The Year: 2018

The Mission: Create a new event named, Horde Mode for the Extinction DLC.

The Problem: Pathing. I tried to create a 'neural network' that would detect obstacles. I got it SO close. 4 months on this and we got so close to the deadline I had to use another method

The idea was that the dino would be able to use the green pathing points to navigate to the center. This would be dynamic in the sense you could put it anywhere on the map.

Obviously, I was aiming for this because it offers more variety to the player. Other ways of doing it would be creating pre-defined pathing routes that the player can 'game'

This could be 'gamed' too but I felt like it would provide a more fun experience.

Here's how complex it could get on a real map

The idea from here was that if I dino did not have at least 1 pathing option, it wouldn't spawn at that point. Spawn points were meant to be the outer ring.

So in theory dinos would use this to know what direction to travel.

After spawning, dinos would only choose pathing points that had available routes to the center.

Unfortunately, there were too many edge cases to ship this in a final product. But it was fun. Let me know if these things interest you!

Ok another example

And a SUPER early proof of concept. Pay attention to the debug strings in the top left. It's informing you of the dino's decisions and available moves.

Keep in mind the dino is moving on very straight lines but that would eventually be randomized a bit to give it more of a human feel.

Anyways the point was to show the journey in developing a feature. None of this was even used.

Last post. Another look at what didn't make the cut. We wanted to have the ground appear corrupted and have this fog appear as well but had a lot of problems pulling it off - mainly related to time. Cheers!