Animal Flocks as Natural and Dynamic Spatial Clues in Adventure Video-games
Jesús Ibáñez, Carlos Delgado-Mata, Óscar Serrano, David García Narbona · 2008
Abstract —This paper proposes the use of animal flocks to naturally provide spatial clues in adventure video-games. This approach complements the so far proposed mechanisms to support navigation in virtual worlds, addressing particular conditions that the previous approaches do not cover. The proposed model is natural and peripheral. Moreover, it does not limit the player freedom, it is adequate for dynamic and large environments, and it does not create false expectations. Our model is composed of two complementary algorithms. The first one is a flocking algorithm (based on an extension of Reynolds’ boids algorithm) which creates an emergent group behaviour from simple individual rules. The second one is a control algorithm which manages the list of places, decides the particular place to suggest at each time and parameterises the flocking behaviour. Index Terms —Adventure video-games, flocking behaviour, guiding, navigation support. I. INTRODUCTION Most current video-games take place in interactive 3D virtual environments. Many of them are interactive adventures in big virtual spaces where the player gradually acquires information about the game context. Examples of such games are Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Zack and Wiki for the Nintendo Wii console and the revolutionary Okami for PS2 and the Nintendo Wii. When the game starts, the user has nearly no information about the game plot. Sometimes the user does not even know the game objective. While playing, the game provides the player with clues about the story he is immersed in. Thus, as the player gets more and more information, the game objective becomes clearer for him and he is able to develop new tasks towards the game completion. Therefore, one of the issues this kind of game deals with is how to provide new clues to the user. A particular kind of clue is the spatial clue. The game suggests spatial locations that the user should visit in order to get more information. For instance the game could suggest to the player to approach a particular building (or garden, or tree, etc). Then, when the user reaches this place, the player discovers a useful element for the game plot (for instance the user finds a useful object, or he finds a characters who tells him something interesting, etc.). In this sense, there are two extreme approaches to suggest spatial clues to the game players. On the one hand, the game can explicitly indicate to the player the next location he should