This week has been an interesting one for us as we have started to set up AI behaviour and Split Screen multiplayer gamemodes. The feel of the game is starting to come through now that the player has an unpredictable threat to evade, so we will soon move on to creating the greyboxes of the story mode environments and begin fine tuning how the game will play.
Enemy AI
During the last week we began working on basic enemy AI using the Guard Dog that was set up the week before. The AI will patrol an area, detect and chase the player and return to it’s patrol route if they cannot find the player. We will be constantly expanding on the AI as we want a broad spectrum of behaviours that will make the enemies feel like actual humans/drones.
It is also possible to hack and possess these Guard Dogs (as shown last week). This can be used to attack enemies or pass through a hostile area without attracting suspicion. The Quadcopter remains static when hacking, so it is vulnerable to detection if you left it in a bad spot. As well as this, if the Guard Dog is too far from the player they will lose connection to the Guard Dog.
Split Screen Mode
Replayability is something we are aiming to make the most of, so modes like split screen allow us to provide a lot of replay value relatively simply. At the moment we have a competitive split screen mode, which is a variant of the single player time trial mode. In the current mode players compete to collect the most pickups in a short time period. Whoever collects the most wins. If a player is spotted or killed, they immediately lose all their points, usually winning the game for the other player (unless the other player has no points either, then it’s a draw).
Over the next few weeks we will be adding new competitive and cooperative modes. Players won’t just be playing as drones in these modes either, we aim to have Quadcopter/Guard Dog modes where one player (as a Guard Dog) protects or hunts the other (who controls a Quadcopter).
Auto Turrets
Another new enemy type is the auto turret. These are fixed machine guns that scan an area in a similar vein to the security cameras, however instead of raising an alarm when a player is detected, the open fire with lethal accuracy.
Turrets can be hacked but not possessed (yet at least). Whilst they do not raise an alarm themselves, the noise of gunfire will attract attention unless no one is nearby.
That’s all for this week!
Next SitRep is on the 15th August, with hopefully plenty of new things to show! Thanks for reading!
EVIL GAMES 