Hi all!

In this post I give some background about the development of the project for those interested.

Dummy is a project created at DAE in the context of Graphics Programming. The Main challenge consisted out of building up a c++ framework robust enough to support true-and-tried graphics implementations. During the course we were familiarized with the DirectX pipeline, implemented physics with Nvidia PhysX, added characters with skeletal meshes and their animation and adding shadows through shadow mapping.

Afterwards we were tasked with further developing the engine, adding to it individually and then realizing a game project. I chose to create a top down horror game, inspired by titles as 'Slender' and 'Darkwood'.  Since the horror genre heavily relies on a carefully created atmosphere, lightning and mood would be a big challenge. 

That's why I focused entirely on fine tuning the torchlight. Since the shadow mapping currently supported only a static directional light, I had to overhaul the system, making sure it could be moved at runtime.  Once the shadows were satisfactory, I made sure the light had a pleasing fall off and range. Once it was set up just right, the spooky mood instantly followed.

The second big challenge was the Dummies' AI. I adopted the philosophy of the well known pac-man game, where each ghost has a distinct character. One would always follow the player, the other one would try to get in front of the player, and yet another one would go in a random direction.   All of the different roles, (follow, get ahead, random) , were implemented with the A-star algorithm, the only difference was the target. Once the Dummy could track the player,  it could as easily track a spot  a bit ahead of the player. 

I can still remember testing the behavior out, by setting all the behaviors on 'get in front of the player'.  I sat there waiting around in the dark, only to notice to my excitement, that when turning my light on, three stoic dummies were standing just a few meters in front of me. 

I hope this gives you some insight into how I realized this game. As much as it frightened me to playtest this at two in the morning, I know I loved every little victory in it's development and am very proud of the result.

Thanks you for your interest!

Quentin