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Artificial Intelligence in Tribulation Knights

Producer — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 22:19:07 +0000

The Artificial Intelligence found in the new version of the Tribulation Knights video game is based on GuideBot technology. Below is some information about how this works and a diagram showing the process.

We are using Guide Bot which is a cutting-edge all-in-one middleware AI solution for games and virtual reality.
First of all Guide Bot provides implementation of standard steering behaviors like chasing, steering, dynamic obstacle avoiding.
The flexible and expandable architecture of Guide Bot is based on intellectual autonomous agent’s theory. Actor is AI controlled entity. Actor can be in one of predefined visual states (like walking barehanded, running with sword, sitting, lying etc). Actor consists of effectors – arms, legs, mouth etc. Simple actions can be assigned for each effector: walk for legs, punch or use weapon for arms, talk for a mouth.

High-level actions are used to activate more complex behavioral patterns like: fighting enemy with different types of weapon (melee or distant), chase/flee enemy, patrol territory, wandering around.
Perception (or sensor) system allows AI entity to emulate eyesight and hearing in the virtual environment.

Each state manages its own set of animations.

Main Character work for Tribulation Knights

Producer — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:08:14 +0000

Here is a screen capture of the stories main character in the game in the Cyber Monitoring Center.
Also a snapshot of the enemy Enforcers with their glowing eye shield.
The main characters face is based on a real person to avoid the standard dull looking game characters.
The character’s name is Steele, and he holds the rank of Chief Warrant Officer.
of course this character is still being tweaked, along with the weapon systems.
His army uniform will change here soon to work with the new ones I created.
The rifle is a non-lethal energy weapon, and sends a pulse of energy that disrupts a persons nervous system, rendering them unconscious.
Using it on the heavy armored troops requires multiple shots to take them down.
This will be demonstrated soon in a detailed weapons post.

Click on the image below to see it full size.

Game HUD for Tribulation Knights

Producer — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:42:18 +0000

Here is a visual explanation of the game GUI, and HUD for the video game Tribulation Knights.
It is being modified to create the best gameplay experience.
Since the dialog window pops up at the bottom when the player selects an NPC to communicate with, it is best to keep the heads-up displays at the top of the screen.
The Health meter will show the current level, and can be replenished with food, drinks, and med kits. All these things have to be found in lockers, cabinets, and inside storage rooms.
The Impact Token counter will show you the current number tokens accumulated. An Impact Token is what is given to you by a person that you have made a positive impact on. This can occur in dialog with NPC’s (Non-Player Characters). If you are rude, and cause a negative impact then you will lose an impact token.
The compass will help you navigate maps, and keep your heading when following directions.
The money counter is necessary to buy food, and can be used to help others.
The Battery indicator shows the amount of power available for certain types of devices, and instruments in the game. This can be recharged by picking up new batteries or finding recharge stations.
The Tool Selected indicator. Since there are enemies to be dealt with, there are weapons of different types. Most non-lethal, and all require ammo of some type and form.

Click on the image to see it full size.

Explanation of game gui

Game Character Dialog Designing in Tribulation Knights

Producer — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:39:01 +0000

I am using a program called Chat Mapper to design and develop the player conversations with the NPC’s (Non Player Characters) in Tribulation Knights. Below is a snapshot of a conversation being designed.

Click on the image to see it full size.

There are a lot of NPC conversations in Tribulation Knights video game, and they are necessary to tell the whole story.

The more people the player talks to, the more information is gathered. This valuable intel is needed to unlock additional conversational and playable branches in the game. You might talk to a janitor and he give you the key to an old unused room with items you can add to your inventory.

How you ask questions is important, since you can be rude which has a negative response. If you make someone upset they will remember when you come back, also their responses will be different if you have been rude. The character dialog is much more than just clicking through to get a key card, or an access code to a safe. There is an impact score that keeps count how many positive and negative impacts you have on people. Conversation with NPC’s is suppose be like in real life. If you are not nice, then people will not like you, and less likely to help you.

3D Game Characters

Producer — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:32:09 +0000

Quick update!

Here is a screen capture of some of the newer 3D game characters added to the game.

They are critical personalities in the first episode.

Click on the image to see it full size.

Potential Impact to Tribulation Knights

Producer — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:30:32 +0000

As I have mentioned before, the main game technology we use is InstantAction’s Torque game engine. The particular engine we switched to this year is T3D, (from TGEA) because it is a fantastic looking engine. The game was looking quite dated under the TGEA engine, so we migrated to the new Torque 3D engine. The structure is different, and code references are changed. Also some of the 3rd party components and code we use have not been officially migrated to T3d by their developers. So a lot of redesign work on the game took place this year. Now the bad news.

Unfortunately this past week the company that owns the former Garage Games operation released the following statement.

“Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations. While we are shutting down the InstantAction.com website and Instant Jam game, Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque. We thank all of our past and current customers for their support.”

