Cabinet of Curiosities
I worked on this project for about 24 weeks split into an engine part and a gameplay/AI part. The first 8 weeks I worked as part of the team creating the custom engine, then worked the other 16 weeks primarily on the AI and the system that controlled it. This game was split into 2 versions to let the designers work on their things while the programmers set up everything that was needed for the game to work in the custom engine.
Above you can see the trailer, which was recorded in the unreal version of the game.
In the first block, we worked on making a custom engine that was created with a top down/2.5D dungeon crawler game, I worked on gameplay implementations of some of the basic AI, collision, movement, and shooting.
At this point of the project, the aim was to still play the game on the switch as well as have a normal build, so we had to keep that in mind when working
I also chose to create the enemies for this version. I created them in a sprite sheet so we could show animation. I had designed another enemy, but I didn’t have time to finish that. I used the program called Aseprite to create these sprite sheets.
Then I left for another group for a block, however, their concepts were red-lighted by the teachers, and this group needed a lot of AI. So I was back. I explained my reasoning for a certain type of AI, which would be a lot of work. But once finished would allow to quickly make more actions and forms of behavior, namely: Goal Oriented Action Planning.
It took a while to get it running, seeing as I hadn’t worked with it before, but at the end of the block, I had a monster that ran after the player using a plan that it had made.
The last block was all about finishing the game, I worked on more behaviors as well as goals and some other smaller things such as fixes for collision and bullet effects.
Eventually, we got it all finished and I had created 3 decent enemies which use GOAP for their planning, and while it stayed simple, I would have been able to create new enemy behavior in 2-3 days depending on the actions it would have.
Technology Used:
Development Time:
Student Year:
Visual Studio, Perforce, Jira, Jenkins, Aseprite.
32 weeks, of which I worked 24.
Second Year.
Programming Language:
Engine:
Platform:
C++.
Stellar Engine (Custom Engine).
Nintendo Switch, Windows.
Team Size:
Custom Engine Creation: 5 programmers.
Game Creation: 8 Programmers, 10 Artists, 8 Designers
Here is the link to the Itch.io page: https://buas.itch.io/coc