Followers

Followers is a serious game where you can only indirectly interact with other school students. Choose how you respond to posts on social media and see how this changes how they react to you when you approach them. Based on your actions, you can reach 1 of 3 endings.

In Followers, you post on the titular social media platform and start receiving comments. When you receive a negative comment, it is up to you how to respond. Your actions have consequences and will determine which of the 3 endings you reach.

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Followers features a simple social media simulation and complex AI. The social media system controls comment frequency and negativity which are affected by your actions. Some of your actions are then in turn affected by the options generated by the system. The AI in Followers exhibit group and crowd behaviour. The students move as a group and when idling, stand and face each other in a circle. While moving, the groups will try to avoid each other in an attempt to prevent messy path finding by stepping to the left or by giving right of way to another group.

I was the sole programmer for this project and was responsible for all the scripting. I programmed the AI, the social media system and interactions as well as interactions around the level such as sitting down and eating. I also programmed a profile system designed to make the experience more personal.

This project required a very complex AI and I learned a lot through its development. For example, I learned more efficient ways of controlling AI states, how to integrate a leader and follower system to simulate groups and the calculations and logic required for crowd avoidance. In addition to this, I learned to use iterative programming to refine my AI and refactoring to keep my scripts tidy.