Shut The Door
ABOUT
Shut The Door, is a top-down arcade game with puzzle and stealth elements. As a ghost in the school, make sure all the doors are closed before the resulting beeping sound drives you insane.
PROJECT DURATION : 3 Months
TEAM SIZE: 4 People
SOFTWARE: Custom made-engine (C++)
ROLE : Designer/ Gameplay Programmer / AI Programmer
Programming
Building AI with a Finite State Machine in C++ custom Engine
Using Finite state machine, I designed the AI to have three states. This was done to allow the AI to react to the player, but also give the player enough time to react, even after being spotted.
AI States
- Idle, where they wander around
- Alert, where they have spotted the player but has yet to react
- Alarmed, where they escape from the player
Used together, these states successfully conveyed the feeling of suspense for players where they have alerted the AI but have yet to be spotted.
Dijkstra's Breath First Search path-finding Algorithm in C++
To allow the AI to run independently of the level we created, we had the AI path-find for themselves.
- At the start of the level, the level is saved as nodes in a graph, as the environment was unchanging, this only needed to be done once.
- The graph was a 1D array, with a helper function that took in x and y coordinates and accessed the actual position in the array.
The result was a fast process of just adding AI's to the level and setting their start position and "Safety position" (position to run to when they are afraid). Reducing the amount of time needed to fine tune the AIs.