Thought an update was needed, so here’s a video clip showing the different layers the engine outputs to give you an idea of the many different aspects that have to be taken into consideration, this is just a graphical representation of selected areas on the map, behind all of this is thousands of lines of code!

The game engine is now done so we are hard at work on creating graphics, sounds, cut-scenes and of course puzzles and enemy boss battles!

The hard part is now done (we hope!) so now it’s just a matter of putting all these pieces together to make a playable, thought provoking and genuinely scary video game, thanks for your patience we’ll be updating on a more regular basis from now on.

Select 1080p on the video below for optimum viewing;

Our latest build for ‘Predestined’ features 3D shadows and extra sound effects depending on the floor type you’re walking on (wood, carpet, stone etc.).

This demo video has no enemies but features new enhanced sound, lighting and shadows that will look and sound awesome in the game.

Hit 720p and fullscreen on this Youtube clip to really see it in action!

Thank you to all waiting on this game, the engine is pretty much done, we are now working on implementing the story into this funky little shooter, you won’t be disappointed.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, we both have to hold down full time jobs and this is all done in our spare time remember.

Anyway Lance has integrated a new system for particle graphical effects, check the video below and notice the new effects such as:

• The fire flies
• The flies around the light
• Leaves on the trees
• Ray-casting effect on the light
• Flowers around the light
• Slight fog effect

The game engine is now running on Direct-X 9 whereas it was running on version 7 before, much more powerful but is scaled to the users system requirements regardless.

Be sure to select 720p at the bottom of the player for ultimate quality.

Ok our new demo is online and ready to play right here.

Enhancements compared to the previous demo are:

• Updated graphics and sound
• Completely new enemy A.I. system
• New save game system implemented
• Dynamic CPU monitoring (results in lower CPU usage)
• DirectX and OpenGL modes supported
• Updated shadows
• Playable character sprite beefed up and is bigger on screen
• Melee attack (crowbar) now included (right mouse)
• Bullets now travel in real time, you no longer have to directly target one enemy, anything close will hit him and probably his buddy behind him too
• ‘Run’ button added, hit Space Bar to move faster
• Shotgun added to the arsenal, one hit kills up close, BANG!
• Circuit board puzzle is now easier
• Cut scene added
• Items that can be interacted with (Use/Take/Examine etc.) are now highlighted in red. If it’s red you can do stuff with it

Download the new demo HERE and check the download page for in-depth information.

25/04/2011 – 02/05/2011
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Well I’ve had plenty free time this week as I’ve been off work. I managed to get everything I set out to do finished, and a lot more besides!

First order of business was to complete the new AI and get it into the game. I finished off the behaviour patterns of the NPC’s pretty quickly as most of the groundwork was already in place. Once the NPC’s were working how I wanted them to I started to restructure the code to make it usable in the game.

What I ended up with is basically a long and complicated chain of types (classes) that all tie into the NPC types. I’ll admit it was a ballache to code it this way, following the chain was very confusing at times and trying to find which adjustments to make and in what type could be a nightmare.

I have a good reason for writing it like this though (or so I believe). You see the thing is, I’m more interested in the actual game than the code. I think it’s important to do all the complicated work on the engine so that I can focus purely on the creative side when I’m actually making the game. This is just a part of that and now that the hard work is done all I have to do to make a new NPC is is give it some stats (health, speed, damage etc) and a brain (the AI).

The bonus to this is that I can assign different “brains” to the same type of NPC independently. This means that in the game you will never be 100% certain how an enemy is going to react just by looking at it. Adds a nice aspect of uncertainty to the gameplay, even if there are only a few different behaviours to choose from.

I had to fiddle and tweak the code no end to get it to co-operate with the existing engine, but to be honest it wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting it to be. With the AI in and working, as far as I’m concerned the engine is complete and I can start looking towards making the rest of the game!

