Samuel J Thorp

 

 

 

Honours Stealth Game

Year 3

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Premise:

Created during my third and final year of university for my Honours, the game is a top-down stealth game that features enemy AI with perception and awareness that builds upon seeing or hearing the player, upon their awareness filling partially they will come to investigate the disturbance and should it fill all the way up they will proceed to hunt the player down, should the player manage to escape their sight during the chase, the enemy will initiate a search for the player in the vicinity and eventually return to their patrol if they find nothing.

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The player is capable of performing take-down kills on enemies provided they posses shivs, use a teleport function to maneuver around tricky patrols or to create escape points in the event they get spotted and hide in shadowed areas to limit their visibility to enemies.

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About:

Once I felt satisfied with the design and had the project thoroughly planned out I set to work on building AI capable of facilitating stealth gameplay, as when that was working I could build the rest of the game and the level around it, this was my first time working on AI of any kind so I perhaps threw myself into the deep end with stealth AI as it would have to be more complex than just standard combat AI, but I was able to pick it up relatively quickly and in the end surpassed my own expectations of what I'd be able to accomplish, albeit with some bumps in the road.

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Once the AI was in an early playable state, I proceeded to design and build the level, which would offer multiple pathways for the player to choose. As stealth requires very delicate balancing to ensure it feels right, the level and AI wen't through rigorous playtesting and iteration, I then added in the players abilities such as hiding in shadows, takedowns and the teleport ability to add variety and tactics to encounters.

 

I aimed to make the game as accessible as possible to players whether it be someone who's never played a stealth game before or those more experienced in the genre who want a challenge.

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Development:

• Conceived and planned out the project.

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Level Design

• Created early designs for level and it's multiple routes.

• Constructed level in Unreal engine including placement of fading building pieces and triggers.

• Testing & Iteration.

• Placed triggers to tilt camera angle in order to prevent camera being obscured by geometry.

• Placed shadow triggers for hiding.

• Enemy placement.

• Plotted enemy patrols then added enemy patrol points.

• Placed shiv pick-ups to allow player access to more shivs.

• Constructed tutorial level to make game more accessible for beginners.

• Integrated colour in level to guide player.

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Visual Scripting

• Created functional enemy AI able to facilitate stealth gameplay including enemy awareness and perception.

• Added patrolling for enemies including editor settings to allow for easy and efficient set-up of multiple enemies.

• Building fading in & out and camera tilt to prevent player camera being obscured.

• Enemy takedown ability and shiv system.

• Teleporter ability.

• Visibility system.

• AI refinements and additions.

• Hookup and blended animations for enemies and player.

• Hookup placeholder audio for player feedback such as enemy grunts and roars to indicate if spotted.

• Script tutorial level.

• script key elements of level including intro matinee.

• Hookup placeholder UI elements for player feedback.

• Main menu & Options.

• Added difficulty settings.