Underworld Ascendant Updates #8-10, $428,107 and Counting

Since the latest time we checked, three more updates, update 8, update 9 and update 10, have been released for the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter campaign. The first is largely a recap of the milestones reached by the campaign so far, the second introduces two new team members, Jeffrey Kesselman and Will Teixeira, and discusses the game’s AI plans, and the third discusses the campaign’s rewards, the game submission to Steam Greenlight, and broadly sketches OtherSide’s plans for the rest of the campaign.

A snippet on the game’s AI:

Not all AI’s are an Artificial Intelligence gone Insane

One of the coding challenges Jeffrey and Will are working through is making the creatures of the Stygian Abyss come to life. Honing an effective AI is one of the one of the most potent tools for pulling this off well.

For instance, in Thief we built the AI all around stealth tactics. Before the AI was coded up and working the game was not fun. You could stomp loudly past a guard, and half the time he’d ignore you.

But once we got the AI working it was a transformative experience. I recall playing the prototype build where we first got the AI to click. I was breaking into a noble’s mansion when a guard thought he heard my footsteps, and got suspicious. He came searching down the dark corridor towards me. I crouched down and pushed my back against a dark alcove. Literally holding my breath, I watched while he guard brushed a mere arm’s distant past me. He never saw me. The sense of relief and then satisfaction that I had snuck around the guard was awesome.

Underworld Ascendant is not stealth-centric like Thief, but it will use stealth AI and mechanics as one of the tools players can use during encounters with creatures of the deep.