Family Time Development Part 9 - Wolf Mama Behaviors and Pig Mechanics

Video shows the summary, text shows the technical!

Episode 2 game release is approaching!

This week:

• Wolf Mama Behaviors

• Pig Mechanics

Wolf Mama Behaviors

I thought the scare animation came out really well! But it's also very useful because boars can get very annoying: You can't outrun boars unless you make them run into walls or trees.

So having the wolf mama as a backup is super cool and useful.

She will at all times defend all pups, herself, and the player if any animal with aggro gets nearby. As a bonus sub-behavior, wolf pups will instinctively move to the mama when she roars.

There are more behaviors like this planned but really the purpose of them is to fill 'gameplay gaps'; ways to stop gameplay things like the boar from annoying you all the time.

Pig Mechanics

Pigs, boars, and piglets all can be tied up if they are knocked out after running into a hard surface. They are knocked out for 8 seconds and will get back up as if nothing happened. They will also naturally huddle together with other pigs if they are within sight distance. Pigs and piglets follow boars so boars can lead the packs.

There were quite a few architectural considerations needed to pull this off mostly regarding GPU data and fast steady lists for keeping track of sight change events. Afterall, the pigs too and every animal is built with the GPU in mind to support 10,000 instances running around and with steady framerate!

In other news I have found an official artist for the game and is in the process of creating official art for the game. This art will be used to replace the AI slop in-game art assets and also for promotional material. A Kickstarter is in the works to fund more child species! 😺🐶🐦. But more on that later!

Stay tuned!