Note: this is the end of 4-part series on Tomb Heist that started with costumes++ and continued with AI features and doors++.
Maker Pen Workshop #1 Recap
Tomb Heist! is the name of the current Maker Pen Workshop we are building internally at Rec Room using only the maker pen. Unlike previous #RRO rooms, Tomb Heist! will be released as a community room. As we build it, we’ll be creating and releasing new creative tools.
This is the elevator pitch for Tomb Heist!:
Tomb Heist! is a short, two player co-op experience that emphasizes stealth, and team play. This heist takes place in a long lost tomb hidden away in the depths of the jungle. The goal is to break in, steal the magic idol, and escape. Each player has a purpose in this heist, and you will need both to pull it off. This quest will take place entirely indoors.
This Maker Pen Workshop was aimed at enhancing the overall quest building experience by adding some new tools and enhancing a lot of the building blocks we have currently. Here are all the things that this Maker Pen Workshop brought the creative community:
Costumes++
Room Doors++
Spawners++
Teleporter Locomotion Features (Falling/Climbing)
CV2 Beta
AI Scripting
Tomb Heist!
This post is highlighting some of the key features of Tomb Heist! And a peek at the inner workings of the AI logic used to create the experience.
Beware...Tomb Heist! Spoilers below.
Game Design
Early on, we wanted to put an emphasis on each character having different abilities, and how each is necessary to complete the quest.
The Strong One can lift heavy objects, and can use pressure plates, but is much slower than The Nimble One.
The Nimble One can climb, jump higher, and move much faster.
A big challenge was that some of these puzzles would highlight only one character’s abilities, and leave the other player standing around. In order to combat this, the puzzles always try to incorporate movement for both players. Additionally, the puzzles tend to include multiple parts for both players, and this often comes with players exploring their options together as they progress through the level.
While the first level in Tomb Heist! is linear, mainly for tutorialization reasons, we wanted the main level to be more open ended. Early on, there were iterations where we tried forcing players to deal with the AI enemies in specific ways like locking them behind gates. Overall, this ended up being pretty confusing and not the way people wanted to play. We ended up opening up the solutions to levels to let the player decide how they want to proceed. If you want to completely stealth around the AIs and avoid them you totally can, or if you want to lean into dealing with AIs and taking them out however you can as you go, you can do that too.
Stealth AI
Stealth gameplay was the chief goal for developing the CV2 AI functionality. We felt the commands you would need to script your own system to do this would provide flexibility to accomplish that, and so much more.
The stealth logic itself is broken up into a few core parts:
Initialize: Sets all the variables were going to use, and sets additional AI parameters.
Patrolling: Controls the state where the AI is looking for a target, and decides to investigate or initiate combat.
Investigating: The goes to the location near where an enemy was spotted and looks around, distracted.
Combat: State where the enemy chases the enemy, attacking them. Additional logic to allow the for the enemy to escape if they get too far away, or are out of sight for too long.
What’s Next?
Now that Tomb Heist is completed, we plan to take a bit of time to learn from the experience and see what improvements we can do to make creating similar experiences easier to do. We would love to hear what you thought of this Maker Pen Workshop overall. We can’t wait to see you what you all make with the new tools! Also please note, the room ^TombHeist is copy-able for you to take a look at on your own to learn more about how the room was made.
