Creating an Animat

The process of creating an animat in FEAR is threefold, as described in this section.

Description of the Architecture

Create a file with the description of the architecture. This specifies which components the brain of the animat needs and other recursive dependencies for those components.

Generating the Source Code

To create all the project files, we need to process this architecture definition with the toolset. The resulting animat should compile by default, effectively creating a brain-dead animat!

Adding behaviors to the animat involves adding code to a few files—usually those with "to-do" comments inside them. Other generated files are managed by the toolset (stored in the Generated folder of the project) and should not be edited manually; their content may disappear when the tools are used again.

Preparations for the Game

The compiled files need to be accessible by the game engine. This involves copying the brain dynamic link library (DLL) into the correct directory, along with a descriptive file to tell the framework about the architecture required. All the data files for the animats are stored in their own directory, too.