Child of Night was pitched as a 2nd year major project and is a casual top-down 3D stealth game where the player - as a vampire - must sneak around the town and consume their victims before the sun rises.
The prototype was completed over a five week period, including the conception and planning, before it was pitched to an industry panel. The games consists of sneaking around a single town and consuming different victims as per your objectives. You have different abilities to aid you in your ambitions; Cloak (renders you invisible), Shadow (creates a decoy which guards will follow), Dash (increases your move speed drastically, for a very short period) and Hypnotise (acts as a stunning effect).
For this prototype I primarily worked on the AI for the villagers and the stealth/vision mechanic. The AI is relatively rudimentary, being based on a state-machine like approach. The longer the vampire is seen the higher their alertness increases, they're alertness level determining what state they are in. For the basic victims, these states consists mainly of; Wandering, Cautious, Scared and Terrified. The more complicated and antagonistic guards and vampire slayer are different with the states; Patrolling, Investigating and Attacking. Each of these states are implemented slightly differently for the different types of villagers.
The stealth/vision mechanic I scavenged from my previous project a VR stealth game and makes use of a camera component for each villager. The camera component does not draw to the screen and so does not slow the computer, but at the same time I was able to utilise the camera's easily modifiable frustum and built-in transform functions.
By the end of the prototype period the prototype was validated by the industry panel and I begun work on it for the remained of the year.
Designers: Blayne Cuzner, Jono Hosking
Artists: Meg Groenveld, Lani Parker
Programmers: Sean McCarthy, Thomas Wooster, Justin Cragg
Final Version: https://www.justincragg.com/post/child-of-night