"Gas Bags" Wildlife
When working on the envrioment demos for the Ai characters, I kept getting a sense of the world feeling to empty and not of assets, but of life. We had discussed the idea of wildlife being in the game but it had never really gone further than casual conversations. Though now I wanted to pitch to the group my idea of what wildlife could be in our game, so I spent one weekend working on a base prototype of the creature and some quick visuals to show the group, almost like a game jam for one character idea. I wanted to get a basic ai coded in engine with simple movement and a placement model along with some sketched out ideas looking into how it could look in more detail.
Some of my favourite game series have also used this method of including wildlife into the game without their being any real purpose to them in the sandbox apart from building on the lore of the world. The biggest inspiration to include animals in the game was from the rpg series Mass Effect, which uses a diverse array of animals that wander the enviroments of the different planets, this help to add personality and believability in these places in my opinion.
When coming to the idea of what I called a Gas Bag, I tried to think of something that would tonally fit into the world and story and also at the same time not be to complexed that it could take away from development in other key areas. I thought of a simple floating creature that would use a simple animation system to express several movements and emotions such as moving, eating and sleeping.
Above you can see the simple block out I created for the Gas Bag creature, using preset shapes in Unreal Engine just to get the basic shape and look, to go along with the code il write for the creature.
Above you can see the temporary model.
These pictures show the node structure behind these creatures with them moving to random areas of the world and pausing along with also floating away from the player and other Ai that come to close.
For playtest purposes they will use the mock up I made earlier till either me or my team mate produce and animate a model.
Below you can see footage from a playtest seeing how the Gas Bag Ai would work in engine along with the player.
These where some quick designs I sketched up with the group.
The design where refined in photoshop until we came to conclusion to use the design seen on the left.
