A Stampede of Sheep pt.2: A Machine for Sheep

After my tantrum last week, I took a short mental for some self discovery. I laughed, I cried, I reexamined what it means to live, and then I stood up and from my ten minute tirade and went to bed. Upon waking, I immediately solved Horatio's issues (A navmesh issue where I was asking Horatio to move somewhere he literally could not go) and moved on with the stampede behavior.

Lately I've been working on a new enemy for Kyon, one whose gaze petrifies and terrorizes poor little sheep. Unfortunately, I'm not able to talk much about him yet while he's in development, but I can leave you with his prototype Unreal Mannequin man!

Thanks for reading!

Christopher Miller

Lead Programmer

Barks, Bites, and Baddies: Defending the Herd

When developing Kyon, we had to make sure to maintain a strong connection between the player and the core concept of being a sheepdog. My previous blog post covered the herding aspects of player mechanics, but another aspect of being a sheepdog is protecting the herd. 

Designing combat systems for Kyon was much more focused on enemy AI design rather than player ability mechanics to maintain variety of encounter. Throughout the game, the player must defend the herd from enemy AI opponents such as cultists, wolves, and mythological creatures. Kyon, being a dog, has limited combat abilities. To deal damage, the player can use a bite attack, or a sprinting charge attack. 
 

The bite is fairly basic, being a general purpose attack that deals one increment of damage per successful strike. It's what any given player would expect of a dog character to be able to do. 

 

The sprint attack sends Kyon in whatever direction he is facing at the time of activating the ability at a high speed for a set distance. Kyon will deal one increment of damage when successfully colliding with an enemy, but it also serves other utilitarian purposes. It's useful for evading enemies when low on health, closing with fast moving enemies who are difficult to catch up to, or quickly getting around the flock if the player needs to quickly change their direction.

So being that Kyon's combat abilities are limited, the design goal was to keep encounters varied by having opponents respond differently to Kyon's abilities. One way is through bark commands.
 

he cultists, for example, are scared of Kyon's bark. If the player uses any bark within range of a cultist they will drop a sheep if carrying one and run the opposite direction for a time. This helps the player manage the herd when taking on multiple cultist enemies.

 

However, with wolves the barks do they opposite. Wolves aren't afraid, and will actually prioritize Kyon as a target. This increases difficulty for the player, since these bark commands are an important way to manage the herd. At the same time, players can use this to their advantage and aggro the wolves away from the herd when necessary. 

These bark and bite abilities can be used in more complex ways utilizing the environment in other scenarios. During the final boss fight, for example, Polyphemus is blind and searches for the player. The player cannot damage Polyphemus, and will take damage from him when physically close. Instead, the player must use bark commands to attract him towards dangerous environment actors that can stun Polyphemus. This is when the player can get a few hits in. 

Well, that covers Kyon's basic abilities for combat. For my next post I will be writing about environmental hazards.

Until next time.

-Jack Lipoff
 

A Stampede of Sheep pt.1

While our flock behaves quite well and every sheep follows a strict policy of herding ethics, we at Sheeple decided that our sheep needed to live a little, and could perhaps devolve into a chaotic stampede when certain criteria were met. "Leave it to me," I said to them. "It'll be easy and then I can get back to work on new boss enemies." This behavior is tough, and not because finding the logic is difficult.

Our main Ram, Horatio (as I call him), has been a handful since the onset. At first my problem was figuring out how to get Horatio to move away from the player, which was no problem. Next, Horatio developed a fondness for fire and walls, which I corrected. Our last big problem was that Horatio was actually incapable of dying, which I ultimately corrected after a hard-fought battle with Unreal's collision settings.

Now Horatio is once again causing us issues, in that he is actually refusing to stampede. Actually refusing to move at all in fact. He simply stops, waits for the end of the stampede timer, and then resumes normal behavior.

My logic thus far has revolved around getting our character, checking the direction he is facing, and then just moving along that direction a certain distance. Sounds simple, move the direction you are facing. So why does he suddenly feel the need to stand obstinate against those who created him?

My next post will revolve around (hopefully) how I managed to fix this problem. Till then, thank you for reading!

Christopher Miller

Lead Programmer

Core Mechanics: Herding Sheep and Having Fun Doing It

When we first began developing this game, the first and most important aspect of the game that was examined was the player's core mechanic: sheep herding. While there have been a number of video games in the past that focus on guiding friendly AI through treacherous environments, we could find very few non-strategy titles that centered on mob behavior controlled with passive  player guidance. This made the design process difficult, as I had few examples to draw from. Designing, refining, and implementing the core herding mechanic required a great deal of attention and care.

Player Movement

The first step was determining how the player would move and interact with the world. We had already settled that the game would have a top down third person view with the most minimal UI possible. A key part of this was sticking strictly to what a dog would be capable of. What can Kyon do, and what can he not do?

The player moves freely in a 360 degree range and can sprint short distances. The player's movement had to be as smooth as possible with the joystick on a gamepad, because the player's steering affects the herd's steering. 

Corralling Sheep

Next, I had to determine how the player interacts with the sheep. Any time the player comes across a lone sheep, they can have that sheep join the herd by touching the sheep.
 

Originally, we had an invisible AI herd actor that was repelled from the player, and the sheep would continuously follow that invisible actor. This allowed the sheep to always move in the opposite direction of the player. This, unfortunately, created issues with sheep jamming up on each other trying to get to the herd actor, could cause issues if the sheep somehow were separated from the herd actor, and reduced the player's ability to quickly visually understand where the flock's center of gravity and direction of movement is.
 

Herding Sheep

Instead, we introduced Horatio, a ram with golden fleece that guides the herd. This served to give the player a much better visual understanding of where the herd is going, and also reduced the amount of sheep pileups that occurred. Again, making sure the player feels like they are in control of not only their character, but also the flock has been the top design priority for this game.
 

Bark Commands

The player uses two bark commands to control the flock: a stop bark and a go bark. The stop bark has Horatio immediately stop moving if within range, thus the flock stops. If the player uses the go bark after this, Horatio will resume his normal behavior. If the sheep haven't been ordered to stop, the go bark will make them briefly move much faster.

Picking Up Sheep

The player has the ability to pick up and carry sheep if they so choose. This is useful for getting trapped sheep, stray sheep taking too long to get to the flock, or fixing traffic jams.

Each of these core mechanics went through multiple iterations, which allowed Chris and me to refine interaction between the player and the sheep. To me, this was the most important factor of the game. The herding system is relatively novel, and being the core mechanic of the entire game meant that it had to immediately be enjoyable to navigate the world and guide the sheep. It wouldn't matter about how good any other aspect of this game was. If the herding mechanics don't feel responsive or enjoyable to the player, the game is a failure. Fortunately, we have been receiving very positive feedback from playtesters indicating that they enjoy the herding mechanics. However, there's always more to refine and improve and we will continue to work on it. 


Jack Lipoff

Product Owner
Lead Designer