I sent a copy of the new version over to Shane to let him pick it apart and give me some feedback. I’m in a pretty good position to have Shane available and willing to test for me. You could fit what Shane doesn’t know about games and gaming on the back of a postage stamp (I’m convinced you can take that literally). So when someone like that gives you advice you’d do well to listen to it.

Biggest change that came from this is that you no longer have to aim directly at an enemy to shoot it. The player now fires real bullets, as it were. This was a very good move in my opinion. The combat just feels so much better now, more intuitive. The guns all still have different stats for range, accuracy and damage, and the accuracy and damage of the player is still increased by the adrenaline system, it just plays a lot differently now. Good call Shane!

I also added a run/walk button and automatic reloading of weapons (if you have ammo in your inventory). After that it was just a case of fixing a few minor bugs here and there and the game is now looking and playing much better than it was at the start of the week.

I’ve only got to redo the first cut-scene and a new demo version will be available on the site! Happy Days.

The ‘Video’ page now shows footage from our latest demo build.

This demo will replace the current one very soon and highlights enhanced enemy AI, the new melee combat, enhanced graphics and sound, a new ‘Run’ button has been added, the character auto reload’s now when gun chamber is empty and bullets now hit any enemies in the line of fire, not just ones directly targeted.

The next update you see should hopefully be the new demo build, we’re currently working on a cut-scene for when you complete the puzzle that really kicks off the story and shows you what this game is really going to be about, stay tuned.

11/04/2011 – 24/04/2011
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‘Artificial Unintelligence’ pretty much sums up my last couple of weeks work on the game. Theres not a great deal to report to be honest, I’ve been pretty busy at work, and the weather’s been superb so I haven’t had as much time for the game as I would (or should) have. I have been making progress though.

Following on from the rewrite of the inventory system I decided to tackle the last big job left to do before the engine is complete – A.I. I’m still using the same pathfinding routine – an A* algorithm heavily based on a fantastic article by Patrick Lester at http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm (the source code in the article was converted to Blitzmax by Jesse Perez – that was the code I used as the basis for mine).

The thing with pathfinding in games is it’s pretty easy to get one “unit” moving around a map and interacting with the player. The problem, for me at least, is getting multiple units moving around and interacting properly with each other while still sticking to their original purpose. That’s what I’ve been working on.

The beauty of games like this is that the enemies tend not to live long enough to show up any really bad faults in the A.I. For me personally though that isnt an excuse to leave flawed A.I in the game. I feel obligated to cover all possibilities and stress test the hell out of it all to make sure that players (hopefully) don’t get pulled out of the game by some stupid A.I.

With that in mind I set out to rewrite all of the stuff I wasn’t happy with. I wrote a new system for organising unit target positions for groups of enemies and wrote a sort of bredth-first search function that can be used for the more advanced aspects of the A.I (such as finding target positions that are not in the players line of sight).

I also changed the whole system to use a grid based approach instead of a pixel based approach. While this is possibly less fluid than the old method it’s much more solid, more stable. I really started to understand the grid based method while I was writing VirussS, which goes to show that it can be a good idea to go and do smaller projects sometimes, especially if you’re learning like I am.

There’s still a long way to go yet. A lot of the more advanced routines are only half finished, then I’ve got to wrap it all up so it’s usable in the game. Then I’ve got to actually integrate it with the existing code in the game! Might take a while…

Not that I’m too bothered about that though, this is a part of making games that I really enjoy. Creating personalities for the NPC’s is something I find very rewarding. That is when it works, watching a bunch of squares flail around on the screen like bees on acid isn’t exactly fun, it’s pretty disturbing in all honesty. When it all comes together though and all those little squares are running round in unison with each other, it’s definitely worth it.

As much as I enjoy it though, all of this work is really just to make the game more fun to play. I don’t want the game to be filled with yet more mindless zombies, shambling their way to the player. The enemies will be much more than that. I’m not saying it will be perfect, I’ve still got a lot to learn after all, but it will be interesting, and more likely than not pretty damn unpredictable. But how scary can a game really be if you know whats lurking around every corner?

