One Man and His Dog - The Game started out as a programming project during my Masters at the University of Abertay. It was inspired by a previous AI module in which I had to produce a report indicating how flocking techniques were used in games. My research showed that in the majority of cases this technique was used in a background or non-interactive context. However I was interested to see whether this technique would work when it was central to the game play.Would it create an interesting experience?

Obviously flocks are limited to where they occur in real life (mainly within groups of animals), which limited the type of game I could make. However having seen sheep being herded and seeing that this was a popular game subject, I decided to create a game of this type. Further details of what I did to create the flocking / herding behaviour can be found within the project documentation.

The aim of the game is to herd the group of sheep through the three sets of gate in the level in as quick a time as possible. Each gate is only complete when all the sheep have moved between the posts in the correct direction; indicated by the red flag, which has to be on the left as they go through.The player can only indirectly move the sheep using the dog , which is controlled using the mouse. As the dog moves closer to the sheep they will intentionally move away. However unlike most herding games, there are additional rules governing the herd which make it more realistic to play.

The game is written using C++ and uses the DirectX 9.0c SDK. DirectInput handles both the mouse and keyboard inputs, while DirectAudio creates the sounds. All the graphics within the game are rendered using shaders, with only the menu screen using the fixed function pipeline. In future when time allows I hope to find proper dog and sheep models to replace the current basic circles. I also hope to expand the game by creating a level system where difficulty is increased through the addion of more gates of varying sizes.

One Man and His Dog Installer (.exe, 24.2 MB)
One Man and His Dog Project Document (.doc, 760 kB)