The company is now looking for a buyer for the Video Game Engine operations.

This is bad news for us. The engine is currently at version 1.1 beta 3, and we were waiting for the full release of T3D 1.1 to release the first installment of the game. There were a variety of bugs that we have been waiting to be fixed. Many have been fixed in the latest release Beta 3, but it is still not a full release. Since Instant Action has shut down most of its operations, there is question that a full release will ever make it to us. Instant Action is looking for a buyer of the game engine part of the company but that does not guarantee the continuation of the engine development. Currently the Gamebryo game engine owner Emergent Technologies are up for sale to the highest bidder. So two major game engines comapnies are making their assets available for sale. This does not look good.

We were in this exact same scenario back in 2005 when we bought a very expensive game engine called Reality Engine. The engine was a dream come true, but not 100% complete. There were bugs being worked on until EPIC bought the rights to the technology so they could add them to the Unreal engine. The main programmer left to go work for WPIC as well. So the Reality Engine died a painful death eaten by bugs and neglict.

We were delayed this year with our flagship game Tribulation Knights as we waited for a more stable version of the Torque 3D to be released, we have to wait on the outcome of the former Garage Games, now Instant Action. Please pray for a good outcome for Instant Action and their employees. This situation affects so many small indie game developers around the world.

Torque Logo

Chapter One Sneak Peak

Producer — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:46:51 +0000

I have been hard at work on Chapter One after taking a break for a while.

Now looking at everything with fresh eyes, work is progressing quickly toward a release of the first chapter. All work on the other chapters will cease until the first is released.

Here is a sneak peak of the food store in Bunker town. Since food is in short supply, food is the number one item for all consumers! Funny how starvation changes peoples priorities. Keeping up with the Jones is not as important as feeding what family you have left.

The future is not as fun and shiny as we would like. Read Revelations and find out for yourself.

Bunker Town store selling food

New Look of Game!

Producer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:33:34 +0000

Ok I decided to test a few models and code in the newest T3D engine now that it’s our of beta. The tests looked so good that I have decided to make the jump! Yes I know this will delay the game once again, but it will be worth it.

I have started porting all the code and models over to the new T3D 1.0.1 engine. The rendering looks fantastic, and to prove it here is a snapshot with several evil Enforcers. The environment was created by a 3rd party, and it looks great. These new environments will make the natural environments look realistic. The new T3D engine does a nice job of rendering and it can be seen when you compare what everything looked like only a few months ago.

Once the porting is complete, we should be able to release a technical demo.

It will be used for testers to check the frame rates and rendering abilityof the game on their home computers, and send that information back to me.

Click on the image below to see it full size.

The Tribulation Knight’s game technology rendering can be photo-realistic if so desired. The new Torque 3D renderer, includes per-pixel dynamic lighting, normal and parallax occlusion mapping, and much more. Lighting can support hundreds of lights and global real-time dynamic shadowing on every object.

Looking at New T3D Game Engine

Producer — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:32:23 +0000

I purchased a license to the new Torque version of Garage Games T3D engine. The speed, features, and tools make it the perfect choice for future game chapters of Tribulation Knights. It is too late to migrate the current chapter of the game over without delaying it. So I will move forward with publishing the first chapter using TGEA 1.7.1.
I have to say that the new engine when finally released will make my job easier when designing levels and environments. The new model format collada is a welcome addition for Torque developers. I have looked at multiple large levels built in 3DSmax and imported into T3D in several large pieces using the collada format. The results are fantastic.

I have to tear myself away from it so I can finish the current Tribulation Knights.

TK Models in T3D Engine

The image above demonstrates the high quality of the rendering capabilities of the new engine. I recreated the terrain from chapter one, in the T3D engine in only minutes.

A level building comparison:

The roads I built in chapter one using the TGEA 1.1.7 engine took me a long time because of the pain to line up the road pieces. Even then I had to tweak the terrain so that the road would look correct when laying on the surface. Time it took, at least 4 Hours.

In T3D I have the capability to lay down roads, or paths using a spline technique. After adding them I can go back and tweak the path, and alignment. Time it took, only 30 minutes.

An indie developer has to watch the bottom line on every purchase, and I admit I did debated over this decision. The discount I received for being an early adopter, and a existing TGEA licensee helped me with the cost. The actual results I receieved when using each beta interation has proved to me that it was worth the investment of my money and time. I am so excited about using it on Tribulation Knights, but at the time of writing this it is only up to Beta version 4. Only once it has reached a full release version will I consider jumping to it. The reason why is that I have to convert my code to each version of the code, and that takes time. Each change and modification would need to be moved from a previous version to a new version of the code. That takes a lot of time, troubleshooting, and bug fixes. I want to avoid that and wait for the full release. Once that happens, expect to see more screenshots and videos of TK conversion tests.

Go over to the Garage Games website and check out the engine for yourself.

http://www.garagegames.com