Roger's Cheesy Pub Crawl: Unity C# 4 Day Gamejam
https://github.com/TiernanMcCarthy/GameJam-2021
Playable at: https://bigboirogur.itch.io/rogers-cheesy-pub-crawl
Winner of Best Use of Technology
Main contributions: AI Systems, Level Creation/Beautification, Character Controller, Game Logic and Miscellaneous Features
In June 2021 I participated in my fourth University of Portsmouth Gamejam. Prior to the get go I understood that I wanted to do something ambitious with AI and the theme of a pub in Newcastle presented us with ample opportunity to have many AI agents on screen interacting with each other. We decided that the game was going to require the player to constantly manage and satisfy the pub goers, and that to be able to achieve this I was going to need to create AI agents with multiple factors that deteriorate and grow separately from each other, whilst converging into common and predictable behaviours so that the player could address them. With this in mind I decided that a Finite State Machine approach to managing the AI agents was simple and more than adequate, and that I could pair it with a Desirability Brain system that would decide what actions they would take. This allowed for expandability if the project required it or if at a future date I wanted to take it further, I could. As seen on the image on the right, all AI agents spawn with and manage these variables in a manner that allows for actions to spontaneously occur. In addition to this, I randomise many of the personality values upon spawn to allow for varied pub goers and to ensure that not one game is the same as the last. I felt like I learned a lot on this project about how to create and maintain dynamic AI systems from within a game's sandbox and in all honesty the opportunity of being able to develop a larger and more ambitious game around systems as complex (if not more complex than this) would absolutely delight me. |