An Exploration Tool for Predicting Stealthy Behaviour

Abstract

Stealthy movement is an important part of many games in the First Person Shooter (FPS) and Role Playing Games (RPG) genres.  Structuring a game level to match stealth goals, however, is difficult, and can depend on subtle and fragile interactions between the game space, enemy motion, and other factors. Here we apply a probabilistic path-finding approach to efficiently analyze a 2D space and find stealthy paths. This approach naturally accommodates variation in the level design, numbers and movements of enemies, fields of view, and player start and goal placement. Our design is integrated directly into the Unity 3D game development framework, allowing for interactive and highly dynamic exploration of how different virtual spaces and enemy configurations affect the potential for stealthly movement by players, or other NPCs.