Blogs - GrimStarGames

I am making a platformer for this weeks itch weekly game jam. The topic is "Platform to Heaven". I decided to make climber where you need to climb faster than the fire pit of hell that will be chasing you. Can you get to heaven faster enough?

A black budget bio weapons experiment has gone wrong, what is known as "Specimen-SMD10X was supposed to enhance humans physical biology and possibly create super soldiers. The outcome of the first human subjected to Specimen-SMD10X has shown some flaws in the specimen. A black ops team has been sent to recover the research and destroy the lab. Guide your npc squad through the level and wipe out the threats, extract the package and stop Specimen-SMD10X from escaping the lab and causing an apocalypse.

Prototype release date: 01/06/2019.

I am currently creating an advanced npc system with c# in Unity. I am experimenting with giving the npcs eyesight so they can evaluate their surroundings. Currently the most effective method I have used is raycasting. I am concerned about how this would effect performance on a larger scale. Just a few npcs in the scene all shooting anywhere from 1 to 30 raycasts a second is ok but what about 50 npcs or even 100.

Description of photo above:

The npcs is shooting 3 raycasts a second (blue rays) towards the player, if it hits the player then that indicates the player can see the npc. When the npc (small red person center of image) realizes it is in view of the player (green capsual) it shoots the yellow rays and then shoots a raycast from the player to the location the yellow ray hit. If the ray shot from the player hits a location within a close range to the yellow ray then that indicates the player will be able to see the npc if it tries to take cover there so the ray appears red, otherwise it shoots a green ray at the locations that are not within a close range to indicate better cover locations.

Another example:

This project is primarily focused on creating an advanced NPC system. To make the process of creating this system as fun as possible I decided to include a first-person shooter system which lead to the game idea "RAID". The player is the leader of a SWAT team and must lead the team on raids of many different scenarios. The main goal for the NPC system is of course to make their behavior as human like as possible. As friendly co-op NPCs they must have reasonable and accurate logic when responding to player commands and actions but at the same time not just feel like robots that do exactly what the player commands. As enemy NPCs their behavior should be predictable but only to the same extent as a human enemy player would be. The ways the NPC goes about deciding what direction to approach the player from and evaluating areas where it can take cover out of sight of the player is the most important but I want them to have a variety of choices and be able to continuously evaluate their chance of survival and change their attack plan at any time if necessary.