Blog #4 Gameplay, Enemy AI, & Story
Intro
Another month of game developing has gone by and with it mother’s day and Easter. My brother and I got some well deserved family time and I hope our readers did too. This month gameplay, enemy AI, & story were on our minds. What would keep the player engaged? How would the enemies behave? What got the player into this mess? All questions we sought to answer with the goal of maximizing player enjoyment. In recent years shareholders have convinced themselves engagement is synonymous with enjoyment. VG2 will not be making that mistake. The answers to these questions will reflect that ideology.
Very Good Video Games (VG2) new logo.
Gameplay
Mysterious book, What stories does it hold? Credit to Noupload
For a while now my brother and I have known we wanted some kind of group puzzles to solve. In addition we need enemies to challenge the player. Those were a given in all reality but something was missing. The puzzles would bring the players together and the enemies would keep players on their toes. What the game needed though was some level of replayability. Our first thoughts were to make the puzzles have a dynamic solution. The design of a puzzle or obstacle shouldn’t be so rigid where there is only one solution. One solution, restricts creativity and feels less rewarding. If a player has an out of the box solution it would make for a great moment and be much more rewarding. Multiple solutions was a great start but we wondered is there more we could do. The games monsters were another focus we could look at. Having complex enemies isn’t so far fetched but how complex could we get? A concept was born with a little inspiration from other games before us. Why couldn’t the enemies change based on something the player decides? The game has the player camping so, it felt natural that players reading horrifing campfire stories could play a role in how the enemies behaved. Based on the story read each night the shadows would change. The game now felt it had resolved a lot of issues such as, replayability, unique experience, and new challenges to complete. Having a mysterious book around also opened ideas for finding unique stories throughout the map, or bits of lore the player could use to gain an edge on surviving the whole ordeal.
Enemy AI
To help visualize a shadowy enemy. Credit goes to OpenClipart-Vectors
Naturally enemy AI is the next step to consider with the new knowledge of our every adapting shadow people. It is clear we need a robust system that leaves room for expansion for future updates that may include new stories that’ll inevitably change our enemy behaviors. There are 2 options that have stood the test of time, finite state machines and behavior trees. Finite state machines have been around since the inception of coding, being that timeless and easy to understand in a small scale, makes it a strong contender. A behavior tree is a hierarchical node system, they are easy to expand upon, and understandable at all scales of AI behaviors. The game requires us to make complex AI because of the key role it plays with keeping the player challenged. The decision was clear our enemies need a behavior tree. Fortunately a spring sale was in full affect on unity’s asset store “Behavior Designer Pro - DOTS Powered Behavior Trees” was discounted 50%. Behavior Designer Pro is a powerful tool, highly optimized, and works with another product we sought to implement. The gold standard for path finding ”A* Pathfinding Project Pro”. Working in unison these tools would provide huge performance improvements keeping the game running buttery smooth, while allowing for our complex enemies to run, well, complexly. Now these tools did save us quite a lot of development time, it is worth noting that all the behavior we seek to implement will still take a great deal of time. The solutions to our terrifying enemies was finally here. Every month more milestones are being reached and the path forward is becoming clear.
Story
Abandoned Mine. Credit goes to dkatana
With the path being clearer; story is a topic my brother and I wanted more clarity on. Answers to questions like; how much story should we have? How will the story be revealed? What is the story? All questions we needed answers too. To develop a since of mysterious atmosphere the game needed to be told in a nonchalant manner. Something the player discovers through exploration, game progression, interactions, and subtle behaviors. There would be no narrator, minimal cutscenes, if any, and no NPC rants. This does not mean the lore will not be rich, but it would mean the lore would be something the player is to discover through their own curiosity. Stories told in this manner give ominous undertones, a mysterious atmosphere, and give the player a obscure desire to unravel the mystery. Allowing the story to be told this way sets the mood, and gives the player a mission without giving the player a mission. What might the player(s) unravel well; at the risk of spoiling our own story, I can tell you that the player(s) end up camping in a abandoned part of the campsite based on their own decisions and becoming trapped due to a unfortunate “accident”. Being trapped it is clear the player(s) will need to find their way back to the main campground and escape the horrors they are trapped with.
Outro
Enemy AI, Story, and Gameplay becoming much more defined; it fills me with excitement and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for VG2. The path has been laid before us we just need to walk it now. I am grateful to find continued support on our social media accounts (links below) and on our youtube channel: VG2 Reviews. As always if you have any comments, questions, concerns feel free to leave them down below or a direct message to our social media accounts. I would like to leave everyone with a quote for every blog now. Thanks for reading and remember:
“The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.”
