or Character in order to control the actions of said pawn or character.
While a Player Controller relies on the input of an actual player, an AI Controller applies AI to the characters they possess and responds to the environment based on the rules set forth by the AI. By doing so, the AI can make intelligent decisions in response to the player and other external factors, without the actual player explicitly telling it to do so. Multiple instances of the same AI pawn can share the same AI Controller, and the same AI Controller can be used across different AI pawn classes. AI, like all actors inside Unreal Engine 4, are spawned through the UWorld
class.
Note
You will be learning more about the UWorld
class in Chapter 14, Spawning the Player Projectile, but...