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Xanthous

ABOUT

 

“Xanthous” is a VR horror game and an academic project for my final project and thesis. I was an AI programmer creating algorithm designs such as Fuzzy Logic, Monte Carlo, Behavior Tree, and more.

PROJECT INFO

 

Role: Game Programmer

Team Size: 5

Time Frame: 10 Months

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

INTRODUCTION

 

This game was created for our final project as a bachelor in computer engineering. At first, we thought it would be a great idea to use horror because it looked easy to market, and we also loved watching people playing horror games on YouTube. So we think a horror VR game is a great score, oh boy were we so ambitious. It was a pretty tough but very enlightening journey, from designing the game to having a struggle developing the game on VR.

 

The game is about a kid named Jaka who’s looking for his family member inside his family’s apartment unit. After the family’s incident where they crashed, Jaka got a major concussion. When he woke up, he decided to go to his apartment and suddenly passed out as he approached his parent’s room. Then the mystery and horror begins…..

 

In development it was an up-and-down moment, especially the VR part, sometimes it would just be tiresome, But we managed to pull through somehow. We managed to create a pretty good face on our campus having multiple great reviews during testing and the harsh critique was also there. The main problem with the game is if now its player is having problems understanding the game objectives and the story is poorly delivered. But as a team, we think the journey ends here for the game, to think about it sounds sad. Maybe sometime in the future, we will come back to it.

MY ROLE

 

In this project, my role is the AI programmer, in which I have the job of creating the algorithm for the behavior of the AI and also some mechanics that correlate to the AI.

 

There are multiple algorithms that I use and implement to create the AI such as fuzzy logic, monte carlo, finite state machine, behavior tree, and AI perception. The one that stands out the most is definitely the fuzzy logic, and the thing is I created all algorithms in an unreal blueprint for some that is not really efficient to think about after I created it.

 

List of what I did:

 

  • Project Planning and Design:

    • Conceptualized and planned the development of the game “Xanthous,” focusing on integrating AI to control NPC behavior in a horror game environment.

 

  • AI Techniques Implementation:

    • Finite State Machine (FSM): Implemented FSM to manage various states of NPCs like Mysterious Sound, Smoky Ghost, and Emily, determining their behavior based on player actions.
    • Behavior Tree: Used Behavior Trees to create complex and modular AI behavior for NPCs, particularly NPC Emily, which reacts dynamically to the player’s presence.
    • Fuzzy Logic: Integrated Fuzzy Logic into the NPCs to adjust their behavior based on gameplay conditions, such as the intensity of poltergeist activities or the thickness of smoke.
    • Monte Carlo Simulation: Applied Monte Carlo simulations to improve the AI decision-making process, particularly for the NPC Smoky Ghost in the blackjack game scenario.

 

  • AI Perception System:

    • Implemented AI Perception, which allows NPCs to simulate human-like senses such as hearing and sight, enabling them to react more realistically to player actions.

CONCLUSION

 

This project was a lot of fun to work on even though we had ups and downs, a lot of things were learned from this project hard and soft skill-wise. 

 

In terms of hard skills, I learned algorithm concepts and development, also although visual scripting is really nice it’s not really a good implementation for an algorithm that uses a good amount of calculation.

 

Sometimes I took the role of the leader especially when the project had just gone off from our main idea. We also are really open and help each other, which boosts our morale together to make the game much better.