"A Spy Game About Subtle Behavior" and "A Puzzle Game About Observing People": Spy Party and Remote Shepherd

I'm reading this month's issue of GameInformer, and there's an interview with some guy named Chris Hecker. Some of you may have heard of him. Anyways, he's talking about this game he's working on, Spy Party. As I'm reading about this game where one player tries to blend in with a crowd of NPCs, and another with a sniper rifle tries to identify that player via behavioral cues, I think to myself: this sounds familiar.

Oh right, I just finished making a single player version of this game.

The World Is Not A Round, Spherical Place: Nav Meshes vs. Path Nodes

First printed as "The World Is Not A Round, Spherical Place" on the Remote Shepherd Dev' Blog


AI characters need a way to get around the world, and we considered three ways to let them do this. The first was local avoidance, but this can very easily devolve into dithering unless the level is specifically designed to prevent it. As such we decided to do actual path finding, the only decision left being whether to use a node graph or a navigation mesh. We decided to go with a navigation mesh based on the recommendations of this article. I'll summarize the relevant points here.