Even more advanced enemy AI coding techniques with enemies now literally stalking the player.

“I added the line of sight check tonight and started to work on some of the more interesting AI routines. This video shows the first version of the stalking routine.

It still needs some tweaking but the video does a pretty good job of demonstrating what I’m going for. You can see in the video how the enemies are trying to get close to the player whilst staying out of sight! They even sometimes take much longer routes to get to their destination, just to stay out of sight!

If you can imagine that in the game the enemies are not visible while they are out of sight it should make for some superbly unpredictable behavior. In theory you will be attacked in different places by different enemies each time you play the game, without the need for any hard coded scripting!”

A quick video to show the new work-in-progress AI routines Lance is working on for the enemies in the game.

“So far I’ve rewritten the target selection and group position selection routines. Already it’s way better than it was before. As you can see in the video the enemies will select a destination in relation to where you’re standing without ever getting stuck in walls or whatever. The destinations are based on distance from the player and the speed the enemies move at, so the ones that will get to the player first will always get the closest spots. The further away/slower ones will have to wait at the back until you move or kill one next to you.

Just got to add a line of sight check so that they don’t go the wrong side of a wall and the basics are done! Then I can move onto the more advanced stuff. I already wrote a recursive search function which I’ll be able to reuse to get all different types of AI. For example I could force certain enemies to find destinations close to the player but keep out of line of sight, effectively making the enemy “stalk” the player until it was within a certain range, then jump out on you!

In the vid the diamonds are the enemies, the spinning square would be the player and the X’s are the target destinations. So far the routine is lightning fast! Will be able to get a lot of enemies on screen (more for the arena than the main game)!”

Disclaimer:
Audio track used on the video is ‘The Abyss‘ by Terry Devine-King / Alicia Anderson / Nikolaj Bjerre / Ben Blakeman available from AudioNetworks.com

27/03/2011 – 10/04/2011
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Slightly different format for this update. The new inventory system was much more complicated to incorporate than I had anticipated, I ended up going back and forth so much it wouldn’t make sense to give a day by day account. Instead I’ll just try to give an overview of whats been happening over the last couple of weeks.

The majority of the time was spent getting the inventory to do what I wanted it to. After the miscellaneous items were sorted I moved onto a part of the system I was dreading, ammo! After trying in vain for hours to get it working how I wanted I realised it just wasn’t going to happen. So I settled on a more simple solution in order to keep development moving. The game now uses 5 slots for the different types of ammo, with a maximum cap on each. Not exactly what I had in mind when I started but a decent enough compromise.

Once the ins and outs of the new system were all in place I only had to plug it into the game and everything would be sorted. Or not. Turns out the inventory was much more deeply rooted into other aspects of the game than I had given it credit for. I had to rewrite a lot of code to get the new system up and running, including the whole save game system!

After a lot of perseverance the new inventory was in and working. I then moved onto the arduous task of making a new interface for the inventory screen. The art side of making games is definitely near the bottom of my preferred jobs and I’m not particularly good at it either. But after whats seems like thousands of attempts and tweaks its finished and looks much better than the old version in my opinion.

As a test once everything was working I decided to make a new item type to see how it went. The result? The wooden crate! A vital part of all good games. So I put some crates in and thought “what goods a crate if you can’t break it?” This led to an unexpected development, I decided to scrap the tazer and replaced it with a normal melee weapon. This weapon can not only be used to smash crates (which may or may not contain items!), but also to beat the shit out of any nasty buggers that  try to eat your face! A bit cliche I know, but its good fun, and solves the problem of players running out of ammo!

So was it worth it? It took a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would and if I’d known just how much work was going to be involved to get it finished I don’t think I would have even contemplated it! Now its done though I’m happy with the results. This new version is much easier to maintain and almost completely self-sufficient. With just a few lines of code I can make any number of different items, of any type, and know that it will be dealt with correctly without any intervention from me.