Humannequin
The Project​
This project was part of a University module and involved a team developing a game from a company or student chosen brief.
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Myself and 2 other teammates formed the team Treehouse Games and created the idea/brief for 'Humannequin'. We pitched it to the rest of the 3rd year students and hired the appropriate team members to help us create the game.
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Overall we constisted of 3 programmers, 2 artists, 2 game designers and a sound designer.
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My Work on the Game
I was the technical lead/programmer on the team and focused on implementing:
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Enemy AI
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Wire Puzzle mechanics
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VR movement/interaction
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Scare tactics / events (jump scares and sounds)
I was also responsible for maintaining a bugs and features list, assigning the developers to tasks and rating each task with a priority and difficulty.
As part of the University module, I was responsible for writing a Technical Design document and a postmortem report.
Enemy Mannequin AI
Stalker Mannequin
This enemy is the players main threat, stalking without showing any movements whatsoever. Whenever the mannequin is visible, it will remain still, but when the player turns around, it follows.
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This mechanic was designed so that the player would not notice the enemy’s movements whatsoever, and so the player might question if the enemy actually did move. (It also saved our artist a bunch of time animating).
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It was crucial that the player would never actually witness the enemy move. This is based heavily on the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, which I find to be the most terrifying thing from that show.
Torch Light Mannequin
This is an advanced form of the Stalk Mannequin, meant to be used in a completely dark room with only your torch light to see. It pursues the player when not being lit by the torch light.
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This was created by giving the torch a cone shaped trigger and scaling it to the exact size of the spotlight volume.
Mutated/Transform Mannequin
This is the final enemy in the game, It will suddenly mutate once the player approaches, breaking the rule of the mannequins movements being unseen.
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Mannequin body parts are also found scattered around the level. Mannequin heads will also turn to follow the player while the player cannot see them, similar to the Stalking Mannequin AI.
The Wire Puzzle
This fuse box puzzle requires player to connect coloured nodes without crossing the lines. The player must use the pliers to drag wires between the coloured nodes and must connect up all the wires ends to complete the puzzle
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I implemented this using Unity LineRenderer, allowing the user to drag different lines to each node, without crossing any used nodes.
VR Movement
As VR motion sickness is an issue, we spent time researching and testing the best ways to reduce this. A lot of exploration games use a teleportation system but we did like this as we felt it broke the immersion and players could easily avoid the enemies this way.
We decided to use a traditional analogue stick style of movement (used with the HTC Vive touch-pads) with features to counter motion sickness, such as incremented turning.
