Welcome to the first blog post in a series of many regarding the development of my latest project: Strain.
I will be using this blog to keep a weekly record of my personal development progress and experiences working on this project.
So now to the game:
"Strain is a top-down twin stick shooter that uses the Unity engine to simulate a zombie apocalypse in real-time around the player. It features zombie virus strains that evolve as they propagate through the population, creating a naturally-occurring difficulty curve and reflecting the spread of real-life viral outbreaks."
This game is an AI programmers dream, as it will use and apply genetic algorithms in real-time to simulate the spread of the zombie outbreak. Multiple other AI behavioral techniques will also be implemented to simulate human and zombie behavior, such as flocking, fleeing and chasing, all linked together in a comprehensive behavior tree.
My team and spent a couple of weeks working out the design for the game and roles of each member, but have now well and truly begun prototyping our idea. I spent this first week working on basic gameplay mechanics that are core to the game, such as movement and shooting. I have also implemented basic zombie and human behaviors; zombies will hunt down the closest human (including the player) and try to infect them, humans will wander aimlessly until they come close to a zombie and flee. The results of this weeks work can be seen below.
I will be using this blog to keep a weekly record of my personal development progress and experiences working on this project.
So now to the game:
"Strain is a top-down twin stick shooter that uses the Unity engine to simulate a zombie apocalypse in real-time around the player. It features zombie virus strains that evolve as they propagate through the population, creating a naturally-occurring difficulty curve and reflecting the spread of real-life viral outbreaks."
This game is an AI programmers dream, as it will use and apply genetic algorithms in real-time to simulate the spread of the zombie outbreak. Multiple other AI behavioral techniques will also be implemented to simulate human and zombie behavior, such as flocking, fleeing and chasing, all linked together in a comprehensive behavior tree.
My team and spent a couple of weeks working out the design for the game and roles of each member, but have now well and truly begun prototyping our idea. I spent this first week working on basic gameplay mechanics that are core to the game, such as movement and shooting. I have also implemented basic zombie and human behaviors; zombies will hunt down the closest human (including the player) and try to infect them, humans will wander aimlessly until they come close to a zombie and flee. The results of this weeks work can be seen below.
In this image, the player character is represented by the blue capsule, humans by green capsules and zombies by red capsules. This zombies in this screenshot are hunting the humans just above the player, the humans fleeing from said zombies. The player in this image is demonstrating the shooting mechanic; the bullet is represented by the yellow line between the player and the lower zombie.
The next image shows off our initial attempts at a day - night cycle. The player is illuminating the area before him with a flashlight.
That about wraps up my progress on this project so far without going into the specifics of each feature and its implementation. After this first week I feel as though this project is coming along smoothly. I find that rapid prototyping of this sort is both fun and rewarding and I am definitely looking forward to the next few weeks when I can really start working on the AI behaviors, specifically the genetic algorithm.