Week 4

Zombie tutorial

During this tutorial I was finishing things off with the tutorial, this week I completed all sections (green, orange & red).

This was the final week of zombie tutorial and the main part was to create random spawning. Firstly, I decided to clean up the editor by creating an empty game object which would then store all subsequent spawned zombies as children, this is to make life more organised and easier for myself because if I spawned 50 zombies It would be bad practise to clutter up the editor.

I then created a “SpawnZombies” script which would be the helper script to constantly instantiate zombies to keep the game flowing. This works by creating in several variables; numberOfZombies, allWaypoints, ZombiePrefab. This would then find the game objects with the relevant tags (“Waypoint” & “Zombie”) to ensure we get the correct game object associated with it.

Next, in the update I created a counter to store the amount of zombies currently existing, then we compare that value to the numberOfZombies and if it is less than the amount I want I then proceed to instantiate the zombie prefab at a random waypoint location. I intend in the future to extend the spawn zombie script to take in more prefabs and spawn locations to increase the randomness of zombie spawning to be more enjoyable. Once this was all finished I then continued to texture all of my assets to polish my game more. I do intend to extend all AI features much further, I will then go on to talk about how I went further within than what was taught in the tutorial in my final blog post about my final game. I will clearly state what extra has been changed / improved and implemented and support that

Lab 4 – Inital concept for coursework 2

I feel that from following the zombie tutorial I have gained a good solid understanding from AI and I feel that it has allowed me to explore new AI techniques in which I intend to implement in Assignment 2.

I will be keeping the same genre in which I will create my game as I want to expand much further, it will be still be a third person shooter, and will perhaps vary from zombies but I feel that by implementing zombie behaviour will allow for showcasing of more advanced AI techniques. Games such as Left 4 Dead 2 & World War Z have great examples of these and do it very well, I am hoping to implement;

Flocking – This behaviour is usually shown with animals such as birds or sheep where many individuals act as one whole unit, I intend to implement this with zombies and create hordes of wandering AI and also allowing for other AI agents to join this horde when getting within a certain range, this has great game design aspects as it gives a randomness affect to gameplay as hordes will always vary.

Sensors – This behaviour refers to sound sensors within majority of stealth games. AI would be much more sophisticated if they have the ability to “hear” things and adds another depth of immersion and challenge for the player as it can feel unrealistic if you are hiding behind a wall firing a gun into the air and no zombie reacts.

Various state machines – I also want to add much more variation between zombies this will include mixture between ranged and melee enemies with emphasis on abilities, this will result in more sophisticated state machines. By implementing spells / abilities it will also allow for much in depth combat AI system. This will include fuzzy logic to figure out probabilities to whether for example an AI agent will auto attack or start to run away to start casting a spell / ability.