This is going to be my first gamejam (and what better place than LD). As an AI student, I’m gonna try and focus my game design on that area (if at all possible!). I completely regretted not participating last LD, since I had a brilliant idea for AI in a game. I hope I’m lucky this time around. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the game since I won’t be able to spare all 48 hrs. (aka WORK!)

I’ll be using:

Engine – Unity 4

Graphical Assets – CC stuff and maybe a few textures done in GIMP.

Music – I’ll either get a friend to make something quick for me, or I’ll go undust my unused ORG Maker skills.

Sounds – CC stuff or maybe I’ll try my hand at SFXR.

Thx for the oportunity guys!

-Raw

As it was my first time doing anything more than clicking the editor on Unity3D, and probably the only real game project I’ve ever worked on, it’s no surprise the compo’s deadline crept up on me. I manage to do all basic assets and player interactions, but I just started developing the “core” of the experience, the AI.

I’ll stop trying to rush it and focus on getting it done in the next 27 hours for the JAM. Even if THAT isn’t enough, I’ll spend the next week finishing up the game. So hail or storm, this game is coming out.

This is my tech demo of assets and character control:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6322731/build_280413_1602/build_280413_1602.html

Controls are standard fare First Person:

WASD – movement

Mouse – look

CTRL (Hold) – crouch

Space – jump

E – activate

Sad to say my first LD/Gamejam ended in a failure. I ran out of time. I began working on getting my “sub-engine” inside Unity3D running, and work on all level creation assets. But the whole point of my game, the AI, still is in progress. You can find the tech demo at:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6322731/asset_demo_build/asset_demo_build.html

You could play my technical demo, but since it lacks the element that made the game concept something special, it’s not something you would find any purpose. This is the schedule I followed:

1. Designing the game.
2. Getting a character controller running in Unity3D.
3. Designing, creating and texturing the game’s assets. These include prefabs for all walls, obstacles, etc, so that level creation would be a breeze (the tech demo’s level was made in about 5 minutes with drag n’ drop only, everything instantiated)
4. Designing the AI. This, my friends, is where I got stuck for a while. Still, I got it finished, just not in time.
5. Implementing the AI on C# & Unity. What I’m at.
6. Polishing. This includes GUI and music.

The main point of my game was for the player to teach an AI entity how to clear obstacles just like the player does, using a real machine learning engine (not a finite-state machine or simple imitation) . However, I underestimated the complexity of this task. I’ll keep working on this game, since the AI system is already designed and only needs to be implemented in C# (in Unity). After that, things like the GUI and music are all that’s left.

Anyone interested in watching an experiment on how we, the players, feel about interacting with an learning AI, should keep posted as I’m sure you be won’t disappointed. I’ll have the game finished by this week.