Project description
The game is about adding and removing wolves, rabbits and deers into an ecosystem. The wolves will hunt the other animals when hungry and the animals will try to escape.
The game is played on the phone using AR. By orienting the phone around the player can see the environment where the game takes place. By tapping the screen the player can select an animal and then spawn it wherever he wants and remove existing animals.
Demo video
Goals and motivation
The technology is intriguing and novel for us. We wanted to expand our knowledge about AR and mobile phone development.
Also, we wanted to create a unique learning platform about the ecosystem that engages users into altering the environment and observing how it adapts.
Goals:
- AR interactive map on a flat surface with different animal species
- Realistic animal behaviour with appropriate animations
- Animals can interact with each other
About the technologies
-
Unreal Engine 4
- Handheld AR for Android - Google ARCore
Individual contributions
Filip
- Animal AI
- Animations
- Sound
- Game design
Facundo
- UI
- Spawning and removing animals
- Webpage
Thibault
- 3D models, animation and sounds
- Animal and plane spawning
Carl
- Environment/Level Design
- Particle Systems
- Game Design
Challenges and obstacles
The challenges and obstacles we encountered are:
- Setting up AR and mobile phone development environment inside Unreal Engine 4
- Creating realistic and believable AI for the animals
- Animating models properly depending on which state the animal is in
- Creating the environment that can be rendered on mobile devices while achieving satisfactory performance
Related work
Some reading material we found interesting:
- Study on population dynamics for triple-linked food chain using a simulation-based approach
- Dynamical behaviors of a food-chain model with stage structure and time delays
Some projects we were inspired on:
Making of
Gallery
