What is Companions Escape?
Companions Escape is a small Escape Room Styled Puzzle Game I created to show of the Main Part of my Honours Project, The AI Framework.
How the Framework Came to Be?
During the time I was trying to come up with an Idea for my Honours Project I was Playing the most recent video game adaption to Avatar The Last Airbender and while playing all I could think was how badly the AI Companions were design and executed in the game for example:
* The AI Companions would randomly stop following you so when it came the time you needed them they were miles behind you.
* They would walk into traps if they were following the player.
And I knew there were many other games with badly designed AI Companions which prompted the idea for my Project which was to Create an AI Companion Framework which would work in a puzzle game I made.
The Research
To not Over scope my project since I also had to make a puzzle game I decided to choose 3 problems to which I conducted research into other games which had features that could offer a possible solution to each problem, After finding solutions to each problem I considered the Pros and Cons and after careful considerations I Implemented the chosen solution to my AI Framework.
Problem 1 - God of War: Ragnarök.
Problem - The AI Companions are too fast at telling the player how to solve a puzzle.
Solution - Create a pause menu which the player can set the help timer themselves rather than a preset one, then whenever the player attempts a puzzle after the time has passed a UI widget will appear prompting the player to press 'H' if they want the help.
Problem 2 - AI Not Reviving Player.
Problem - There are have complaints about the AI Companions not reviving the player in Payday the Heist.
Solution - Rather than just making the framework revive the player as this remove consequence for the player and wont bother about looking out for traps, I used my research when looking into other games to allows the AI Companion to always revive the player but after the companion goes to 1 medical cart to gather supplies to revive the player then if the player is injured again the companion will need to find a different medical cart and if it takes too long then the player will die.
Problem 3 - AI Companions Walking into traps.
Problem - There are several games for example, Avatar the Last Airbender: Quest for Balance, Metal Gear Solid, Guardians Tale and many more where the AI Companions walk into traps and most times die and in some cases that means mission failed.
Solution - Again rather than just having the AI Companion never walk into a trap as when they stop at a trap every time the player will know there a trap there and stop which never bring that sense of Gameplay and consequence.
So i created a system which gives the AI Companion a chance to notice the trap to make it more realistic when the player has never been injured from a trap the companions sense will be low giving it a lower chance of noticing but if the player has been injured from a trap the companions sense is higher giving them a higher chance of noticing and after a while of not been injured their sense will go down.
